Aesop's Fable

I wrote an Aesop fable many years ago and recently brought it up in conversation. Here we go...

Tadpoles in a Small Pond

   Once upon a time there were two tadpoles who lived in a small pond. One tadpole was much smaller than the other and didn't have any legs. The other tadpole was larger and had developed small little frog legs. One day they were speaking with each other and the small tadpole says to the large tadpole,
   "I really like living in this small pond. It's safe, and all of my food is right here."
   The larger tadpole replies,
   "Are you crazy? I can't wait to become a frog I'll be able to jump around on dry land and I'll be able to breathe air and I'll be able to catch food with my tongue flying through the air. It's going to be great!"
   Just as they were having this conversation a large bass spied both of them. Both tadpoles shot off like bolts and swam for the safest spot that they knew about. As they both neared a very small opening near the shore, the smaller tadpole just couldn't swim as fast without the legs. The bass gobbled him up. The larger tadpole used his small frog legs to muscle through the water, but as he approached, realized that his body had gotten too big for the very small opening. He became stuck, and the bass gobbled him up, too.

Only the tadpole that is wise in both body and mind will grow to become the frog.

Roux

Roux is a conceptual term used by cooks to describe a base for a cream gravy, sauce, or binder. Glutens are first heated in oil, turning them into thickening starches, leaving just proteins in water on which to bind. If you have flour and oil (or butter), and you heat it for five minutes, then add stock or lactose. Stir like crazy. In three minutes, you should have an awesome cream sauce.

Don't forget to stir like crazy.

The polar opposite of this concept is reduction. That's where you cross over from cream sauce to beurre blanc. This involves a combination of aromatics and wine, reducing au sec (to where there is no moisture left), then adding cream and reducing still further (2/3rds reduction), until you have an amazing sauce that can only be finished with copious amounts of butter.

Both sauces are delicious and simple, though one definitely requires more time than the other.

Spectrum Analysis

Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in lighting, photography, videography, publishing, manufacturing, astrophysics, horticulture, and other fields. In practice, color temperature is only meaningful for light sources that do in fact correspond somewhat closely to the radiation of some black body, i.e., those on a line from reddish/orange to yellow to more or less white to blueish white. It does not make sense to speak of the color temperature of, e.g., a green or a purple light. Color temperature is conventionally stated in the unit of absolute temperature, the Kelvin, having the unit symbol K.

Color temperatures over 5,000K are called cool colors (bluish white), while lower color temperatures (2,700–3,000K) are called warm colors (yellowish white through red). This relation, however, is a psychological one in contrast to the physical relation implied by Wien's Displacement Law, according to which the spectral peak is shifted towards shorter wavelengths (resulting in a more blueish white) for higher temperatures.

The stars burn with white and yellow-hot heat, blue and gold bottle rockets that crackle and spark for what might as well be called forever. The intense amount of energy required to keep the flame glowing at a sustained rate is, quite literally, astronomical. The surprise twist: "cool" colors with shorter wavelengths, blueish, burn much hotter than "warm" colors; and remember, it doesn't make sense to speak of the color temperature of a green or purple light.

You can't tell at what temperature a green or purple flame burns, because those colors are simply not a part of the color temperature spectrum.