I've found my jobs' internal (social) message boards/mailing lists/Slack channels/etc to be great resources as the only contributors are those who work/worked at the company. Your (ex)coworkers presumably met/meet a certain competency bar and are less likely to spam. At larger companies there are message boards/mailing lists/Slack channels/etc for nearly every topic.
For local information, I've found forums for local sport teams to be great resources during the off season. Posters are often happy to engage in any sort of chat during the off season. Even if you haven't gotten to know the frequent posters during the sport's season you can use the (usually highly visible w/o any additional clicks) account age/# of posts/"karma" as a proxy of posters' trustworthiness. note: If you don't normally contribute on-topic (i.e., about the team and sport) posts, I would only search the forums for your questions and not post off-topic questions as that'll get you quickly banned.
This article relies heavily on findings by the Gottman Institute however the Gottman Institute's findings are suspect because they built their prediction models after the results are known and they never verified that their models hold up w/ additional data.
In machine learning parlance, it's equivalent to deriving a formula using training data and not checking if the formula is accurate w/ a validation data. I doubt many (anyone?) here would trust an autonomous car built w/ only training data and never tested w/ validation data. Similarly, I don't believe/trust the Gottman's prediction rate (94%) for a second.
Can you expand on this? It does look like there are HEPA specifications[0]. Are you saying that a product that doesn't meet those standards can still legally be labeled as HEPA? Yikes!
You are mostly correct. However, per your links, using "HEPA" with any prefix or suffix is problematically allowed. The specifications laid out by the DOE are mostly for DOE facilities and so they have their own version. Everyone else is using their own brand of "-HEPA-" which can mean <0.003 pm or not and is therefore misleading.
Thanks for the response! To make sure I understand this correctly: If I find a product labeled as "HEPA" (w/o a prefix or suffix such as "type," "like", "style," and "99%") then I can be assured that the product does meet the standard of removing 99.97% of particles that have a size of 0.3 µm?
Does the near-highway location of the house concern anyone else?
The correlation between near-highway air exposure and adverse health outcomes is well documented and I have not found a single study, article, etc that disputes the correlation. Below are three articles and snippets (emphasis mine) regarding the aforementioned correlation and how quickly the pollution levels drop over short distances from the freeway.
source: http://now.tufts.edu/articles/big-road-blues-pollution-highw...
"Throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, dozens of studies found links between fine particulate pollution and cardiovascular health. One of the largest and most influential of these, the Harvard Six Cities Study, followed more than 8,000 participants in six towns across the Midwest and New England. Over 15 years, the initial phase of the study tracked each person’s health and measured particulate levels in the air over their communities. Its findings, first released in 1993, showed that even a minuscule increase in fine particulates (just 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air), could cause up to an 18 percent bump in cardiovascular disease." ... there’s reason to think that ultrafine particles, which the EPA does not regulate, are even more insidious than their larger counterparts ... ultrafines can fluctuate dramatically over the course of a morning or afternoon, depending on the weather and how many cars and trucks are on the road. Ultrafines are also confined to a relatively small area ... close to major highways, often spiking dramatically within a few hundred meters of the source."
source: http://www.scpcs.ucla.edu/news/Freeway.pdf
"Studies conducted by SCPCS investigators here in LA show that carbon monoxide and ultrafine particles – the smallest portion of particulate matter emissions and potentially the most toxic – are extremely high on or near the freeway, dropping to about half that concentration 50-90 meters (~165-295 feet) from the freeway ..."
source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1971259/
"People living or otherwise spending substantial time within about 200 m of highways are exposed to these pollutants more so than persons living at a greater distance, even compared to living on busy urban streets. Evidence of the health hazards of these pollutants arises from studies that assess proximity to highways, actual exposure to the pollutants, or both. Taken as a whole, the health studies show elevated risk for development of asthma and reduced lung function in children who live near major highways. Studies of particulate matter (PM) that show associations with cardiac and pulmonary mortality also appear to indicate increasing risk as smaller geographic areas are studied, suggesting localized sources that likely include major highways. Although less work has tested the association between lung cancer and highways, the existing studies suggest an association as well. While the evidence is substantial for a link between near-highway exposures and adverse health outcomes, considerable work remains to understand the exact nature and magnitude of the risks."
SC Johnson (Ziplock manufacturer) themselves do not recommend cooking w/ their bags. Note their bags are made w/ the supposedly safe (per the links in the previous bullet) polyethylene (PE)
Right now I'm very intrigued by sous-vide but am too paranoid about the plastics to make the jump.
The bottom line: No one knows how safe HDPE sous-vide is in the long run. There's nothing conclusive out there, though what little evidence there is points to it being safe. Nathan seems so think so, too: http://modernistcuisine.com/2013/01/why-cook-sous-vide/
In the end you have to make a personal call. For me, the risk of undiscovered effects is vastly outweighed by the awesome food I serve.
I respect your concern, even if I don't share it, and I'm hoping to solve it soon enough, too. Be on the look out for a new product from us in the coming year.
Ah, there's a question I'm going to sneak away from. I shouldn't have hinted, sorry for being a tease, but it's just not ready for show-and-tell yet :)
On food-safe bags; we can't make a better recommendation than what the manufacturers make themselves.
Personally, I've used ziploc when I've been able to afford it.
I don't know a lot about sous-vide, I am more of a wood fire and smoking kinda person, but what would prevent you from using a stainless steel canister? That would eliminate the risks from plastic. Perhaps, a ceramic would also work?
You still need to put the food in something that keeps it out of direct contact with the water while not leaving enough space for air to insulate the food.
I see. So a hard sided container won't trasfer heat properly? Sounds like I need to talk to a friend in polymers to really get a grasp on the right approach because I can't really think of a non-polymer material that would meet the flexibility requirement.
In general it seems like sous-vide would result in food similiar to a braise but without the browny bits and the pan sauce? (saying it that way makes it sound unappetising but I understand it is quiet nice) That said, I think while it doesn't have the asthetic of a wood fired smoker, a device like the op's could replace the slow cooker.
Noooooooo. Food is not similar to a braise. The point of low-temp cooking (sous vide is low temp under a hard vacuum) is that the cook locks in a perfect temperature for the food and the water bath never exceeds that temperature. In practice, you aim never to exceed the temperature at which the protein expels all the water from the food; think: absolutely perfectly cooked steak --- or, more magically, think a short rib, cooked to the doneness of a perfect steak, but with all the collagen converted to gelatin as if in a braise; it's the best of both worlds. Because a short rib cooked to the temperature of a perfect steak in an oven would be tough as nails, it's something you can really only achieve in a water bath.
There are other tricks too; you can simultaneously cook a dozen eggs to perfect running or "walking" yolk, without paying any attention; you can cook veg to a temperature between the breakdown of pectin and cellulose; you can heat-temper carnaroli or arborio rice and set the starches, so that you can make bulletproof risotto in a pan by dumping all the liquid in at once.
I've been cooking sous-vide for years and somehow missed the risotto trick - thanks for that!
It's worth noting that sous-vide can also cook meats that are somewhere between "a right pain" and "almost impossible" to cook another way. In particular, sous-vide and a bit of time transforms mutton into one of the tastiest, cheapest meals imaginable. I had real trouble going back to lamb after a few months of sous-vide mutton.
Sounds neat I will definitely do some research on it. Smoking is a similar process but without a fancy rig you can't get control very precise (+/- 30°f is what I can achieve over an 8 hour smoke. pros can do much better). The idea is similar, low temperature forea long time, until the meat hits the desired temperature.
The premise is amylopectin retrogradation. Heat a starch to the point where it breaks up and liberates its network of amylopectin. Cool it, and the starch crystallizes in a much stronger structure. Heat it again, or (in the case of, say, potatoes) beat the hell out of them in a blender, and they'll retain their structure; they become somewhat bulletproof.
Retrograded arborio is stable enough that you can dump boiling liquid onto it, stir it, reduce the liquid, and end up with perfect risotto --- rather than carefully tempering the rice with small amounts of slowly stirred liquid. Hence: 7 minute risotto.
It turns out you can also simply hydrate risotto rice (soak it in cold liquid for a couple hours) and do the same thing to it, but it doesn't hold long term the way the retrograded risotto does.
These ideas are due to Ideas in Food, a really amazing blog. The authors have published a couple of books; their first (I think it's just "Ideas In Food") is one of my favorite cooking books.
In summary: SC Johnson (SJC) told Grant Achatz and others chefs not to use their bags for sous-vide so Dave Arnold contacted SJC and asked specifically about using the bags for sous-vide and explained why he believes the practice is safe. The SJC representative replied with "Ziplock brand bags are designed to withheld being held in high temperature water including being used up to 82 degree Celsius for up to 72 hours." (quote at 12:05 of podcast)
I'd feel better if there was a specific statement about the safety of the food being held in the bag rather than an implication that since the bags withstand the bath the food isn't tainted.
Right now I'm very intrigued by sous-vide but am too paranoid about the plastics to make the jump.
FYI, immersion circulators are fairly common in restaurant kitchens, since it's so much easier to get predictable results with them compared to traditional means of cooking meat. So if you dine out, it wouldn't be surprising if you're already unwittingly exposing yourself to the plastics risk.
Awesome dinner out tonight with a great sous vide duck breast or a 1 in a billion chance I will die from the plastic in the bag in which it was cooked? I choose duck.
Get Satisfaction, Or Else...
- article: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else
- discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540540
Follow-up on "Get Satisfaction, Or Else..."
- article: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1661-follow-up-on-get-satisfa...
- discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=543431