Thoughts on Properly Spicing Up V-8

I think that V-8 would be better if it had some garlic juice in it. I have found that V-8 is helped by Sriracha. First, it adds spiciness without too much vinegar. It also has a nice garlic flavor. For my tolerance level I find that most hot sauces are far more vinegary (and salty) than they are hot. Tabasco being the most obvious example. I do like Tabasco, but if I put enough in to make V-8 spicy enough it would be too vinegary. I find that an ample portion of Sriracha and a splash of Cholula chili garlic hot sauce is pretty good. That's what I'm drinking right now in fact. A nice spicy chili powder can also help. I had some African bird's eye chili powder  that I procured from the dual Specialty store, which was really nice. It's especially good if you have a large bottle of V-8 (like the ones featured in my "Making Tap Water Taste Good" entry of 5 Oct) and you put it in that and shake it around. The next day the powder has had a chance to marry with the V-8. That was probably some of the most delicious V-8 I've ever had. I've gotta pick up some more of that...

The Motion of the Minute Hand

If I look at the minute hand of a clock I generally cannot see it move, but I can be pretty sure it is moving, especially if it's reading the right time. The rate at which the minute hand moves is 360 degrees/hour, or a degree every 10 seconds. It seems what I detect is instantaneous motion when my mind determines if something is moving or not. I'm not referring to hands that move in steps, but those that move continuously. I don't know enough about clocks to know if any hands move continuously, or if they all move in steps, just more of them. But I bet that on some level, if I don't see the steps, that they can be approximated as moving continuously. Of course, the larger the clock, and the closer I am to it, the more likely I'll be able to see that the hands are moving.

There's this concept of an adiabatic change, which as I understand it, is that the rate at which something changes which affects a system is slow compared to the rate at which the parameters that describe the system change. When that happens, the 'something' that changes does not increase the disorder of the system. It's like kicking a car versus pushing it. If you kick a car hard enough you dent it and it moves, if you just push it, it just moves.

I wonder if this concept of adiabaticity can be extended to a clock. In the sense that, I can see things changing around me, but I can't see the minute hand changing. So, the rate at which the minute hand changes is slow compared to the changes in the world on the scale that I can perceive them. What does this say about the perception of time? Is this minute hand phenomenon an indication of what is adiabatic for a human? The second hand moves fast enough to easily be seen, and the hour hand is clearly too slow, but the minute hand is rather tantalizing, because its motion seems like it might be close to the edge of perceptibility, on the cusp of subjective adiabaticity.

I wonder if with practice, but without cheating, one could see the motion of a particular minute hand where initially one couldn't. You might think that this could be a good exercise at work for example, but I think it would tend to make the day pass more slowly. Since if you can perceive the same rate of movement on a shorter time scale, then you'll be more aware of time's passage. I think this is because the perception of duration is related to the awareness of the passage of time. Like the mind's clock only adds successive intervals up, counting them, but not multiplying each successive interval by the actual duration of each. I guess that's why when I wake up, it seems like little time has passed since I fell asleep. At least in part this is perhaps why I'm a night owl, since I intuitively realize that the earlier I get to sleep the sooner it will be before I have to get up.

Making Tap Water Taste Good

When my tap water comes out of the sink it doesn't taste very good. If I put it in a bottle and put it in the fridge it tastes better, but mainly just because it's cold. It still has an off flavor. The trick is not to put the cap on the bottle. After a day or so it tastes as good as bottled water to me. I guess what's happening is similar to the case with soda in my previous entry. There are dissolved gases in the tap water that make it taste bad. In the case of soda you want to keep the dissolved gases, but in the case of water, you want to get rid of them. Keeping the cap off let's them diffuse out of the water and into the fridge, where they are easily accommodated.

Three bottles of tap water in the fridge sans caps.

Keeping Soda from going Flat

If you're like me, you buy a bottle of soda, say a 2 liter, but you don't finish it for days, or maybe even weeks. But if you don't finish it quickly it will go flat. I have learned that this does not have to happen. If you squeeze the plastic bottle it came in so that there is little space for air remaining, the soda won't go flat.

It seems that it goes flat because the gas in the soda slowly escapes from the soda into the air inside the bottle. When the Carbon Dioxide in the air inside the bottle reaches the same pressure as inside the liquid, no more will be lost to the liquid. If you squeeze and deform the bottle so there is little room for air in it then less gas will be lost to the air to reach that pressure and the soda won't go flat. Every time you take some soda you'll have to squeeze the bottle some more. If you bring bottles back for deposit, you may get some strange looks.