The weird things people ask their spouses...

[gnomi]

Paraphrased conversation between MAB and me last night:

(edited to add conversational markers, for clarity)

Me: Hey, I've got a science question.

Him: [curious] Yeah?

Me: Do people float in oil?

Him: [bewildered] Huh? I don't want to know where this question came from.

Me: No, seriously. Would a human thrown into a big vat of oil float?

Him: (thinks a minute) Yeah, of course.

Me: Because humans float in water, and oil floats in water.

Him: [contemplatively] Yeah.

(pause)

Him: [bemusedly] OK, why?

Me: Cop show. Bad guy gets thrown off a catwalk into a vat of oil. Does he float?

Him: [contemplatively] Yeah. Unless he drowns, instead.

Me: Yeah, 'cause then the oil's in his lungs and he'll sink to the bottom.

Him: Yeah.

It's conversations of this type (which are somewhat common around our dinner table) that make me wonder if other people talk about things like this.

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

The answer is that it would be kosher, because it's not really bacon. Read "The R Strain" by Harry Turtledove (who is the GoH at Arisia, where I'll be tomorrow).

[cellio]

That's one interpretation. Another is that if it's correct to build a fence around chicken for "meat and milk" lest people get confused or be misled, then even moreso it's appropriate to build a fence around "instinguishable from pig without the lab notes". So I don't know how it would play out.

(This isn't the marit ayin argument, because just as you can put out a stick of yellow fat with a meat meal so long as you show the wrapper saying it's margarine, you could also put out fake pig with the OU hechsher.)