will_couvillier: (Default)
will_couvillier ([personal profile] will_couvillier) wrote2008-03-19 01:28 pm

Interesting Observations and Updates

 

Observation of the Day:  Salt has an expiration date!  Whoa!  Somewhere along the line I was under the impression that salt was a stable compound, a real survivor in the chemical world.  Yet looking on the bottom of my little porta-shaker I see the “best by” date of 09-26-11!

 

What does this mean!?! Will it begin to heat up on 9-25-11 in prelude to molecular break-down?  Will there be a nuclear reaction from my desk drawer as atomic level bonds break apart in wildly violent revulsion?  Or will it blaze forth, transmorphing any and all organic material in a 10-mile radius into pillars of salt, putting to shame the historical and biblical case of Mr. Lot and his wife?

 

We will know - on 9-25-11.

Signing Update: A flyer has been designed by Floyd Edwards and is being posted locally.  Here are the places and times:


9:30AM- 12:30 PM

 Peggy Hillis' Spring Creek Coffee Company

Carmella Creamer's Spring Creek Floral & Gifts

263 Spring Valley Parkway, Spring Creek

 

 

1:30PM - 3:30PM

  Ruth Collins' Enchanted Paper

545 Court Street, Elko

 

  


 --with formatting included!

There will be a local author, Shirley McCullough, also in on this!


Recommended reading: Today I suggest hunting up a copy of “Monument”, by Lloyd Biggle Jr.  This made a huge impression on a young reader. And still stands on its own on a recent re-read. 



Submissions:  I'm still waiting to hear on these: 

(03/06/08) Writers of the Future:  entry  
(12/22/07) Shroud Magazine:  "This Essence Rejected" 


Who Really Is: (insert name)

 

What Ever Happened To:  John Varley?

 

[identity profile] mallory-blog.livejournal.com 2008-03-19 10:28 pm (UTC)(link)
boffo -

http://waltonfeed.com/grain/faqs/iif4.html
http://web.mit.edu/dryfoo/www/Info/condiments.html

table salt does not of its own accord decompose into sodium and chlorine. ... it can be stored indefinitely...

[identity profile] will-couvillier.livejournal.com 2008-03-19 10:41 pm (UTC)(link)
ahHa!!!

See...it's a marketing ploy to lure the consumer into tossing perfectly good product, just so to buy it again! And egads! I nearly fell for it! At least I can feel secure that my work station will not be utterly destroyed with the energies released from atomic dissolution...

(If it hasn't come across yet, I'm in a bit of a silly mood today...)

[identity profile] mallory-blog.livejournal.com 2008-03-19 11:10 pm (UTC)(link)
I admit to chuckling over the salt...

[identity profile] ericreynolds.livejournal.com 2008-03-19 11:12 pm (UTC)(link)
"See...it's a marketing ploy to lure the consumer into tossing perfectly good product, just so to buy it again!"

Yeah, don't want to be eating "spoiled" salt. Hmm, wasn't salt actually used throughout the ages to preserve food? Yeah, it's a racket.

[identity profile] bondo-ba.livejournal.com 2008-03-20 12:37 am (UTC)(link)
Your salt is the victim of regulatory stupidity. It was probably easier to print the expiry date than explain to the goveernment that salt is a ROCK.

Great to see that the signing advances. Best of luck to all involved.

[identity profile] rflong.livejournal.com 2008-03-20 09:50 am (UTC)(link)
Water from a certain bottled water company does the same thing - according to their blurb is spends centuries trickling down through the alps, only to be bottled and go out of date within months.

Strange!

[identity profile] will-couvillier.livejournal.com 2008-03-20 03:32 pm (UTC)(link)
But see, with bottled water there are a number of other odd and unusual properties. First, and the one that really amazes me, is how they take perfectly fine, pure mountain water to bottle, and then add impurities! Haven't you ever seen that "minerals added for taste" thing? Are THESE the compounds that are going to expire, much like our poor, unstable salt? Or rather, are they a horrid additive that will addict us to this warped fluid, this morphing of the great liquid supplied by Gaea to sustain and promote life?

Whoa. Beware!

[identity profile] mehub.livejournal.com 2008-03-20 04:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Don't fret the salt, dude! How can something go bad when it can do so much damage to your blood pressure? See, now you'll have to start another blog, rhapsodizing the beauties of salt, like how people won't eat certain foods without copious amounts of it, etc...