You Have Got to be Kidding Me

They're doing it again. I am trying to come up with another word that has been bastardized as much a "Infrared" seems to be.

I saw a thing like this at Costco on Saturday. But I am freshly shocked at seeing it elsewhere.

I mean really? Infrared technology? Has someone patented a specific frequency of the EM spectrum in the infrared range?

I begin to wonder. Microwaves used to be called radar ranges. Now radar waves are right next to microwaves in the spectrum, so maybe it's not such a big thing. But the layman is pretty up on ultraviolet and X-rays. Some might even know that gamma rays were not invented my Marvel Comics, but are actually a higher frequency than X-rays.

But now infrared has become a technology. Yes, this cooker does use infrared, so it's not lying. But so do my stove, oven, frying pan, grill, blowtorch, dashboard, and carburetor.

I have gone off on this before, but now I start to wonder about things. Are there areas of science that I'm ignorant of whose words have had this done to them?

Does Oxyclean really clean with oxygen? Does an ozone filtration system really use ozone? Does my supplement really have iron or spirolina?

I'm not done; I just can't keep typing while shaking my head in amazed disillusion.

With Ookla the Mock...

As I said, Saturday and Sunday, Jennifer and I went shopping, and I started some comparison shopping for a new gas grill. The one I have now is a hand me down from my dad. It's the second hand me down, and is the second grill they bought. My first had been their first. Now I would like to buy my own.

So we were looking at Lowes and found this Charbroil grill. Now let me preface that the Lowes is in Dublin, California, which is right next to Livermore. As in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. And this company (aside from the ridiculousness of having the word "quantum" in its name) has the idiocy to advertise that this grill cooks with infrared.

Let me give you a quick physics lesson. The sun produces a spectrum of wavelengths of light. The little bit we can see (call "visible light") is a very small percentage. It extends from the relatively low energy red wavelengths through orange, yellow, green, and blue, up to the higher energy violet wavelength. It also produces other shorter (and higher energy) wavelengths in ultraviolet, x-ray and gamma rays.

I've always said that the way you can tell the difference between ultraviolet and x-rays are when you stop getting a tan and you start seeing your bones.

Now there are other longer (lower energy) wavelengths. The lowest is radio waves, moving into microwaves (yes, those microwaves) and infrared. Infrared is slightly less energetic than red and is invisible to human sight. We can sense it on our skin though as the warmth of the sun...

And everything else that generates heat. That's what heat is: infrared light.

Yes, everything that generates heat, radiates infrared light. That means humans, other hot-blooded animals, heating elements, and yes, one of the oldest inventions of man... FIRE.

What the marketing assholes at Charbroil are doing is preying in the non-science educated population for the country. We have not discovered a new form of cooking, all they have done is put metal plates in the grill to block the fire, absorbing it heat, and radiating it up at whatever you are cooking.

That's all.

In summary, ever since the first piece of fish fell in the fire, mastodon was turned over a spit, or bread was baked in an oven man has cooked using infrared.

All right, I'm done.