B"H

On "Exploding" Water, Microwave Ovens and Intelligence

This post relates to the famous "Exploding Water" e-mail that went
around again and again on the Internet. If you weren't one of the
lucky people to get the mass mailing, it can be found on the
following site:

http://www.snopes.com/science/microwav.htm

Someone posted it on another board. I thought the thing died with
the dinosaurs, but there it was again. I told the person who posted
it about Snopes and recommended checking these things out before
sending them to everyone in your address book and posting it on every
board on the net (yet again).

I'd like to share my response to the people who defended
the "exploding water" post with you as I think it is relevant to the
topic and spirit of this board. While I most certainly do not call
for disregarding the warning, I think the real value of
the "exploding water" post lies, well, beneath the surface.

This is my response, edited very slightly to:

The real value of the "exploding water" post resides not in its being
a very important datum, but in its being a classical example of how
not to use data properly to arrive at genuinely intelligent and
balanced conclusions.

In order to arrive at genuinely intelligent conclusions we must
utilize our innate intelligence, data we have acquired as a result of
pro-active learning and research, data we have acquired more or less
passively as a result of life's experiences, data acquired as a
result of others' pro-active learning (including, but not limited to,
the accumulation of data compiled as the results of empirically
verifiable experiments conducted by others), the knowledge acquired
more or less passively as a result of others' life experiences, the
ability to apprehend what is central and what is peripheral in any
and all data presented to us, and finally a good measure of plain old
common sense. All of the above must be used not only simultaneously,
but we must be able to apply them in the correct "proportions" in
each given situation.

Before proceeding some may wish to briefly review cooking with
microwaves vis-א-vis conventional cooking utilizing the far infrared
region of the electromagnetic spectrum (the waves that produce the
phenomenon we subjectively experience as heat).

We are only just beginning to determine just how deleterious eating
foods that have been denatured by being exposed to far infrared waves
(heat) is. Widespread experimentation has verified empirically that
the eating of cooked foods is implicated in a host of acquired
degenerative diseases. Cancer cells are more likely to proliferate
when cultured on cooked foods than they are on raw foods. It is
generally accepted by health experts that the ideal diet consists of
about 75% raw food. The remainder may consist of cooked cereal of
various types.

It would stand to reason, then, that if food exposed to the far end
of the infrared scale becomes so denatured that it loses most of its
nutritional value and even becomes deleterious to our health, then
one should question whether or not the same, or worse, happens when
foods are exposed to microwaves, which are contiguous to far infrared
radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum.

According to our present level of knowledge (and our present level of
knowledge is always open to revision) the answer appears to be
affirmative. Microwave cooking is even more dangerous than cooking
using the far infrared range. Please see the following for a very
brief overview.

http://healingtools.tripod.com/thn4.html

More corroborative research showing that microwave cooking is
undesirable is available. We do not yet know just how undesirable it
is. Someone on the board said that a microwave oven is much, much
safer than an automobile. In fact, we simply do not have enough
experience with cooking with microwaves to make any determination
whatsoever as to just how deleterious the practice is. We are only
just beginning to know how dangerous it is to eat a diet of mostly
food cooked with far infrared waves. We have been using microwaves to
alter the chemical structure of our food for only about a generation.
How can we possibly make statements about how dangerous they are in
relation to another dangerous practice?

In summary: The hoax involved in the post about the "exploding water"
involves deluding people into thinking that by knowing that one datum
they may continue to use their microwave ovens safely, providing that
they don't stare into their cups of hot water after they take them
out of the microwave oven. The hoax plays on people's emotions,
making them feel that they are not engaging in a dangerous practice
(using microwave ovens), that they are in control of the situation
because they are privy to the knowledge of one datum. The hoax also
plays on people's desire to continue to enjoy the convenience that
their microwave ovens provide. The possibility, however remote,
of "exploding water" should be considered as yet another reason not
to use a microwave oven at all. We would need to know the
approximate probability of that even occurring in order to have any
idea how much weight to lend to that factor.

The real danger of eating microwaved food lays not so much in the
improbable accident that might occur, but in the long-term effects of
eating of denatured food as a result of having been exposed to high
frequency radiation.

We cannot, must not, arrive at conclusions because they are the ones
that we want to hear (Hey, I like my microwave!); nor should we
arrive at conclusions that curry favor with the current scientific,
academic, intellectual establishment out of blind identification with
them. The truth, insofar as we are able to perceive it at any given
level, must speak for itself. That which separates the geniuses from
the very intelligent is not so much innate ability as a tenacious
quest for truth and an intrepid willingness to be outside of the
establishment if need be. In every culture, in every time period
there has been the "house intellectuals" kept by the establishment.
They were all very bright indeed, but their job was to maintain the
status quo. They were very good and very fast at learning the
knowledge of the day, parroting it, and applying it in accordance
with the wishes of the powers that be. Then there were the geniuses -
those who dared to transcend the accepted knowledge, those who
deconstructed and reconstructed thought itself and in so doing broke
through into new dimensions of possibility. There always has, and
most probably will be, tension between the two groups for a long time
to come.

Genuine intelligence resides in the being able to see the mega-
concept that a given datum bespeaks, not staring into the given
particular oblivious to the vastly greater whole that it is pointing
us in the direction of.

Doreen