Language: English

Plastic vs. Wooden cutting boards

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Jonathan Cutrer - Sliced Pineapple #jcutrer

Plastic cutting boards, Cliver found, are easier to sanitize. But cutting on them also leaves lots of grooves where bacteria can hide. Wood is tougher to sanitize, but it’s also (often) tougher in general – you won’t find as many deep scratches in the surface.

Fast Facts About Cutting Boards and Food Safety in Your Kitchen | NC State News

 

The tests results indicate that the surface of a wooden board will actually stop dangerous bacteria from multiplying and the germs simply die out after a period of about three minutes. Following the experiment, the scientists at the University of Wisconsin found that 99.9% of the bacteria placed on the wooden chopping boards had died out completely within minutes whereas some of the cheaper plastic boards had very little effect in terms of killing dangerous microbes.

Myth or Fact: The Antibacterial Properties of Wood

 

The study indicated that an antibacterial effect of wood, especially for pine, is caused by the hygroscopic properties of wood and the wood extractives.

(PDF) Wooden boards affecting the survival of bacteria?

 

The only situation where plastic appeared less contaminated than wood (when sampling had been done by contact agar) was just after a drastic cleaning and disinfecting. But we do not know how long this difference was maintained during the working period, or whether the wood had been scraped before cleaning and disinfecting.

Sanitary quality of meat chopping board surfaces: a bibliographical study – ScienceDirect

 

There was a significant difference in bacterial recoveries from wood and plastic. Bacterial numbers decreased faster on the wood surfaces than on the plastic surface.

Wooden boards affecting the survival of bacteria? A. Schönwälder, R. Kehr, A. Wulf and K. Smalla

& Also »

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Evaluating the competition

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Jam Willem Doormembal - Two mandarines

It may look like the natural thing to do – in order to be creative, you should avoid seeing what others are doing.

If you really want to create something original, it may seem, you need to ignore the footsteps of your predecessors.

I’m 50-50 with this. I’m not sure of a 100% solution.

On one hand, it’s good to see what others have done before you, so you can improve on it, and not come up with a strange solution. If you don’t know what others have done prior to you, you risk doing a similar piece of work or coming up with something which feels out of place.

On another hand, if you want to be totally creative, it might help you not knowing what others have done. This solution is not applicable to agencies, where you need to know what others have created, so you don’t go into copying other people’s work.

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Ending world hunger

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Alessio Terzo - Mandorle

It’s a paradox that in some parts of the world, people try to lose some weight, while in other people don’t have enough food.

I’ll mention the „losing weight” people in this blog post because I tend to be more familiar with the situation.

„De ce îi este omului de astăzi foame? De iubire și de sens.”
Nicolae Steinhardt în Jurnalul fericirii

While Nicolae Steinhardt might refer to emotional hunger by saying that the modern person wishes for more love and meaning in life, I think that when you are hungry you tend to wish for things like pizza or chocolate, high in calories, and delicious food.

„In conclusion, even short-term fasts can lead people to make more unhealthy food choices, picking a lower quantity of high-calorie, relative to low-calorie, foods.”

Fattening Fasting: Hungry Grocery Shoppers Buy More Calories, Not More Food | Lifestyle Behaviors | JAMA Internal Medicine | JAMA Network

What’s the solution? I’ve found two solutions:

  • Let’s say it’s 8 in the evening, and you feel hungry. As a  preventive measure, you don’t have pizza or chocolate in the house, but there are other temptations. The first solution is to settle for less. OK, perhaps not pizza, but how about some food which you do find very tasty, but is much less taxing? I like some nuts & seeds, fish caviar, eggplant salad, and even combinations of milk/kefir and bread/polenta (some people don’t like this, while I most certainly do). Even if you eat some jam and bread, it’s not like you eat some chocolate in the evening.
  • The second solution is not to exaggerate the portions. Do you feel like eating some food? Go ahead, but don’t eat until you are 100% full, leave some food for tomorrow. You’ll surely live to see the new day.

With my solution, even if for the day perhaps you’ll eat more calories than in a typical day with calorie restrictions in place, you will not lose much time.

Second-best solutions can be great, too!

Minimize your losses.

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Boy meets world

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Melusina Parkin - Worlds 3

There’s a time in someone’s life when the young person meets the world.

You get to understand better some things in your life.

So, while in early childhood you’re very happy, at some point you get to understand some things.

The age can vary dramatically, there are some children who are forced to work at a very young age.

The thing is, while this process is a necessary step to adapt to the realities of the world, I don’t view it as a pleasant one.

From my experience, it was actually very hard and harsh, and the thing is life after that moment wasn’t ever the same.

If I were to pick, I’d make this transition as further away as possible.

Later edit: On another hand, this helped me grow. It wasn’t pleasant, but I was able to better face the world at a later stage in my life.

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Why you shouldn’t worry, at all

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Nick Kenrick - For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings

Why do people worry?

First of all, it’s easy. It seems like the natural thing to do. It’s within your reach.

Then, it’s a habit, you try not to, but you’re so used to it.

Does it have a good part?

Sure – it makes you prevent some possible failures.

How about the bad part?

It can give you anxiety, and a state of not feeling well.

What’s the solution?

Think of this chart, if you have no problems in your life, you shouldn’t worry. If you do have some problem, focus on solving it, and either you can solve it or not, you shouldn’t worry, cause just worrying won’t solve it.

Nice graph.

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Good student, bad student

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byronv2 - Book and Coffee

I’ve met some really good students in my life. All – better than me.

What was a bit surprising is that most of these students were good at multiple things at once. Sure, they had some ups and downs, but, all-in-all, they were good overall.

My opinion on this is that knowledge compounds – if you learn well in the first grade, you’ll learn easier in the second grade and so on.

On another hand, if you don’t learn well for a while, it’s harder to catch up.

This made me think – can you regain the lost knowledge?

Think of people going to prison for a long while (for example, in communist time in Romania). Did they recover from the lost time in prison?

Two opposite views on this:

  • First, I wouldn’t say time in prison, or time spent for a while not learning well academically is lost time. Sure, it’s not pleasant to be in prison, and sure, if you don’t do your tasks for doing well in school, you can be left behind. But time spent in prison and the time spent doing other activities than learning for school can be a formation period (more on this »). You can learn by reading, but you can also learn by doing things, by watching things on TV, by talking to others, by helping, or by asking for help. Life is a continuous learning period. You can learn quite a lot by reading (books, mostly), but learning is not 100% connected to reading books.
  • On another hand, I’d say „No, you can’t recover the time lost on a 100% level”. If you don’t learn for years, it’s harder to catch up.

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Criticising the critics

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Michael J. Moeller - ... to forever bind them.

Sometimes, I hear „critical thinking is so good”.

Yet, sometimes I meet people who cross their arms and are against pretty much everything.

I fail to see how critical thinking helps those people.

In some online communities, you tend to see lots of negativity, hatred even.

They say only ignorant people can be happy (“Happy people are not the smart people.”).

As far as I can tell, I think only smart people can be happy. I see a lot of angry, upset, negative not-so-smart people.

And I’ve met in my life some people who were both happy and very smart.

What’s the biggest problem I have with always-upset people? They tend to make poor decisions.

Vaccinations, friends, life, voting, choosing between A and B.

And, even more than this, they tend to be unhappy and grumpy.

Be happy, choose wisely, live longer – who wouldn’t want this?

The unhappy / less smart / critical people.

Is critical thinking bad? No. Is being critical all the time, always aggressive, always fighting, always wanting to win, badly? To me, yes.

I don’t have a problem with saying „No”, I have a problem with people always saying „No”.

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„What harm can come out of this?”

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David Acevedo Godoy - Hasta la Cima

At some point, a candidate for the presidency in Romania (which I voted for), had a rather unusual gesture – accepting an invitation to appear on a rather popular TV show on a motorcycle.

 

„Monica Macovei, europarlamentar si candidat la prezidentialele din noiembrie, a intrat, joi, in platoul unei emisiuni TV calare pe o motocicleta, cu casca pe cap si un cartus de mitraliera in mana.”
Macovei explica de ce i-a dat un cartus lui Teo Trandafir (Video) »

 

„Macovei a spus ca Teo Trandafir a vazut pe internet un clip al sau pe motocicleta lui Sorin Avram, si in acel moment i-a propus sa vina astfel in platoul emisiunii sale de la Kanal D.”
VIDEO Monica Macovei despre episodul intrarii cu motocicleta in studioul TV: A fost un fel de santaj:) Teo Trandafir mi-a spus ca ori vin pe motoclicleta, ori ma pune sa calc – Politic – HotNews.ro »

There are two views, as far as I’m concerned, on this:

  • If the candidate thought this was harmless, and actually considered the gesture to be fine, then I have nothing to comment on. „If you think it’s OK, then it just becomes OK. Instantly.” and „All is fair in love and war”. All good.
  • If the candidate did consider this appearance a bit strange but thought something in the line of „What harm can come out of this?”, then I consider the gesture a mistake. Some people (see the quote below) tend to be influenced by various gestures. This is even more important in politics – you need to show you’re capable of managing your brand and seeing the implications of a specific gesture. If you’re a leader, your actions will shape society. On the specific situation we talk about, perhaps the candidate put the two things in balance – „I will gain visibility, in exchange for doing something atypical, and that’s a fair price to pay”. The thing is, others may view this with different eyes. And even if you do a lot of good things, some people will tend to focus on the one time you did something wrong.

(Andrei Pleşu, despre Monica Macovei) „Nu-mi place s-o văd intrînd cu motocicleta într-un studio de televiziune […]”

Andrei Pleşu: Argumentele pentru care îl votez pe Iohannis | adevarul.ro

I voted with Monica Macovei at those elections. I had no problem with her appearance. But seeing how others reacted to that gesture was disheartening, and it might have been a mistake. Some people are hard to please and they will look at a mistake with not-so-happy eyes.

A quote I like a lot:

„I don’t judge people on their worst mistakes.” (Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow, “Avengers: Endgame” – 2019)

More people should embrace this, at least so I think. :)

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