Interesting Links for 14-02-2015

[andrewducker]

• The double life of Hasidic atheists
  (tags: viaCipherGoth Jews atheism )
• Virgin are dramatically expanding their cable network
  (tags: virgin cable )
• Stochastic, Nerdtastic Restaurant Bill Splitting
  (tags: random restaurant statistics payment )
• Everything you know about the Scottish council tax freeze is wrong
  (tags: Scotland tax )
• Every Single

Comments

[apostle_of_eris]

Everything you know about the Scottish council tax freeze is wrong?
Since I have no idea what that is, I guess I'm OK. (Please do not damage my ignorance of the topic.)

[ext_208701]

Isn't the fairest way to split a restaurant bill by ability to pay it

[naath]

A group of friends I often eat out with has the system that you pay for what you ate; but it never involves "pointlessly sitting around for half an hour" the key is that instead of "reading the bill" after you get it you *read the menu* before you order and *remember what you owe*, how hard can it possibly be? Usually we have a pile of the Right Money before the bill shows up.

For people who aren't good at adding up and remembering numbers I think that "split the whole bill N ways" is typically easiest although not always fairest. Although if a small group meets often "take turns who pays" is also good, especially if you like paying with plastic. Screwing around with stochastic paying seems... likely to be very irritating.

[ext_208701]

You can remember not only what you ordered but how much it cost? Shit, normally I'm doing well to get the same meal I asked for :-)

It tends to fall apart I find if you share things like bottles of wine, as it turns out there's often only three small glasses per bottle or if you invite people who can't add up.

The socialist alternative of course would be for everyone to write down their annual salary and run exactly the same stochastic method against earnings, neatly splitting the bill according to ability to pay. I haven't yet found anybody socialist enough to think this suggestion is anything other than utterly hilarious.