Archive for the ‘Whacky Schtuff’ Category

Microwaves and Freezer Burns

Friday, March 10th, 2006

Recently a friend of mine said something about microwaving food and freezer burn as causing a molecular change in the food itself, thus making the food harmful to those who eat it. I decided to do some research to verify if this information is accurate.

Research is a loose term, mainly trying to discover based on data and studies done whether or not these things hold any water, not doing any actual experiments myself.

Freezer Burn
According the FDA, freezer burn is a quality, not a safety issue. This is a process whereby food loses moisture in some parts, which cause those parts to dry out, and may cause them to discolor. So, there is nothing dangerous about freezer burn. In fact, it can be prevented by removing as much air as possible before putting something in the freezer.

The Dangers of Microwave Ovens
This was a bit more challenging. When I did a search on the web regarding this theory, I found a number of links to articles related to the dangers of microwave ovens. However, I did not find these types of links that contained any data or were backed up by studies. In fact, the only commonality among the articles was that 1. the articles all indicated that there were dangerous carcinogens coming out of microwave oven cookery and 2. most of the sites were some part of a homeopathic/herbal/hocus pocus site.

That being said, I changed the wording of what I was looking for and found that microwaving food is safe. The dangers of using the microwave include 1. burns or over-heating may occur when using containers that are not microwave safe, 2. that the food doesn’t always cook evenly, which could open the door to increasing bacteria in the food, and 3. that microwaves should not be used to sterilize anything. There is no molecular change to the food. However, it is interesting to note that the study in Australia concluded that plastics, even those labeled as microwave safe, may allow chemical migration to occur into the food. It recommends to not allow the food to touch the plastic, and indicates that higher-fat foods tend to increase the amount of chemical migration of particles. The FDA concluded that the amount of chemical migration is well below what would be deemed as harmful.

It also indicated that aluminum foil may be used in the microwave, as long as it doesn’t touch the sides of the microwave itself.

An interesting side-note was that, according to studies, microwaves actually help food retain more of their vitamins, minerals, and nutrition than boiling. This contradicts what the anti-microwaving sites were pointing out.

So, all-in-all, I think the people who think microwaving is bad are a bit off-kilter. Food is cooked by the agitation of water molecules inherint in the food. That is all that happens. The agitation is due to the polarity of water being manipulated by the microwaves, causing two different types of heating: dielectric and ionic.

The Chinese Discovered America…well, First.

Thursday, January 19th, 2006


According to a map recently brought to the attention of the world, China discovered America first, but never exploited her. It seems a Chinese map collector, Liu Gang, came across a map from 1763 that is a copy of a map from 1418. The map was drawn by Mo Ti Tong, and was derived from a book, The Marvellous Visions of the Star Raft, written in 1418 about Admiral Zheng He’s explorations around the world. The map is currently being analyzed for authenticity…if proved to be an original, we shall soon hear that the Chinese first discovered America, and, apparently rejected exploiting her. Hmm…. sounds a bit fishy to me.

Big Floating Rocks in Space

Thursday, January 19th, 2006

According to an article in The Economist, Pluto’s planetship is currently being debated. Apparently the Kuiper-belt contains thousand of objects that may or may not be planets, and Pluto is one of those objects. Pluto is less than 1% of the Earth’s mass, and there is an object discovered in the belt that is larger. So now the astronomers are rethinking the definition of a planet. Hope we stay on the list!

Resurrection Stan

Friday, December 30th, 2005

My hard-drives have been dropping like flies. After over a month of not wanting to deal with the problem, my systems are up and running again…. way to go me!

I was able to successfully restore my wonderful webserver, among other odds and ends, and only lost little things (like /etc/hosts & /etc/aliases) here and there.

Now, if I could only do that with the hosed 300GB Windoze hard-drive I have…thanks, Maxtor, for being big pricks who can’t even format a drive properly to ensure data integrity. Guess I get what I deserve by relying on a hard-drive vendor to format a windows drive.

Good thing the majority of the 300GB drive was game & game data, which is easily recoverable. Alas, I’ll have to start Doom III all over again if I am to try to win :o(

Oh, and thanks to my genius, not only was my webserver intact, but IHS didn’t have to be reinstalled/reconfigured…I just mounted the drive, ran apachectl start and away it went! I love *nix!

God’s Joke on Men & Women

Monday, November 21st, 2005

I would like to get comments from my tiny little readership (hmm, I wonder if I’m the only reader of my blog…perhaps I should advertise).

Have you noticed that God designed men and women to be a fairly humorous joke on each other?

For instance…as many I am sure have pointed out….

Men expect their women to stay exactly the same as when they first met them.
Women expect their men to change, if not expect to change their men.

The punchline is….
Men never really change.
Women change constantly.

God definitely has a sense of humor. :o) I’m just wondering who’s actually laughing….we know its not men, and we know its not women….

“Love” Gone Bad…A Woman Scorned

Thursday, November 3rd, 2005

Gail O’Toole did some unspeakable things to her ex-boyfriend, Ken Slaby that should shock you (yes, they sound like porn names, but they’re real people).

Slaby [the ex-boyfriend] said O’Toole waited until he fell asleep and glued his penis to his stomach, glued his testicle to his leg and glued the cheeks of his buttocks together….nail polish….dumped it all over his head.

When he woke up, Slaby said O’Toole threw him out.

He didn’t have a car, so he was forced to walk one mile down Route 22 to call 911 and Murrysville police, Slaby said.

Wow! Remind me never to fall asleep at an ex-girlfriend’s house. I feel really bad for the woman Slaby is dating; inferably he must have cheated on her to be in a position to have his body parts glued to himself, let alone to fall asleep over at his ex-girlfriend’s apartment. Apparently O’Toole had been planning this revenge for quite some time. Of course, O’Toole says that this is their standard sexual behavior; all I know is that I don’t know anyone who gets turned-on by having their a$$ crack glued together. And I know alot of freaks. Yet another case where chastity, and leaving at a reasonable hour, would have prevented such antics.

Moral Taboos

Saturday, October 22nd, 2005

I just took another philosophical quiz on Moral Taboos. I found it interesting, here are my results…acordingly, I am less permissive than most, which, is kind of funny, since I am fairly open-minded. Albeit, I do find certain things to be more acceptable than other things.

Taboo - The Results

How did you do compared to other people?

Taboo has been played 10356 times.

Your Moralising Quotient of 0.79 compares to an average Moralising Quotient of 0.32. This means that as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned you are less permissive than average.

This is fairly surprising as I consider myself to be fairly open-minded.

Your Interference Factor of 0.50 compares to an average Interference Factor of 0.22. This means that as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned you are more likely to recommend societal interference in matters of moral wrongdoing, in the form of prevention or punishment, than average.

I guess this makes sense, I mean, if there is something immoral that needs to be prevented because we can’t see all ends, I recommend prevention &/or punishment over merely allowing it.

Your Universalising Factor of 1.00 compares to an average Universalising Factor of 0.48. This means you are more likely than average to see moral wrongdoing in universal terms - that is, without regard to prevailing cultural norms and social conventions (at least as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned).

Yes, being Christian dictates that there is an objective morality which social norms can not circumvent.

The Matrix

Saturday, October 22nd, 2005

So I have nothing to do today, but wait for the Disaster Recovery work to get finished (well, I have things to do, just that I might be needed….but my stuff works, so I don’t see this happening).

Anyway, I took yet another philosophical quiz that involves ‘The Matrix.’ It was rather boring, except for one part where you choose a card or cards and the program tries to figure out which cards you have chosen. Interestingly, I chose two cards. The program then removes the card(s) you were thinking of. And amazingly, it was accurate the first time. I tried one more time to see where the trick is…. but it basically said I’d have to wait 24hrs.

Whacky, eh? I dare you to try it, if only to beat the system.

Morality Play

Saturday, October 22nd, 2005

I took another philosophy quiz…that of a Morality Play… basically, they ask you questions about the ‘morality’ of a situation and you answer based on your own inner locutions with regards to how moral something is. Its rather interesting and showed that I had a 53% Parsimony score.
(more…)

God’s Battleground

Saturday, October 22nd, 2005

I tried another one of those ‘choose your own adventure’ philosophy games….
This one is regarding consistency of thought with regards to the existence of God.

I thought it was fun, and a bit challenging…Here’s my score:

You took zero direct hits and you bit zero bullets. The average player of this activity to date takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.11 bullets. 285276 people have so far undertaken this activity.

Battleground Analysis
Congratulations!

You have been awarded the TPM medal of honour! This is our highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.

The fact that you progressed through this activity neither being hit nor biting a bullet suggests that your beliefs about God are internally consistent and very well thought out.

A direct hit would have occurred had you answered in a way that implied a logical contradiction. You would have bitten bullets had you responded in ways that required that you held views that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. However, you avoided both these fates - and in doing so qualify for our highest award. A fine achievement!

How did you do compared to other people?

* 285276 people have completed this activity to date.
* You suffered zero direct hits and bit zero bullets.
* This compares with the average player of this activity to date who takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.11 bullets.
* 7.63% of the people who have completed this activity, like you, emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.
* 45.81% of the people who have completed this activity took very little damage and were awarded the TPM Medal of Distinction.

Way to go me! :o) This just reinforces the fact that my belief in God is based on reason and is correct. At the very least, I am consistent with regards to logical philosophy on this matter.