Today I learned...

[Rath Darkblade]

That's true if it's been left unrefrigerated for hours. However, (most) fried rice is usually made from day-old, cold rice that's been refrigerated soon after cooking. That video massively overstates and simplifies the issue, like most video shorts do. And really? Asians don't make a batch of rice and eat it over several days. They just make a batch of new rice for each meal. A rice cooker makes that trivial.

The problem comes when you eat improperly handled rice.

Not if you refrigerate it. Like Nao said, all fried rice is made from old cold rice. And there are no Health Codes regarding anything rice related, other than the HCAAP procedures for Ph levels in sushi rice so you can leave it at room temperature beyond the 4 hour mark.

Thank you, Naomasa and Homer. I used to make large enough batches of rice and curry that would last me several days -- but I always sealed and refrigerated them right after cooking (and nuked little batches each day).

Is that a bad practice? *curious* I did notice a slight stomach pain after eating, but I'd usually make green tea after dinner, and it went away.

Which is counterintuitive when you compare that to the word international. But then you realize there are no physical interstitial spaces between nations, aside from bodies of water. The space between galaxies however is frigging huge!

I'm no astrophysicist or astronomer, which is why I always relied on these wise words:

"Space," it [the Guide -Ed.] says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

(The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams)

Seriously, though: the nearest star to our planet is 4.5 light years away. So theoretically speaking, if we had a spacecraft that could travel the speed of light, it would be a 9 year round trip. Of course, anything inside the spacecraft would have to be able to withstand the enormous pressures of traveling at light speed ... something which, alas, human biology has thus far failed to do.

Is there life somewhere in the Universe? The chance of it lies somewhere between 'perhaps' and 'I believe so'.

Could we ever physically encounter it? Given how vast the universe is, the answer must be 'regrettably, no'.

 

[Naomasa298]

Thank you, Naomasa and Homer. I used to make large enough batches of rice and curry that would last me several days -- but I always sealed and refrigerated them right after cooking (and nuked little batches each day).

Curry, yes. Not rice.

Microwaving rice, assuming that's what you mean, doesn't restore its original texture. It warms it up, but also dries it out, which changes its mouthfeel. When you cook rice, the amylose (starch) leeches out, which makes rice fluffy and soft. When you refrigerate it, it reforms, and heating doesn't usually cause it to melt again. The rice remains firm, which is why fried rice uses it - the firmness and rigidity means the grains are coated, rather than absorb any flavours. That's why Asian families will cook up a new batch of fresh rice every meal. Measure rice, add water, flick switch, wait, done. If you can boil water, you can cook rice.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Fair enough. I could tell there was a problem, but I had no idea why. Thank you.

 

[Naomasa298]

Seriously, though: the nearest star to our planet is 4.5 light years away. So theoretically speaking, if we had a spacecraft that could travel the speed of light, it would be a 9 year round trip. Of course, anything inside the spacecraft would have to be able to withstand the enormous pressures of traveling at light speed ... something which, alas, human biology has thus far failed to do.

There's no "pressure" per se of travelling at the speed of light. The pressure you are referring to is caused by acceleration. At a constant acceleration of 1G, it takes roughly a year to accelerate to c, then you have to decelerate so you don't shoot past it. So actually doing that doesn't significantly make the journey any faster, but also doesn't stress your body out that much.

However, a constant acceleration of 1G also progressively requires more and more energy as you approach c (E=mc^2), so it's basically impossible. Even travelling to the Alpha Centauri system is basically a one-way trip. Having said that, we don't (or certainly, I don't) know what travelling at relativistic speeds do to the flow of particles and signals around a physical system. If you were travelling at exactly the speed of light, that might imply that electrical signals must exceed c in order to travel from your hand to your brain, but I don't have the maths to work out how that works within the signal's own frame of reference.

 

[Kiraann]

Unfortunately, I have to greatly restrict my rice intake - type 2 diabetes.

 

[Naomasa298]

Unfortunately, I have to greatly restrict my rice intake - type 2 diabetes.

It depends on the kind of rice though. Long grain rices, like basmati, have lower glycaemic indices, so are a lot easier to control compared to short grain, like sushi or glutinous rice. They don't spike as wildly.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Today I learned how they thought, in the 17th century, female babies were conceived

This is what passed for medical advice in the 17th century – the passage from Aristotle’s Masterpiece below – a sex and midwifery manual that stayed in print for over 200 years in the UK and America. The author remains anonymous.

You can have a look at this book at this link

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher.

When a young couple are married, they naturally desire children; and therefore adopt the means that nature has appointed to that end…

For a female child, let the woman lie on her left side, strongly fancying a female in the time of procreation, drinking the decoction of female mercury four days from the first day of purgation; the male mercury having the like operation in case of a male; for this concoction purges the right and left side of the womb, opens the receptacles, and makes way for the seminary of generation. The best time to beget a female is, when the moon is in the wane, in Libra or Aquaries. Advicenne says, that when the menses are spent and the womb cleansed, which is commonly in five or seven days at most, if a man lie with his wife from the first day she is purged to the fifth, she will conceive a male; but from the fifth to the eighth a female; and from the eighth to the twelfth a male again: but after that perhaps neither distinctly, but both in an hermaphrodite. In a word, they that would be happy in the fruits of their labour, must observe to use copulation in due distance of time, not too often nor too seldom, for both are alike hurtful; and to use it immoderately weakens and wastes the spirits and spoils the seed. And this much for the first particular.

 

[Naomasa298]

Aristotle wasn't much one for collecting empirical evidence.

 

[JLT]

Today I learned how they thought, in the 17th century, female babies were conceived

My, my.

makes way for the seminary of generation.

You know, it never occurred to me that the word "seminary" was related to the word "semen." But I looked it up in Wikipedia and found this:

"The English word is taken from Latin: seminarium, translated as 'seed-bed', an image taken from the Council of Trent document Cum adolescentium aetas, 'Since the age of adolescence' which called for the first modern seminaries."

It's one of those cognates like "canvas" and "cannabis" which both stem from the hemp plant from which each product is derived...canvas from the fiber, and cannabis for the pharmaceutical.

 

[Louanne Learning]

it never occurred to me that the word "seminary" was related to the word "semen."

Me either! Good catch!

 

[CatrionaGrace]

True story.

A friend of my daughter's is the son of folks who moved here from Mainland China forty years ago. They wanted to give their son a completely American name: Peter. Pete's last name is Wang. He joined the Navy where he became Seaman Peter Wang. He said his dream was to marry a girl named Fanny.

 

[Naomasa298]

True story.

A friend of my daughter's is the son of folks who moved here from Mainland China forty years ago. They wanted to give their son a completely American name: Peter. Pete's last name is Wang. He joined the Navy where he became Seaman Peter Wang. He said his dream was to marry a girl named Fanny.

Wang, in Chinese (王), generally means "king", or "monarch", so he was the semen king, huh?

And interestingly, "fanny" means things on different sides of the body in British and American English.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Today I learned how they thought, in the 17th century, female babies were conceived...

For a female child, let the woman lie on her left side, strongly fancying a female in the time of procreation, drinking the decoction of female mercury...

Say no more. The 17th century was also when heated mercury baths and fumigation (!!!) were the recommended medical practice to cure venereal disease (now known as STIs or Sexually Transmitted Infections), specifically syphilis. Patients were placed in, or exposed to vapors from, mercury-based mixtures to induce sweating and salivation, believed to release syphilitic poisons, but often caused fatal poisoning.

Besides baths, mercury was applied as a ointment (inunction), ingested as pills ("Blue Mass"), or inhaled in vapor chambers. It was believed that the extreme, often toxic, side effects of the mercury were necessary to "cure" the infection, which led to the phrase "A night with Venus and a lifetime with Mercury".

The treatments were, obviously, deadlier than the disease, causing rotting jaws, loss of teeth, severe nervous system issues (erethism), kidney failure, and eventually death.

Despite its high toxicity, mercury remained the primary treatment for syphilis for over 400 years - from the late 15th century right up to the early 20th.