Sep 13, 2012

Yeh anda ki baat hai

I presume at some point in history, boiling an egg was an art - a minor, teensy-weensy one, but art nevertheless. Some people, the talented ones, intuitively knew exactly how long to keep it on the fire. The less talented ones had hit-and-miss days - you never knew what they would produce. The Gorans and Marats among the egg-boilers would produce a beautiful, soft yet firm, egg one day and on others, just hurl the egg at the referee and walk out. (At which point, the turbaned commentator would say: "you can't make omelettes without breaking any eggs".)


But today, in the time of timers and gas controls, egg boiling is science. Follow an algorithm, turn the heat on some H20 for 3/6/9 minutes, and almost everyone can be a yolk-star. I expect the problem went from art to science not in a series of DARPA-funded experiments that varied time, heat, and water, resulting in many post-doctoral positions, but via the obscure processes through which cultural wisdom develops over the ages.


Three cheers for cultural wisdom - which gave us much of what we love to eat (in the pre-molecular gastronomy days).


ok, this month, I actually, really, effectively learnt how to boil an egg with consistent results. Call it my Anda Andy Murray moment.

Sep 12, 2012

The Infinite Zounds 2012 Survey

My quiz blog is close to completing two years - to find out more about what readers think of the content on the blog, I am running a survey. If you are a reader (however regular or infrequent), do take the survey:

Link to the survey