Posted by Larry Hoover on May 29, 2006, at 11:28:57
In reply to Re: I don't get the picture, posted by llrrrpp on May 29, 2006, at 10:53:29
> Larry,
> I have newfound respect for Canadians every day. One of my bestest friends is Canadian. She's cool. Now that I have heard of the mythic buttertart I'm filling out my immigration papers. Does Canadia have any provinces in the subtropics perchance? I don't really like temperature extremes.Ummm, no. When we divided the continent, y'all drew the line across. I would have loved it, had they drawn it up and down. The guys with the guns took the warm part, seems to me.
If I am not presenting a factoid (psuedojame just fixed one), I believe that substantially more than 90% of the Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the border with the U.S. I do not believe that is a coincidence. We're doing the best we can, to keep warm. But the dang border.....
All those stories about Maine winters. Or Nebraskan storms. Heh. All of Canada is north of you. That said, southern Ontario is at a similar latitude as is northern California.
There are way more people in California than there are in all of Canada.
> In regard to sulfites and such. I think NaCl is okay, and smoke, and sunshine, but the pink-inducing stuff kinda freaks me out.
The pink-inducing stuff is called saltpeter. A.k.a. potassium nitrate. I was holding out details on you. Protecting a Canadian icon, methinks.
> I special order beef jerky from this place in New Mexico where they don't add that stuff in there. It tastes better, and it doesn't give me a sore throat if I eat too much. (just a sore tummy)
Eh? Jerky is dried meat, flavoured for convenience. There is no need for anything being added to it. Microbes simply can't metabolize the protein if the water concentration gets below a certain level. Dried meats don't rot. All the flavourings are elective. Even the salt, to be totally honest, but it does improve the likelihood that the meat will get to the sub-microbial moisture content without rotting along the way. Salts disrupt the osmotic water balance, pulling water out of cells, including microbe cells. They die, trying to pump water back in, losing energy all the while. The salt just poops them out, until they die.
Truly, though, jerky is dried meat. Not salted or flavoured dried meat. You can easily make your own. There is no need to pay other people to do it, and you control the flavour precisely. All you need is a dessicator.
A clothes-line works, too, if you put it in the shade, and the surrounding humidity is somehow limited.
It's the thickness of the slice that determines jerky success or failure. Surface area to volume ratio.
> No need for telepathy on jeopardy. just keep the information coming on babble. I'll use my brand spankin' new hippocampal cells to consolidate all of this terribly useful knowledge into some kind of easily retrieved representation. That's nerdish for memory.
Re: jeopardy. I probbly wouldn't do so good on there, because I don't know American history, and I don't do names well. Names of chemicals, I do fine. Names of people, I screw those up. Literary references, and all that.
Well, relatively, I'd not do so well.
Also, there is an age issue. They've proven that a substantial difference in the ability to press the response button comes with aging. Younger people just keep beating older folk to the buzzer. If you're paying attention, you'll not often see three people competing who are vastly different in age. They try to keep the playing field pretty level.
> fondly yours,
> -llGrinningly yours,
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:650023
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060527/msgs/650079.html