holy range

[naomind]

I took a look at my new oven this morning, and the sunlight was shining just right for me to see all the potential LED messages on the iridescent display at once. You know, that tight little grid of letter and number segments, packed in so efficiently? Anyway, amid all the AUTO-COOK-PREHEAT-BAKE verbiage, I saw this word

Comments

[nihilistech]

That's great! Can no baking be done from Friday night until Saturday night then? I guess you'd have to find out if it's orthodox, too.

[rjl20]

Heh. I think my oven has a sabbath mode too. I think what it does is turn off the safety feature that shuts the oven off after a certain amount of time. That way, you can turn the oven on before the sabbath and keep food warm. Without sabbath mode, the oven would shut off automatically, and your food would get cold.

You can get refrigerators with a sabbath mode, too. For those, I think that means that the light inside doesn't turn on when you open the door, and the thermostat has a random element attached, so that the act of opening the door isn't a direct cause of the compressor kicking in. Apparently if the fridge is on random play, it's ok to use it on the sabbath, because your opening the door isn't specifically causing any work to be done. Hooray for loopholes!

[m_dash]

Wow! I wonder if your oven is observant.

[eddiewillers]

Yup, you've got an observant Jewish oven.

rjl20 has it exactly right; the principle is that a Jewish person can't "use fire" on the Sabbath (sundown Friday until an hour after sundown Saturday), which observant folks extend to mean "cause an electrical event or signal". The Sabbath mode is to keep food warm for Friday night and Saturday meals.

Isn't technology wonderful ?

Oh, um, don't mind me. I was just walking by. The light was on.