cool water. I do it all the time.

Cool, thanks all. There was NEVER a chance of me putting these in the microwave.

don't suck the air out with a straw. Use the water pressure from the full bowl of water and carefully lower the ziploc, open end stays out of the water, into the bowl and let the pressure push the air out, then seal it tight. I don't like using either method but I will go with the water over the microwave everytime.

In culinary school, we learned to defrost items by placing the frozen items in a bowl and run cold tap water over them until they are completely defrosted. You wouldn't want to leave them on the counter because that is asking for bacterial growth and microwaving on a low setting most likely cook some of the outer bits of the item. The best way is really to plan ahead and defrost in the fridge.

Not the most environmentally friendly method, but probably the best for quality: put the pork chops in a ziploc bag, suck out the air and seal. Put in a bowl/pot in the sink and fill with cool water. You can either leave the sink running at a trickle, or every 20 minutes or so change out the very cold water for cool water. Depending on the thickness of your pork chops, this should take somewhere from 30 minutes to an hour, I think.

Actually Alton Brown discourages that method. If you don't have time to defrost them gradually in the refrigerator then microwave would probably be your next best choice. But then if you don't have a microwave...

I believe Alton Brown actually did a test of various defrosting methods to find the most effective way, and found that the method matt_walsh describes worked best. We don't own a microwave, so the water bath/running water method is what we use.

under cold running water in a bowl in the sink.