There’s a point in the movie Chocolat where Juliette Binoche’s character tells us she puts a pinch of cayenne pepper in the pot of hot cocoa.
Bah. I just added three drops of Blair’s Sudden Death Sauce to 6 ounces of hot cocoa. Drink THAT with your gypsy buddies, Vianne!
Someone posted a link to me describing research in which theobromine (the it’s-not-caffeine-but-it’s-similar ingredient in cocoa) was tested successfully as a cough suppressant. In order to make patients cough in the first place they had them inhale capsicum/capseicin. The message to me was “hey Howard, look! Two of your favorite ingredients in the same place!” Well, now I’ve GOT them in the same place. Two great tastes that OW IT BURNS OW OW OW!
SETI may have a hard time finding anything at all, even if the universe is teeming with life. This article, which I picked up over at PhysOrg, cites new research which says that once you get good at compressing your data, radio transmissions become indistinguishable from those naturally emanating from stars. SETI looks for inefficient transmissions like the ones we currently create, but it’s likely that any civilizations out there who have had radio for more than the paltry 8 decades we have will be communicating in very efficient, compressed code.
Bummer. We’re probably staring at hundreds of really, really cool feeds from 20,000-year-old disc jockeys when we look at the night sky, but our gear doesn’t recognize the signal. (And we don’t have their public key, either.)
I came downstairs to write about the evening because I needed to cool off before climbing into bed with Sandra.
No, we’re not fighting or anything. I had a half-teaspoon of Sudden Death sauce in a quarter-cup of mild salsa. When I was shoveling it in I was happy as a (severely addled) clam, but 5 minutes after I finished I let loose a burning belch that told me that my breath was probably halfway to being weapons-grade capsicum spray.
Snuggling someone with halitosis is annoying. Snuggling someone whose respiratory system is leaking tear gas is another matter entirely.
wrote a journal entry awhile back about burping after really spicy meals in which he counseled against the quiet, exhale-it-through-your-nose burp. Your tongue and throat may be pain-gated from all the capsicum, but unless you’ve been eating through your nose your sinuses are NOT hardened against that stuff. He concluded that cultures with spicy dishes tend to be cultures with loud burping because of natural selection: if they burp through their nose, they’ll DIE.
I’ve taken his advice to heart, but as I was typing my last journal entry I coughed. I covered my mouth, and the backblast got in my EYE. Note to self: polite coughing following spicy meals should only be attempted with both eyes firmly SHUT.