Things I learned today

[Moonliner]

I can make English Toffee (http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/159/English-Toffee) (one of my favorites) anytime I want. All it takes is butter, sugar, salt and vanilla. Who knew it was that easy?

This could be a bad thing.

[MouseWife]

I'm not going to click. I don't want to know. No. I DO want to know.

I just should not.

Nice to know if you wanted it fresh you could do it. :0)

[cirquelover]

I knew the ingredients were simple it's the putting together that gets me every time. I've never had a batch of toffee turn out right. So now I only get it when I go to DL, which thankfully for my waist is not that often.

Although now I would love to have some, thanks Moonie!

[Kevy Baby]

My favorite thing is that a site called "Cooking For Engineers" even exists. I love the vernacular of the recipe

[bewitched]

I learned that the saying, "thing come in threes" should really be changed to, "things come in fours." :rolleyes:

[RStar]

With candy making there is a very particular method that includes timing, tempurature, tools, and some experience (including how much you stir and with how much force). It's not just about the ingredients. The crystaline structure of sugar in fudge can make or break it, for instance.

You know how some people have a green thumb with plants? Candy makers can have what I will now term as the "Sweet Thumb".

Case in point, I am a pretty good cook. Baking not so much, but I can whip up a great batch of pasta, cook the heck out of a chicken, and beat Bobby Flay on the Bar-B-Q. But I took the recipe from a friend from work for her mom's famous lemon bars and made the most horrid mess out of it. I followed it exactly, but it is an odd combination of candy making and baking. I bet if I work on it I could finally get it right. But then again, some things should remain an infrequent special occasion treat.

[Mousey Girl]

I looked through a couple of recipes. I have a killer one for lemon bars, but they always stuck so bad that I stopped making them. I never thought of using paper to line the pan.

[wolfy999]

When you see pictures in a cookbook of bars etc. it's because they line the pan with foil, then when completely cool, lift out the bars, then cut with a very sharp knife. I tried it and surprise surprise......it worked great!

[JWBear]

I learned more about leprosy this afternoon than I ever wanted to...

[Not Afraid]

Ewwwww! I used to have nightmares about leprosy (they started after visiting Hawaii in 1971 and learning one of the islands was a leper colony).

[Kevy Baby]

How do you know when a hockey game is over in the leper colony?

When there's a face off in the corner

[Mousey Girl]

On the same vein as Kevy:

How do you know when a leper baseball game is over?

somone drops a ball in left field

[Moonliner]

I had a flight today so I tried using the electronic boarding pass sent directly to my PDA (Android). It did not save any time at the airport although it could have.

Important travel trip: If you use the electronic boarding pass you need to enlarge the scan square thingy before you reach security:

http://blogs.twincities.com/yourtechweblog/WindowsLiveWriter/Scanacodewithaphonegetappsandinfoandmore_CA8C/sample_2.png

Note: Don't try this one at home kids, it's just a random one I snagged from Google images.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

That thing is mesmerizing.

[blueerica]

I'm looking for hidden meaning in it.

[Moonliner]

A friend recommend I try "My Fitness Pal (http://www.myfitnesspal.com/)" It's one of many online diet/exercise trackers.

So I joined and dutifully entered all my food for yesterday.

I leaned that "Sliced Turkey" is supermarket speak for "Block of salt". I blew my entire daily sodium ration (and then some) on one sandwich. Doh!

[Alex]

Yeah, pretty much any processed meat is a protein rich salt mine. When god invented meat he didn't intend us to eat it months after we smote it.

[Moonliner]

Huh. I wonder if I could get away with turning part of the conference room into a Turkey pen. We could call it a petting zoo.

On a more practical note, Using the processed meats I was able to make two weeks worth of sandwiches at a time and just toss them in the work fridge for easy lunch time meals. If I switch to using freshly smoted meats I suppose I could still cook two weeks worth at a time, freeze half and make sammies out of the other half for the next week. I'll have to make that part of the Sunday night routine.

[flippyshark]

I've recently eaten a couple of sandwiches with packaged healthy (expensive) not-salted sliced turkey, and boy did they need salt. (I applied a small amount of sea salt and lite "salad dressing," but the result was pretty meh.)

[Moonliner]

I've recently eaten a couple of sandwiches with packaged healthy (expensive) not-salted sliced turkey, and boy did they need salt. (I applied a small amount of sea salt and lite "salad dressing," but the result was pretty meh.)

If I use fresh (ie cooked at home) turkey/chicken I can add a couple of slices of hard salami to each sandwich for flavor and still reduce my sodium intake by ~80%.

[Moonliner]

The song "It's a small world" is a lot less annoying when performed by a full symphony orchestra.

In fact it's down right awesome.

[lashbear]

The song "It's a small world" is a lot less annoying when performed by a full symphony orchestra.

In fact it's down right awesome.
Is there a link?

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Yeah, because of the salt in processed meats, I started to cook mine at home, and hand-slice it for sandwich purposes.

[Moonliner]

Is there a link?

No. It was a live "Disney in concert" event at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

But.... I wouldn't be surprised if Youtube had a version. And they do. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PctbfktQcN0) but it ain't like seeing it live.

[Kevy Baby]

Since you brought back this thread, I will cross-post from a tweet from last night:

Never put on a fresh coat of Chap Stick right before a haircut

[Ghoulish Delight]

The difference between low 40s and low 50s is insignificant compared to the difference between high 30s and low 40s.

[Moonliner]

The difference between low 40s and low 50s is insignificant compared to the difference between high 30s and low 40s.

Sitting here in the mid 20's they all sound pretty good to me.

[Ghoulish Delight]

And if I were sitting still, it probably wouldn't matter as much. But when biking, low 40s and low 50s didn't really feel much different. But 42 vs. 38 meant the difference between relative comfort vs. my fingers in pain even WITH leather gloves.

[Betty]

Your taint is actually called your anogenital distance.

A study of 117 men found a key difference between guys who had kids, and guys who were being treated for infertility. Anogenital distance is, as you might guess, the distance between where your balls stop and your anus begins. The average measurement for the fertile men was 44.6 millimeters. For the infertile men: 31.8 mm. Even more tellingly, sperm density, and the number of active sperm, increased by leaps and bounds for every extra millimeter of anogenital distance. Another recent study found very similar results.

[Alex]

Got a link to that information? I'd be interested in poking (ha ha) into it some more.

Giving a gross number like that (as opposed to some ratio) would tend to suggest that smaller men are more infertile than larger men. Unless that distance is something that is consistent regardless of overall size.

[Kevy Baby]

I found this article (http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/12/study-links-crotch-length-infertility-men/), but there are many more out there

[Alex]

Found the original published study. If you're curious, here's how they measured:

In the supine, frog-legged position with the legs abducted allowing the soles of the feet to meet, the distance from the posterior aspect of the scrotum to the anal verge was measured using a digital caliper (Neiko USA, Model No. 01407A) (Figure 1). The soles of the feet were between 12 to 18 inches from the buttocks for all measurements. The anal verge was marked as the anterior most point where the anus begins. The posterior aspect of the scrotum was the point where the rugated scrotal skin meets the perineum.

I won't post Figure 1.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Your taint is actually called your anogenital distance.
Actually, your taint is called your "perineum". The 'anogenital distance" is the size of your taint.

[Betty]

Taint size. Got it. Perhaps men can now go around bragging not just of the size of their peens but of their taints. Hey ladies, I've got a huge taint and I'm going to get you soooo pregnant.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Taint size. Got it. Perhaps men can now go around bragging not just of the size of their peens but of their taints. Hey ladies, I've got a huge taint and I'm going to get you soooo pregnant.
Better yet, "Condom? Condom?! Have you SEEN how small my taint is? No need for one of those."

[Alex]

Reading the study, it also find that the infertile cohort had shorter flaccid penises and smaller balls.

Don't see anything obviously odd about the study (though I don't seeing mentioning whether AGD is at all proportional to overall body size). But from this I assume the dad in that family with 19 kids has his asshole somewhere between his shoulder blades.

[Not Afraid]

Can I just tell you how strange it is coming into this conversation mid-stream.

[JWBear]

But from this I assume the dad in that family with 19 kids has his asshole somewhere between his shoulder blades.

And then there are the guys that are just one big asshole.

[alphabassettgrrl]

I'm imaging the recruitment process. "Hey, let me measure your taint!"

I'm amused.

[Moonliner]

The difference between bass and treble clef. Ohh and apparently, the direction of a notes tail (up or down) makes no difference at all. Who knew?

I have a new "Music Theory" app on my phone and one for the iPad. Since Moonie Jr. is getting pretty darn serious about music I thought I should be a bit more up on the subject so it's become my new self-improvement project for 2012.

[Kevy Baby]

The difference between bass and treble clef.You couldn't tell the difference between a fish and a music symbol?

[Morrigoon]

Treble: Every Good Boy Does Fine (or FACE)
Bass: All Cows Eat Grass

What's the name of that other weird clef? I think violas use it?

[Kevy Baby]

George. George Clef.




Actually, the other clef is known officially as the C Clef (as Treble Clef is formally the G Clef and the Bass Clef is formally the F Clef), but is know as either the Alto Clef or Tenor Clef, depending on where it is placed on the staff.

[lashbear]

Treble: Empty Garbage Before Dad Flips.

[Kevy Baby]

I always wondered why BBL was the abbreviation for barrel. Watching an episode of Dirty Jobs prompted me to look it up; I got the same basic answer from multiple sites, so I copy the last one I looked at (from here (http://seekingalpha.com/article/18636-where-does-that-2nd-b-in-the-abbreviation-for-crude-barrels-bbl-come-from)):In the early 1860's, when oil production began, there was no standard container for oil, so oil and petroleum products were stored and transported in barrels of all different shapes and sizes (beer barrels, fish barrels, molasses barrels, turpentine barrels, etc.). By the early 1870's, the 42-gallon barrel had been adopted as the standard for oil trade. This was 2 gallons per barrel more than the 40-gallon standard used by many other industries at the time. The extra 2 gallons was to allow for evaporation and leaking during tranport (most barrels were made of wood). Standard Oil began manufacturing 42 gallon barrels that were blue to be used for transporting petroleum. The use of a blue barrel, abbreviated "bbl," guaranteed a buyer that this was a 42-gallon barrel.What is interesting is that I have seen this abbreviation used for 55 gallon barrels.

[Not Afraid]

teeheehee. Kevy said Staff.

[RStar]

Strange, he usually says stiff.

[Betty]

stuff stiff staff.

heh heh. /buthead.