People with Too Much Time on Their Hands: Toast Art
It would never occur to me to take a picture of my toast. Unless it had an image of the Virgin Mary on it or something. Then I would make sure to capture just the right image for my posting on Ebay. Seriously, though, it’s amazing what kinds of creative uses people have put their toasters and minds to. I love it when bored people take a few steps outside of the box. Sometimes it’s a few steps too many. You be the judge.
You’ve been there. At a party or other gathering, a drink in one hand, a plate in the other, and no prehensile tail (obviously I’m excluding the writing staff of most reality-TV shows) so you can’t actually eat the food. Instead of cursing evolution, you can get the Fingerfood tray
[C]harming little plates with rings that fit right on your finger. Now you can balance your glass and your hors d’ouevres, and look positively in control the whole time.
From the folks that brought you the Gin & Titonic.
Peach and Raspberry Gelatin Brain, Melon brain. Killer Rats Cake. Mmmmm. Killer Rats Cake …
Eat Your Spherified Vegetables!
In an effort to expand his palate, I’ve followed the standard parenting guidelines without much luck: I keep putting veggies on his plate, even if he won’t eat them; I eat lots of them myself; and I regularly cook with him. I’ve even tried the morally questionable practice of sneaking veggies into his favorite dishes (a la Jessica Seinfeld). The Critic—as I like to call him—was not so easily fooled: He quickly detected a quarter cup of squash in his salmon cakes the other night and declared them strange. Frustrated but not yet willing to give up, I enlisted the help of an unlikely accomplice: El Bulli chef Ferran Adria. Adria is perhaps the most famous chef in the world, known as a leader in the field of “molecular gastronomy”— a kind of kitchen alchemy that transforms prime ingredients into surreal concoctions using high-tech tools and commercial food additives.
I’ll bet the slices are all the same size, but it’s disappointing that the pieces still stick to each other.
Print me some toast. The scan-toaster.
The toaster utilizes a network of toasting “modules” — hot wires that rotate within a 30 degree radius — that burn the image or text you have selected onto the delicious slice of your choice.
Not commercially available, though.
You can use NMR to tell you if it’s still good, and now you can tell how old the bottles are by hitting them with an ion beam.
Nuclear Physicists Fight Wine Fraud
The beams, which are directed at the glass, not the wine, can distinguish how old the bottles are and where they might originate.
[…]
To prevent counterfeiters from filling authentic old bottles with ordinary wine, Williams intends to combine the ion beam test with another established method that checks for levels of a radioactive isotope, Caesium 137, in the wine itself.
This technique, however, is only effective in identifying wines made in the era of heavy atomic weapons testing in the latter half of the 20th century.
Mmmmm. Cs-137. I know that’s what gave last year’s Beaujolais Nouveau such a perky flavor.
Update: Jennifer Ouellette has a rather extensive post about wine fraud over at Cocktail Party Physics (though this is wine, and technically not a cocktail. But it’s some interesting history and more information. The New Yorker article she mentions is quite interesting)
One thing I usually forget when I go on vacation to western New York is that I’m in “pop” country; “soda” means club soda. If it comes up, I make the mistake once, and then I remember … until the next trip. I grew up on the other side of the state, in “soft drink = soda” country. However, I don’t recall it being so much an issue in some other map areas — they’ve got Orlando, Fl as a “Coke” area, and The Willamette valley in Oregon looks like it’s supposed to be a “pop” area. (Orlando has so many resettled folks, though, that there are lots of ways that it doesn’t seem like the south. Get outside of town, though, and that can change in a hurry)
The largest linguistic difference I recall from CorVegas was “sack” instead of “bag” at the grocery store.
Using NMR to check the fitness of wines (Don’t bother with this, for multiple reasons, if they have a bottlecap instead of a cork)
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Makes Sure Wine is Fit For the Queen of England
When wine hits 1.4 grams of acetic acid per liter it is considered bad. Although the average bottle of vinegar has around 12.50 grams acetic acid per liter the difference is nothing to take lightly. NMR measures acetic acid in wine down to the tenth of a gram.
Up to 10 percent of wine spoilage comes from the oxygen-alcohol blend. Cork taint, from the 2, 4, 6-tricloroanisol molecule accounts for the other main contributor of wine spoilage. Though NMR is only used in locating oxidation based spoilage, it is still a major breakthrough in the wine world, especially when it comes to auctions.
Auctioneers say as many as 50 percent of the vintages pre-1950 auctioned at places like Christie’s or Zachy’s, where $2000 bottles are the norm, are spoiled. Augustine says that when it comes to exquisite wine the importance of protecting the investment is up to an individual.
And Tyler Colman asks, “Why use a cork in the first place?” when dealing with wines that are a little lower in cost.
Although some sommeliers may scoff at wine from a plastic spigot, boxes are perfect for table wines that don’t need to age, which is to say, all but a relative handful of the top wines from around the world. What’s more, boxed wine is superior to glass bottle storage in resolving that age-old problem of not being able to finish a bottle in one sitting. Once open, a box preserves wine for about four weeks compared with only a day or two for a bottle. Boxed wine may be short on charm, but it is long on practicality.
How many ounces in a proverbial?
Find the amount you’d have to drink of your favorite beverages and/or eat foods to get a lethal dose of caffeine.
473.96 cans of Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi + You = Death.
Whew! For a moment, I thought I was in trouble.
via Physics Geek