Hot Chili News!

Grub Street brings news of another record hot chili pepper, called Dragon's Breath, meant only for local anesthesia. (As if!)

According to the BBC, Smith says his chili can’t be eaten; instead, it’s meant only for use as a topical anesthetic. The oil, which is just oozing capsaicin, numbs the skin so much that a person will essentially feel nothing. He wants it to be used in developing countries where normal anesthetics are too costly.
[...]
...Naturally, he’s done what anybody would do who never wants people eating this pepper: immediately sent in paperwork to get it recognized by Guinness as the world’s hottest chili.

Dragon's Breath sports a Scoville rating of 2.48 million, scorching the nearest competitor by almost 300,000 units.

KC is Engaged!

In case the news hasn't reached the outer reaches - New years day dawned with the news that KC has become engaged to BG. Congrats!

Rise of the Planet of the Cows?

Item: The Guardian: Slaughterhouse five: cows escape from Idaho meat plant  

 The first bovine broke out on Friday after jumping a six-foot fence, wandering the town of Pocatello before being shot by local police.

Five adult cows set for slaughter have escaped from a small meat processing plant in Idaho over the last week, according to the Idaho State Journal.

The first breakout happened on Friday, when a cow jumped a six-foot fence on the Anderson Custom Pack slaughterhouse property. The animal wandered the town of Pocatello before it was shot by local police.

Widespread media coverage of that escape led to a second breakout on Sunday when, farmers claim, someone intentionally released more bovines. Then, four cows broke loose from the plant after ranchers claim a gate was intentionally left open. Farmers at Anderson told the Idaho State Journal they have received “hate mail” from animal rights groups since coverage of the cow escape.

As of Wednesday morning, business co-owner Jesse Anderson had shot one of the cows that went missing on Sunday, and another was recaptured. Two remain on the loose, but local authorities say there have been no cow sightings.

A media relations specialist from the Pocatello police department, who answered the phone Wednesday but did not give her name, refused to comment on the incidents.

“We did what we had to do for the safety of the public, and unfortunately it has taken a very ugly turn for our department,” she said before hanging up.

Spring has arrived at Dunkin' Donuts!

Dunkin Donuts to debut a Peeps doughnut in spring colors for Easter

The New York Daily News has *both* sides of the story.

Some people love it!

"Spring has sprung in my mouth," said one tester. "The soft marshmallow peep juxtaposed with the crunchy doughnut texture is nice.”

While others are disappointed.

"It is just a doughnut with a Peep on it," said another grizzled Taste Kitchen veteran. "It thought maybe it'd be filled with Peep or marshmallow."

Click through to the article, which has some juicy peeps donuts on view.

h/t WL

And the IgNobel goes to!

Dung Beatles! The Guardian has the story...

Ig Nobel prize for discovery that dung beetles navigate by the stars

The 2013 Ig Nobels also recognised work on opera-loving mice, walking on water, and predicting when cows will sit down

Stargazing dung beetles, mice that survive for longer after heart surgery when they listen to opera, and whether or not you could walk on water on other planets – all of them are serious scientific questions that researchers sweated over for years. On Thursday, their hard work was honoured with possibly one of the most sought-after nods from their scientific peers: an Ig Nobel prize.

This is the 23rd year of the awards – a spoof of the even more prestigious Nobel prizes, which will be announced next month. The 10 prizes, organised by the humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research and awarded at Harvard University, honour achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think".

The joint astronomy and biology prize went to Eric Warrant's team at the University of Lund for their discovery that dung beetles navigate using the stars.

The researchers had been studying the beetles' ability to roll their balls of dung in straight lines by using the moon as a guide – they use the pattern of polarised light around the moon as a kind of celestial compass.

"One night, however, the night was moonless yet we noticed the beetles could still orient in straight lines," said Warrant. "At first we were shocked and worried that our previous experiments using the moon were wrong. But then looking up we saw the broad stripe of light that is the Milky Way and realised they might be using this as a compass cue. This, it turns out, was the case."

Warrant said other nocturnal navigators such as birds and moths may also use the Milky Way as a compass.

[...]

The probability prize was awarded to animal scientists at Scotland's Rural College for making two related discoveries. "First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up," read their citation. "And second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again."

Bert Tolkamp said he and his colleagues were running several research programmes aimed at improving animal health and welfare. In their award-winning research, they fitted sensors on cows' legs that recorded how long they spent standing up or lying down.

Happy Bastille Day!

That is all.... Though it is early.

AZ has a new job. In LONDON.

Word of the Day: Pompitous.

Only Wikipedia knows what it means, and it's not tellin'.

Word of the day: लोत्र

Sanskrit: लोत्र ("booty") Via the Wictionary entry for the Latin: Lucrum, via Merriam-Webster: Lucre.

Dung beetles guided by Milky Way

Who knew?