Potential energy is a crock. Or more accurately, it is a relic of a Newtonian physical model whose primary point of reference is the giant mass of matter we happen to live immediately adjacent to.

I mean consider the massive amount of potential energy between you and the sun. Or how about that that black hole in the middle of the galaxy. You have got some HUGE potential energy between you and that.

If I were to compile a list of things I don't believe in, "potential energy" would be right up there with building on a floodplain.

But how can you reconcile that with the principle of conservation of energy? You can reclaim the energy spent walking up that hill (what part of it isn't already lost to heat, that is). It seems like that energy goes somewhere, sitting around until it comes back into play. Calling that place "potential energy" is the best we can do, right?

Is sous-vide considered a hipster cooking technique? I've never heard the pre-mourning of the commercialization (?) of a cooking style that almost no one (in the U.S., anyway) has yet encountered.

Is there a name for this phenomenon? I've encountered it with hipster bands, but not methods of cooking.

Well, duh. What did you THINK powered the teleporter?

Ty: with the outsize popularity of Top Chef, it's only a matter of time. You're right -- I'm trying to get ahead of the curve. A significant portion of the internet is already devoted to repeating the same wisdom received from the food network, and that's tiresome enough: yes, fresh ingredients; yes, I agree the term "Maillard Reaction" sounds impressive; yes, I know what a full tang is, and what a chiffonade is, and why to order meat rare, and that artichokes make wine taste funny; yes, I've heard of counterintuitively putting chocolate/coffee/recognizable-brand-of-processed-food in that high-class recipe -- but are you sure it's a good idea? It makes me want to scream, "Didn't you watch Iron Chef in college?! Don't you realize that this is not new information!?"

Sorry. Let me collect myself.

My point is that sous-vide machines are new territory -- and that's what makes them so deadly as the cooking-pretension arms race participants fight over the fewer and fewer scraps of culinary novelty available. These machines strike me as poised to become the fondue pots of the aughts. Whatever I can do to stem the tide of inanity and future garage sale fodder, I feel I must.

I admit that I'm sort of looking forward to the MAKE magazine/blog writeup of ad-hoc approaches to the technique, however. I have a feeling that Roombas will be involved.

Tom is standing athwart pop culinary history, yelling "Stop!"

It only seems hopeless because you never hear about the tragedies that fogeyism successfully prevents.

1. I definitely think you're right on this, Tom. The existence of Space Bag infomercials proves America's readiness. My gadget prediction: kitchens of the future will be built with compressed air lines, for easy drying of foods and dishes.

2. A potential energy change results from moving mass from an area of high energy to low energy. Presumably, your teleporter would have to initially convert your body into some all-energy-no-mass inertialess state for the actual transportation, and then convert you back. So because your mass isn't moving through the potential gradient, the potential energy isn't released as it would if you just fell down the hill. But conservation-wise, it would be offset by the energy associated with directing your massless intra-teleported state in the proper direction, which wouldn't happen spontaneously.

By the way, a recurring theme in physical chemistry is that if you think you've disproved the laws of thermodynamics, you're probably wrong.

Well, of course I'm not trying to say "gotcha!" and maintain that I've figured out something the laws of the universe haven't. I'm just saying that this seems like a potential problem with teleportation.

And I gotta say, your conclusion seems to presuppose some facts about teleportation that it seems premature to conclude. Like, say the portal works through some gravitic, space-bending wormhole effect. Surely that doesn't necessarily require energy to direct the transmission.

Besides, consider your example in simplified terms: let's imagine that my all-energy state can be transmitted like other EM radiation using, say, two satellite dishes. If I set up one teleportation rig at the top of a footstool and another at the top of Mount Everest, and beamed my signal down to sea level, do you think the difference in required signal-transmission energy would scale evenly with the difference in stored kinetic energy? It seems unlikely to me.

Admittedly, having never watched DS9 seriously I'm not really up to date on my wormhole metaphysics. So I'll grant you that possibility.

And now I'm thinking that my now that my original analogy was incorrect. Light is indeed bent by gravity, so even if you were converted to EM radiation you would still be affected by the Earth's gravity. Any sort of signal transmission would have to take this into account, though it seems likely that this chunk of energy would be negligible compared to the energy associated with the organized conversion of matter to EM radiation.

But regardless, I've had far too few beers to give this topic the amount of animated attention it so richly deserves.

I think the sous-vide endgame can be predicted on the basis of its Wikipedia entry:

"Clostridium botulinum bacteria can grow in food in the absence of oxygen and produce the deadly botulinum toxin, so sous-vide cooking must be performed under carefully controlled conditions to avoid botulism poisoning.[2] To help with food safety and taste, relatively expensive water-bath machines (thermal immersion circulators) are used to circulate precisely heated water. Differences of even one degree can affect the finished product."

hahaha... Okay, Dan wins.