Category Archives: Popular Culture

General, Popular Culture, Technology and Society

Frying A Turkey Without Oil?

17 Comments

Not exactly, despite the claim of this post:

Deep frying is a form of convection heating. Instead of hot air, you are using hot oil to transfer the heat. Depending on the oil used in the fryer, the temperature is usually about 375 degrees to keep the food from absorbing a lot of oil.

The Big Easy uses infrared energy to “bathe” food. It excites the proteins, not the water. Thus, you are literally frying it. It’s just like sitting in the sun all day. The infrared energy will “fry” your meat’s skin. The Big Easy doesn’t need a lid because it’s better to let the hot air escape. That way your food doesn’t dry out and there’s no basting necessary. Unlike conventional turkey fryers there is also no warm-up period. Just drop your thawed turkey (stuffed or unstuffed, injected or not, sugar-less rubbed or not) into the chamber and turn the Big Easy on. Infrared energy starts cooking it immediately and the cooking time for 12-14-pound turkey will be cut almost in half.

Without expressing an opinion on the relative merits of cooking a turkey this way, it’s not equivalent to deep-fat frying. As it says, it only radiates the skin, whereas a deep fryer gets hot oil inside the bird as well, which has to speed up the cooking time considerably. And if the oil is sufficiently hot, there’s no reason that it has to make the bird greasy, or any more so than it would be naturally from its own fat.

The Big Easy™ is $165 at Amazon, whereas serviceable friers are available for less than half the price. Of course, with the former, you don’t need any oil, which might save you ten bucks or so per turkey preparation, so it might pay for itself over time if you do a lot of turkeys. But considering the time value of money, I think that you’d have to be a real turkey fan to make up the difference. Of course, it might be good for other meats as well.

[Update late evening]

Contrary to Glenn’s comment, I don’t call “foul.” The proper spelling is “fowl.”

Popular Culture, Technology and Society

Disappearing Art

5 Comments

We’re losing our movies:

The report’s authors state the data explosion could turn into digital movie extinction, unless the studios push the development of storage standards and data management practices that will guarantee long-term access of their content.

As the report points out, even if a 100-year black box were invented that “read data reliably without introducing any errors, required no maintenance and offered sufficient bit density at an affordable price,” there would be nobody alive capable of repairing it if that box were to fail at 99 years. In the real world of data management, digital assets are stored on media with longevities much less than 100 years, vulnerable to temperature changes, humidity and static electricity. It can be misidentified, inadequately indexed and difficult to track.

Also, whereas a well-preserved 35mm negative has traditionally contained enough information to fulfill any requirement for ancillary markets, there’s a question in the minds of some industry observers about whether the quality of masters archived in digital formats will be sufficient for quality duplication. In an age when home movie systems can often provide a better experience than some commercial theaters, that’s not an unimportant concern.

This is a problem that cryonicists face as well. How do you preserve the data that defines your life and identity over an indefinite period of time? No static media can be relied on–they all deteriorate eventually. I know that I have lots of floppies from the eighties that are probably unreadable now.

Data is going to have to be stored dynamically, and continually moved to new systems as the technology evolves. It will also have to be stored holographically, and distributed. Fortunately, the costs of digital data storage are plunging, with terabyte drives now available for the cost of multi-megabytes twenty years ago, and that trend is likely to continue as we get into molecular storage.

Popular Culture

At Least It’s Not Hip Hop

The producers of the Superbowl half time show have obviously confused me with a Tom Petty fan. Let’s just hope there are no wardrobe malfunctions.

Though I do have to confess that, while this is the first time I’ve actually seen Justin Timberlake, and prior to tonight would not have recognized him, I was most gratified to see him so physically abused in that commercial.

[After-game update]

Well, some publisher made a bad bet:

19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England’s Unbeatable Patriots (Paperback)

Guess they weren’t as “unbeatable” as they thought. Given that the putative author was “Boston Globe,” presumably they were going to publish as well.

As Nelson Muntz would say, “Ha ha.”

But, you have to say, it was a hell of a game. And being a Wolverine, I did want Brady to pull it out at the end, but it was a tough call. It’s too bad that only one team could win. And of course, there were Michigan players on both sides of the ball. The Giants wouldn’t have won without wide receivers Plaxico Burress (a Spartan), who caught the winning touchdown, and Amani Toomer (a record-holding Wolverine, though slightly before Brady’s time).

Popular Culture

At Least It’s Not Hip Hop

8 Comments

The producers of the Superbowl half time show have obviously confused me with a Tom Petty fan. Let’s just hope there are no wardrobe malfunctions.

Though I do have to confess that, while this is the first time I’ve actually seen Justin Timberlake, and prior to tonight would not have recognized him, I was most gratified to see him so physically abused in that commercial.

[After-game update]

Well, some publisher made a bad bet:

19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England’s Unbeatable Patriots (Paperback)

Guess they weren’t as “unbeatable” as they thought. Given that the putative author was “Boston Globe,” presumably they were going to publish as well.

As Nelson Muntz would say, “Ha ha.”

But, you have to say, it was a hell of a game. And being a Wolverine, I did want Brady to pull it out at the end, but it was a tough call. It’s too bad that only one team could win. And of course, there were Michigan players on both sides of the ball. The Giants wouldn’t have won without wide receivers Plaxico Burress (a Spartan), who caught the winning touchdown, and Amani Toomer (a record-holding Wolverine, though slightly before Brady’s time).

Popular Culture

At Least It’s Not Hip Hop

The producers of the Superbowl half time show have obviously confused me with a Tom Petty fan. Let’s just hope there are no wardrobe malfunctions.

Though I do have to confess that, while this is the first time I’ve actually seen Justin Timberlake, and prior to tonight would not have recognized him, I was most gratified to see him so physically abused in that commercial.

[After-game update]

Well, some publisher made a bad bet:

19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England’s Unbeatable Patriots (Paperback)

Guess they weren’t as “unbeatable” as they thought. Given that the putative author was “Boston Globe,” presumably they were going to publish as well.

As Nelson Muntz would say, “Ha ha.”

But, you have to say, it was a hell of a game. And being a Wolverine, I did want Brady to pull it out at the end, but it was a tough call. It’s too bad that only one team could win. And of course, there were Michigan players on both sides of the ball. The Giants wouldn’t have won without wide receivers Plaxico Burress (a Spartan), who caught the winning touchdown, and Amani Toomer (a record-holding Wolverine, though slightly before Brady’s time).

Humor, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Weird

As If It Weren’t Bad Enough

Global warming will lead to an increase in zombie attacks.

I blame George Bush.

Fortunately, some of us have been prepared for a while.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Saved by the sun:

The Canadian Space Agency’s radio telescope has been reporting Flux Density Values so low they will mean a mini ice age if they continue.

Like the number of sunspots, the Flux Density Values reflect the Sun’s magnetic activity, which affects the rate at which the Sun radiates energy and warmth. CSA project director Ken Tapping calls the radio telescope that supplies NASA and the rest of the world with daily values of the Sun’s magnetic activity a “stethoscope on the Sun.” In this case, however, it is the “doctor” whose health is directly affected by the readings.

This is because when the magnetic activity is low, the Sun is dimmer, and puts out less radiant warmth. If the Sun goes into dim mode, as it has in the past, the Earth gets much colder.

Take that, undead!

Zombies and vampires. Is there any problem the sun can’t fix?