Chillies

Gary,

I see you have discovered the Guatemalan Insanity Pepper. Very trippy.

Joe

Just don't use them in foreplay.

What's foreplay ?

Spock

Chillies 2 surely ?

The pedant in me wants to scold you for referring to 'chillies' when it is in fact 'chiles'. However, the pedant won't.

If you're into peppers, I grow my own - I have some USDA Red Savina Habanero coming on (and getting to be nicely spicy) and plenty of others. Don't know how green-fingered you are but it's always worth reserving a few seeds (dry them out in some kitchen roll on top of your central heating boiler - works for me) and planting them the following February. If you want to give this a try, I can send you some seeds.

Us Chile-Heads must stick together

John

Spock
it's like pon farr, but with touching.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Top Cat:
The pedant in me wants to scold you for referring to 'chillies' when it is in fact 'chiles'. However, the pedant won't.

If you're into peppers, I grow my own - I have some USDA Red Savina Habanero coming on (and getting to be nicely spicy) and plenty of others. Don't know how green-fingered you are but it's always worth reserving a few seeds (dry them out in some kitchen roll on top of your central heating boiler - works for me) and planting them the following February. If you want to give this a try, I can send you some seeds.

Us Chile-Heads must stick together


John

---

Hi T.C.

Do you need to grow in a greenhouse, or do you just plant them outside (around your dustbin?)

quote:

---

Originally posted by Joe Petrik:
I see you have discovered the http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/gpryor/hot.peppers.html. Very trippy.

---

What a fascinating article, Joe. I'm trying to decide whether it provides 'grist to the mill' for Creationists or Evolutionists (or hybrids like me). In the end I think it just illustrates the rich, miraculous tapestry of life.

Steve Margolis
defy convention - make music

I bought those the other day. They're the sort of thing superchefs in Watford think are hot.

Bugger off you, just because I am not a proper 'Cockney'

Steve,

quote:

---

I'm trying to decide whether it provides 'grist to the mill' for Creationists or Evolutionists (or hybrids like me).

---

Probably no big surprise, but I see the hotness of chili peppers and the best seed dispersal mechanism available to them (that is, birds) being unaffected by the hotness as overwhelming evidence of evolution in action. If God created all things, as Creationists assert, he also created chili peppers and He could have simply made their seeds indigestible or impervious to chewing, instead of using a chemical poison to prevent just about every other animal from eating them.

Oxford biologist, Richard Dawkins, has written a lot about adaptations in nature and if they more strongly support an evolutionary explanation or Creationist one, and in every example he shows that evolutionary explanation is the most likely. Here’s a quote from one of his books:

"The teeth, claws, eyes, nose, leg muscles, backbone and brain of a cheetah are all precisely what we should expect if God's purpose in designing cheetahs was to maximise death among antelopes.... It is as though cheetahs had been designed by one deity and antelopes by a rival deity. Alternatively, if there is only one Creator who made the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is He playing at? Is He a sadist who enjoys spectator blood sports ... Is he maneuvering to maximize David Attenborough's television ratings?"

Joe

quote:

---

Originally posted by Spock:
What's foreplay ?

Spock

---

A complete waste of 10 seconds.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Joe Petrik:
Oxford biologist, Richard Dawkins, has written a lot about adaptations in nature and if they more strongly support an evolutionary explanation or Creationist one, and in every example he shows that evolutionary explanation is the most likely.

---

Interestingly, Alister McGraph in this week's Spectator argues that "atheism has been discredited by the collapse of communism and the postmodern need for tolerance". He quotes Dawkins as having established himself as atheism’s leading representative in the public arena but suggests that "his arguments rest more on fuzzy logic and aggressive rhetoric than on serious evidence-based argument".
The incoming sea of faith

Personally, I don't see a clear dichotomy between creationism and evolution. I have always been struck by the huge similarilties between engineering and evolution. In engineering, as in evolution, some designs survive and go on to be further developed and 'evolved', others die out. Of course, engineering has the human mind at its root. I see no problem with the possibility that, at the root of evolution, is the 'mind of the universe'. In fact, this idea solves many problems with the theory of evolution of the nature of 'how did the insect wing develop?'

Anyway, for some reason, nearly everything that comes out of the mouth of Richard Dawkins gets straight up my nose. An evolutionary quirk perhaps?

Steve Margolis
defy convention - make music

"Personally, I don't see a clear dichotomy between creationism and evolution"

In Creationism the species were all created fully formed (as it were) and are immutable and don't evolve. This is, to all intents and purposes, just plain wrong.

If you believe that God created some primodial gloop (or whatever) and also the system of natural selection that subsequently created the various species then you don't believe in Creationism. Rather, you believe in Evolution and just happen to believe in God as well.

Matthew

Steve,

quote:

---

Anyway, for some reason, nearly everything that comes out of the mouth of Richard Dawkins gets straight up my nose.

---

Quite the opposite for me. I find Dawkins an exceptionally lucid and rational thinker.

Joe

quote:

---

Originally posted by Matthew Robinson:
"Personally, I don't see a clear dichotomy between creationism and evolution"

In Creationism the species were all created fully formed (as it were) and are immutable and don't evolve. This is, to all intents and purposes, just plain wrong.

---

My mistake, Matthew.

I believe in a divinely inspired evolution where 'God' is to Universe as 'Mind' is to Body/Brain.

Taking your definition to be true, creationism is, after all, a load of bollocks.

Thanks for putting me right there. I'd better go and declare war on the USA's Bible Belt.

Steve

quote:

---

Originally posted by Joe Petrik:
Quite the opposite for me. I find Dawkins an exceptionally lucid and rational thinker.

---

Joe,

Vive la difference.

Just out of interest, do your hi-fi preferences tend towards objectivism or subjectivism?

Steve

Joe -- I am also a fan of Dawkins but the quote you gave is pretty dumb. It basically says "If there's a God why do kids get cancer?".

Matthew

Steve,

quote:

---

Just out of interest, do your hi-fi preferences tend towards objectivism or subjectivism?

---

If by objectivism you mean "a slave, for lack of a better word, to measurement" and by subjectivism you mean "slave to perception" then I lean very strongly toward being a hi-fi subjectivist. In other words, I don't care how well a piece of hi-fi measures if it doesn't connect me with the music. And, conversely, I don't care how poorly a piece of hi-fi measures if it makes me happy.

But it's not that I think any magic or voodoo is going on. It's just that there's a loose correlation between measurement of hi-fi performance (watts, THD, transient response, etc.) and what matters to me in a hi-fi (boogie, tune, etc.).

Joe

quote:

---

Originally posted by Joe Petrik:
But it's not that I think any magic or voodoo is going on. It's just that there's a loose correlation between measurement of hi-fi performance (watts, THD, transient response, etc.) and what matters to me in a hi-fi (boogie, tune, etc.).

---

Good answer.

What Joe means is that all his FEP gathering gear measures really badly.

Matthew,

quote:

---

I am also a fan of Dawkins but the quote you gave is pretty dumb. It basically says "If there's a God why do kids get cancer?".

---

It was the only quote I had on hand and although I agree it wasn't the best example, the general principle is still true: If God created all living things, why did he bother creating things like blood parasites, cold viruses, flesh-eating bacteria, AIDS viruses and so on? At the least, some of "creation" suggests a very capricious Creator.

Joe

Alex,

quote:

---

What Joe means is that all his FEP gathering gear measures really badly.

---

Especially my speakers. On a deep bass note, my Royd Sorcerers are about 50% true bass signal and about 50% weird farty sound, but at least the farts are tuneful.

Joe

Back to the Chiles......

When cooking one day I managed to scratch the inside of my nose after chopping the little buggers... I then found myself in the bathroom trying to snort the tap water to rinse my navel cavity out!

Oh, and the following day when putting in my contact lenses.....yup you guessed it....
I'm back in the bathroom desperately trying to rip my contact out and flush my eye!

A lesson learnt.

Some people say they wear gloves (rubber/latex) when chopping chiles, but I think that's just an excuse for a bit of a fetish....why not.... Others say if you rinse your hands with lemon juice afterwards it will get rid of the chile oil.......

I'm not sure I'm convinced.

quote:

---

trying to snort the tap water to rinse my navel cavity out!

---

Not sure that'd work. If you still have a navel cavity you could be in a spot of bother.

Anyway, as you all know the only real problem with chiles is next morning.