{"id":120,"date":"2008-05-04T22:24:57","date_gmt":"2008-05-05T06:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=120"},"modified":"2009-10-06T03:19:32","modified_gmt":"2009-10-06T11:19:32","slug":"heronic-measures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=120","title":{"rendered":"Heronic Measures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most people, at some point or another, when confronted by a vending machine that is supposed to take bills in payment, have had trouble getting it to take a bill.  I have a method that has always worked for me.  There are <em>two theories<\/em> as to <em>why<\/em> it works; I will explain my method in terms of <em>one<\/em> of these theories.<\/p> <p>A vending machine that rejects your bill wishes to <em>thwart<\/em> you.  It infers that you would rather have its product than the bill, and so it would leave you with the bill and deny you the product.<\/p> <p>Now, you can keep feeding it the bill until it tires of the game and sells you the product, but who knows how long that might take?  Some machines would derive <em>endless<\/em> pleasure from spitting the bill back at you.<\/p> <p>You cannot very well say <q>Oh, I'd rather have this bill than the fizzy sugar water!<\/q> and, hoping that the machine will be thus fooled, insert the bill.  First of all, the machine probably cannot hear you anyway; and, secondly, your actions will in any case speak louder than do your words.  It is a <em>given<\/em> that, at the time that you insert the bill, you would rather have the fizzy sugar water.  Hence, you must persuade the machine that you have <em>changed your mind after the insertion of the bill<\/em>.<\/p> <p>You can do this by <em>pulling back on the bill after the rollers have grabbed it<\/em>.  The machine infers that you have just re&auml;lized that you won't have enough money for the bus, or have just recognized the bill as a rare collectable.  In keeping with its <em>underlying<\/em> desire to thwart you, it will now hold fast to the bill, pull it inward, and dispense the product.<\/p> <p>Feel free to laugh in triumph; as I said, the machine probably cannot hear you anyway.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most people, at some point or another, when confronted by a vending machine that is supposed to take bills in payment, have had trouble getting it to take a bill. I have a method that has always worked for me. There are two theories as to why it works; I will explain my method in [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[202,203],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-public","tag-everyday-frustrations","tag-vending-machines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}