Posted by John Nichols on April 21, 2005 at 14:18:46 from 165.91.196.105 user Mcneacail.
In Reply to: Re: Mrs. DIXON cooking over open fire posted by Jon on April 21, 2005 at 13:07:25:
Open fire cooking:
Anne and I use the charcoal fire all the time to do cooking. About three nights a week. I follow exactly the same routine every time and cook the meat and vegetables based on time (very rarely will I bring out the digital thermometer and check the cooked temp of some meat - usually I do this to please Anne). Once or twice I have added two minutes to the cooking cause I was reading AR and I wanted an extra minute of pleasure, always dried out the meat.
We forget that human beings are naturally great scientists and Mrs Dixon stikes me as being better than the average bear. I bet she could judge just how much timber or coal to put on the fire and how long it needed to heat her stove. Also the stove would have leaked energy at a reasonable rate which she would have allowed for in her cooking.
I am sure she had had scones ruined when she was younger and pride would soon teach her the controls of her stove.
I remember when I was first using the computer for Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) I would write programs in LISP (a great computer language) to speed up the work of my draftspersons. Helen, a very good drafter, would use the programs I had created, I was constantly amazed at the uses she would find for a program - which I had never meant, or intended or designed into the code. She could resolve differences on the screen in terms of picking objects that I had trouble even seeing.
The human is a wonderful thing - great tool if used correctly.
Deep Blue might now be able to beat the world's best chess player - but could Deep Blue cook a cake, nurse a baby, or put out a fire. Susan at 12 could do all those things well, and hold a decent conversation.
If you had to take a trip to the moon would you take Deep Blue or Susan?
Although I did read one 12 year old boys' comments on mothers this morning. He suggested that the President should put more mothers in space as that would give some poor kids on earth a break for a few days. I am sure he was joking although it struck me as mildly humourous.
I used to fish but not now. It is a quiet sport that does not generate much in the way of conversation. If one read AR for the fishing it would be a long time between tales. (Pun intended)
JMN