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From: Jim Beard on 1 Oct 2007 22:22
Moe Trin wrote:
> Some people talk about taking things with a grain of salt. Some userland
> applications require more than that - and I'm on a reduced sodium diet.

Not to worry. The original aphorism was to "take with a grain of salts."
The salts in question were Epsom salts, still available as a purgative
or to pour into bath water or a bucket of hot water and soak to ease the
pain of aching muscles.

Epsom salts is magnesium sulfate heptahydrate (yeah, had to look that one
up). No sodium involved.

Cheers!

jim b.
--
UNIX is not user-unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.
From: Adam on 3 Oct 2007 17:21
Jim Beard wrote:
> Not to worry. The original aphorism was to "take with a grain of salts."
> The salts in question were Epsom salts, still available as a purgative
> or to pour into bath water or a bucket of hot water and soak to ease the
> pain of aching muscles.
>
> Epsom salts is magnesium sulfate heptahydrate (yeah, had to look that one
> up). No sodium involved.

MgSO4-7H2O (the 4 and 2 should be subscripts and the dash should be a
dot) -- magnesium (Mg) sulf- (S) -ate (O4) hepta- (7) -hydrate (H2O).

If you add Epsom salts to distilled water, you get "hard water" which
can be filtered through a water softener but then you have to recharge
the water softener with sodium chloride, ordinary table salt. I knew
there had to be some way to work sodium into this!

Adam

From: TJ on 4 Oct 2007 08:06
Jim Beard wrote:
> Moe Trin wrote:
>> Some people talk about taking things with a grain of salt. Some userland
>> applications require more than that - and I'm on a reduced sodium diet.
>
> Not to worry. The original aphorism was to "take with a grain of salts."
> The salts in question were Epsom salts, still available as a purgative
> or to pour into bath water or a bucket of hot water and soak to ease the
> pain of aching muscles.
>
> Epsom salts is magnesium sulfate heptahydrate (yeah, had to look that one
> up). No sodium involved.
>
> Cheers!
>
> jim b.

Sigh. Another "truism" shot to hell. For years I've been thinking that
whenever a weather prediction contained the word "seasonable" said
prediction should be "taken with a grain of salt." Now I don't know what
to do.

TJ

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

From: Curt on 4 Oct 2007 10:44
On 2007-10-03, Adam <look(a)bottom.for.address> wrote:
>>
>> Epsom salts is magnesium sulfate heptahydrate (yeah, had to look that one
>> up). No sodium involved.
>
> MgSO4-7H2O (the 4 and 2 should be subscripts and the dash should be a
> dot) -- magnesium (Mg) sulf- (S) -ate (O4) hepta- (7) -hydrate (H2O).
>

I'm taking his "grain of salts" theory with a grain of salt:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_of_salt
http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/e21.html
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/take-with-a-grain-of-salt.html
http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/with_a_grain_of_salt/
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=grain%20of%20salt

I can't find anything to substantiate the "Epsom salts" etymology of the
expression, and I'm not buying it until I do, which may very well be never.

Perhaps somebody would be kind enough to post a link to something of a
substantiating nature, though one doubts the "original aphorism" [sic], if
indeed it ever got soaked in a solution of Epsom salts, could possibly antedate
Pliny the Elder, though I remain open to novel ideas.
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