Jason in Dallas wrote:

> I won't bore you with the science since I'm a poor teacher and not a
> thermodynamicist. Probably can't even spell it right.
>
> The short explaination is yes, boiling cooks differently and faster than
> smoking. It's bacause water is much more dense than air and holds more heat
> to impart top the food. The reason you feel more hot on a humid day, because
> steamy air holds more heat (HVAC guys call it "latent" heat).

I've always thought that humidity substantially reduced the
efficiency of the human evaporative cooling system, err...
sweat glands.

Dana