Mar 05

This recipe is a weiner

One of the great things about Food Network and Cooking Channel is that they’re very good about putting the recipes from all their shows online, where they’re immediately searchable. The only exceptions are a few shows produced by outside companies that place some sort of restrictions on how many recipes can be published online, or on how long they can be left online.

This thoroughness, however, has sometimes been carried to the extreme. For example, a TV chef might talk about all of the elements of a meal, or about a day’s worth of food and snacks, and in the course of that discussion the chef might mention something which is not so much a recipe as a way of serving an already-prepared product. In some cases, somewhat absurdly, Food Network has posted such non-recipes online alongside all of the real recipes from the episode in question.

For several weeks now, the web site Food Network Humor — dedicated to mocking all things Food Network — has been calling attention to “Ridiculous Food Network Recipes” for things such as dark chocolate. The readers of the humor site, alerted to the absurd non-recipe, head on over to the official recipe page and leave snarky comments about it.

Someone at Food Network is apparently a little thin-skinned about this, apparently, because whenever it happens the non-recipe and the snarky comments get taken down and that URL is redirected to some other page on the site — another recipe by the same chef, or what have you.

The latest such fiasco: Michael Chiarello’s hot dog recipe. As I write this, it’s still up at the Food Network site, but who knows how long it will last.

Nov 20

The hidden killer

Are you as concerned about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide as I am?

Go to the web site and you’ll learn that inhaling even small quantities of DHMO can be fatal, and that prolonged exposure to solid DHMO can cause severe tissue damage. And yet, DHMO is an ingredient in hundreds of items in your home. Yes, your home! And the government has little incentive to do away with DHMO, because many of the leading suppliers of DHMO are government-owned!

Go wander around the web site and learn more about DHMO. And, if you can’t figure out exactly what it is, here’s a hint: “dihydrogen monoxide” means that each molecule contains two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

Oct 11

Rocket science

NASA Announces Plan To Bring<br> Wi-Fi To Its Headquarters By 2017

The Onion

NASA Announces Plan To Bring
Wi-Fi To Its Headquarters By 2017

HOUSTON—Still relying on a single dial-up modem, NASA employees continue to get disconnected when someone at the Johnson Space Center picks up the phone to dial out.

Sep 23

The force was with them

I called my West Coast brother today to wish him a happy birthday. I mentioned that even though I’m not a big “Family Guy” fan, I would probably watch their “Star Wars” special tonight. My brother’s response was that he wouldn’t watch “Family Guy” if they were doing a parody of his own family.

Actually, though, the special is great — and I’m not, as I say, a big “Family Guy” fan. It’s a scene-for-scene parody of the original 1977 movie, with some surprisingly detailed animation of the space battles. In some ways, it’s even funnier than the very funny “Robot Chicken” “Star Wars” parody from earlier in the year.