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Tim Colwill is a 22 year old human male who resides in Perth, Western Australia. Inventor of the cardboard toaster and the car-powered car, Tim is also an accomplished author, having penned such notable works as Romeo and Juliet, Clifford The Big Red Dog, and The Bible. In his spare time, Tim directs movies under the nom de plume Steven Spielberg and maintains his own standing army of genetically engineered watermelons. Truly it is said that Tim has had an illustrious career, matched only by its ludicrously unbelievable exaggeration.

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We Do This A Lot

// Filed under: Life on Wednesday April 25th 2007, 8:41 pm

So, Simon and I are in the kitchen, and we’re drying the dishes. And what better time, my friends, to discuss the nutritional value of a carrot.

This begins when my mother remarks that she read in a report recently that the nutritional value of a carrot substantially improved after boiling. Simon pounces. “Ridiculous!” he cries, stabbing his index finger into the sky. “How can mere water add anything to a carrot that wasn’t already there! I spurn your voodoo magicks and all who swear fealty to their cause!” It’s all I can do to restrain him as he sprays bile into my face and gnashes his angry, aspiring-biologist-teeth in my mother’s general direction.

“Fie!” I hiss in his throbbing ears. “What evidence do you have to support this claim! Our mother cites a publication of repute! You cite merely your own unsubstantiated judgements!” He tears free of my grasp, wielding a teatowel as lesser men wield broadswords or battle-axes. “It’s common sense, you unwashed jackanapes! I don’t need to prove it! I know I am right.”

“But,” I say, “how can you know that you are right, if you have no proof or evidence with which to back up your spurious claims?”

“Tim, you are a small-minded nitwit, and therefore much of what I say will be lost on you,” he begins, his muttonchops dancing in the soft breeze of the kitchen. “It is a held tenet of Glorious Science that nothing can ever, truly, be known. To know something, one must be able to prove something to be right, and nothing can ever be proven absolutely right - only absolutely wrong.”

“So basically, dear brother - what you are saying to me in effect is that the only thing you can be certain of, is that you can never be certain?”

“Correct.”

“And yet you know - you are certain - without any proof or evidence to back you up, that a carrot, once boiled, could not possibly have increased in nutritional content?”

“Right.”

Wrong.

// 12 Comments

12 Comments »

Jess says:

April 25, 2007 at 8:48 pm

Why, it sounds as if you’re having some kind of ARGUMENT. With your BROTHER. How exciting, I should come and stay more often!

Seriously though, did you edit out the parts where you continually try and kick each other in the balls? Coz that’s important.
Simon says:

April 25, 2007 at 9:23 pm

I submit to you that you need to shut the hell up! Way to post a one sided view of how it happened! For instance I don’t think I’ve called anyone a nitwit for possibly all time.And why does clicking “Go back to Nutrition Study Homepage” on that table lead me to a 404 Not Found error? DOES IT EVEN EXIST? I’m not too sure. But my argument still stands, unless you can tell me how boiling a carrot in water (and a scientific study should be using purified/deionised water so as not to muck up the results with differeing concentrations of elements in tap water all over the world.) suddenly more than doubles it’s sodium content, via the addition of the apparently magical H20. To deduce it down into a maths equation where x = sodium:

x + 0(sodium in water)x = 2x
Therefore; x = 2x

Wait for it, waaaiiit for iittt!

… No it doesn’t.
Marquis says:

April 25, 2007 at 9:24 pm

Your intellectual smackdown is of the highest calibre - Sir, I salute you.
reds8n says:

April 25, 2007 at 11:43 pm

Is it because we can’t fully digest the uncooked goodness of said orange vegetable, without weakening it’s tenacious grasp through purification by immersion in boiling HOLY water ?
Also the devil is more impressed by the different colour scheme.

Hand washing dishes ? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!..
That the drought we keep hearing about or a lack of appliance ? If t’is the later i know some violent men in Hong Kong who could arrange for delivery of one. They’ll take any white slaves that you have spare.
John says:

April 26, 2007 at 10:53 am

Have a look at the World Carrot Museum (Yes!) nutrition page and all will be answered.
Simon says:

April 26, 2007 at 8:15 pm

Bah! Whether or not you can absorb the nutrients available better after boiling is not in dispute! I am disputing the fact that they amount of said nutrients actually increases! Physically impossible I say! [/spittle]
James says:

April 27, 2007 at 2:37 am

I think it says a lot that this entry, which centers around the nutritional value of carrots and a battle-of-the-titans all out ego fest, has attracted more responses, more quickly, than any you’ve posted in a while. Especially from people with a penchant for old worlde English. Damn it, I want in.

Also, Simon, the world hasn’t seen such hauteur and spurious use of facts so freshly gleamed from schooling the paints still wet since I was a first-year. I even used the whole null-hypotheses argument when trying to explain to my own mum how stupid some crackpot research she was going on about was. I forget exactly what. It probably involved crystals or why being dead once in a while is good for you. Gods but I hate hippies. Point is, stop it. I don’t like you reminding me of myself, and I’m sure you could do without the parallel.
James says:

April 27, 2007 at 2:38 am

I also have bad things to say about you Tim, but I’m in a post-orgasmic afterglow of love at you. I don’t like your new page, but am so happy with the one you made for me I can’t bear to be my usual unlovable self and meticulously enumerate the reasons why.

And turns out I was wrong, having my own page hasn’t stopped me from rambling pointlessly on yours. Live and learn.
reds8n says:

April 27, 2007 at 10:18 pm

When do we get paid for making you look popular Mr. Tim?
Yuber says:

April 28, 2007 at 4:53 pm

Carrots! They are the agents of Evil, sowing enmity amongst siblings. You crazy antipodeans. Jess is right though, there does seem to be a major part lacking.. Namely the good old “let’s decide who’s right by means of unnecessary violence”. No need to censor that stuff, it’s practically the best part of any sibling “discussion”.
Tom says:

April 29, 2007 at 6:21 am

This entry makes learning fun!

I wish carrots spurred philosophical discussion at my house! They mostly just fuel… soup.
Charmee says:

May 16, 2007 at 1:51 am

Fascinating developments on the horizon! Though I must say, having glanced at the chart of so-called “proof”, it seems that EVEN IF the facts are indeed TRUE, then the proposed “nutrients” being altered from raw to cooked state of carrotude are doing so at the cost of vitamins and potassium, which some might argue are more valuable than the sodium and calcium whose numbers are boosted. In other words, the point is moot by anyone’s standards, and the only way to establish a true victor is the proverbial BATTLE TO THE DEATH… with lions. Lions that shoot lasers out of their eyes. Go on, get.

As a closing statement, let me simply pass on the wise words of a certain biology teacher I once had the pleasure of hearing about vicariously…

“Always remember: Carrots are just fucking the earth.”