Thanks for the chemistry lesson. I've always been pretty successful with beer (not wine). Wasn't sure whether it was the lower acidity or lack of carbonation. Folks who pass on alcoholic drinks say that sodas work for them. Thoughts?

Sounds like a good reason to switch to gin and tonnic the next time I'm out for Indian food.

Cheers,
Dave

I don't know. A sufficient quantity of beer seems to either clear the hot or dull the pain. Either result works for me.

Cheers,
Dave

Water is one of the WORST things you can have if you find food to be too hot. Capsaician is an oily substance (long carbon chain). By drinking water you spread the oil and that makes it seem even hotten. Best slternatives are things that absorb the capsaician such as starcy foods like bread, rice or potatoes or acidic beverages like fruit juices, beer, etc. that disolve the oil. I've heard milk also works but somehow milk and spicy food doesn't sound good to me.

One of the things that makes hot "buffalo wings" so hot is chicken wings are fatty so the fat from the chicken wings coats your mouth and holds the capsaician there. I like hot spicy food but found that out the hard way when I tried the hottest wings on the menu at a Buffalo Wild Wings. Tasted good initially but then the heat just stayed in my mouth. Only time I haven't been able to finish something because it was too hot.

Cheers,
Dave

I still remember the days of "DLL hell" when everyone shipping Windows products included their own version of various, supposedly shared DLLs. The problem was the first one loaded was expected to work with the others which didn't happen since it didn't have the right customizations. Yeah, that approach worked really well.

The problem with avoiding shared libraries is that the onus for keeping up with updates to the shared libraries transfers to the application developer. You still run into the same problem as my example; just the immediate consequences are hidden. If "B" builds in or statically links to an old version of the library, there is still the possibility that there will be a critical update to the library and it's now up to the application developer to re-build it in, test the new build and release the update. It's possible that the critical bug is in a part of a library their application doesn't use but we're now relying on the application developer to make that determination.

Cheers,
Dave

OK. As long as you don't say, "I can't do that, Dave," when I ask you to open the door.

Cheers,
Dave

Shared dependencies:

Packages A and B both depend on shared library C. A critical bug is discovered in package A that requires a change to library C. Package B releases an update to stay compatible with library C. It turns out that the update to B doesn't work. There is no way to revert B to the previous version since this also requires reverting library C and package A to the version with the critical bug.

Testing:

Each old reversion point for any sort of shared library means that every package that is dependent on that library has to be fully tested with each version of the shared library. Add in multiple shared libraries and the test case tree becomes very bushy since all permutations and combinations of the shared libraries must be tested.

Cheers,
Dave

Who else on /. (besides me) remembers the Church Committee hearings? Tricky Dicky? The Saturday Night Massacre?

Cheers,
Dave

Something like that (my emphasis in bold) would make it impossible for most guys to get anywhere in a car in most beach cities. Even worse, I can hear my wife now saying, "Would you keep your eyes on the road! We can't get there if the car parks itself every time some eye candy in a bikini is in view."

Cheers,
Dave

I liked the way Obama blocked building the keystone pipeline to supposedly placate the greeny types. So instead of shipping the Bracken crude in a fairly non-polluting pipeline, we have trains pulling it to where it can be processed and polluting and sometimes exploding along the way. Same amount of oil gets burned plus you have the pollution from the trains plus a few exploding trains. Real enviromentalism in practice.

Cheers,
Dave

No. First you buy the coal stocks and then, after the stock price runs up from the artificial demand created by this goofy scheme to buy out all of coal companies, you sell the coal stocks and then buy natural gas stocks. The coal stocks will go up as soon as the scheme starts buying. Natural gas stocks won't go up that much until the scheme actually starts limiting the coal supply.

My bet is that there are enough unexploited coal deposits that this scheme will mainly result in a bunch of coal mining start ups and will never seriously impact the supply of coal. Same thing happened when Standard Oil tried to create an oil monopoly back in the 19th century. Lots of people got rich starting and selling oil companies.

Cheers,
Dave

There is no such thing as economic security. I recognize that and work for a society that lets me keep what I earn.

Your idea of economic security comes at my expense with me at the wrong end of the tax collector's gun. All of the mass murders of the 20th century (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.) promised economic security if only their subjects gave them enough power and relinquished their real liberty. You know. The old, "From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs." If those are your idea of "civilized standards", I'll pass.

Cheers,
Dave

No, Thatcher and Reagan got it the most wrong of all. Not as wrong as Mao, but incredibly wrong by liberal standards.

Fixed that for you. You seem to assume that your liberal leanings are Western standards. Not.

Cheers,
Dave

And how many "modern" coal fired plants are being built? Not many due to pollution limits. On the other hand, there are lots of old coal fired plants that were located close to population centers. I usually pass a couple of coal trains each day hauling Wyoming coal down to Colorado Springs (where I work) and points south like Pueblo and on into New Mexico. Quite a few only make it as far as Denver. Not many power plants up near the mines in Wyoming (also not many people).

Another funny thing about that. Recently had a local political flap about plans to build some new high tension transmission lines where there hadn't been any before. You should have heard the outcry against building "ugly power lines". Nobody seems to notice a couple more coal trains on the same tracks though.

Other point... That's "several million new tons of domestic coal". You apparently missed the "new". Can't find a number for how much domestic coal they haul but they ship about 30 to 35 million tons a year for export. Just one railroad.

Cheers,
Dave

Liberals hate conservatives but they REALLY hate conservatives like Thatcher and Reagan who got it right. Conservatives like Bush Jr. and Palin are easy targets and ad hominem attacks that discredit the person rather than the ideas. Thatcher and Reagan put their ideas into operation and both countries benefited. That's what really pisses off the liberals. They'd rather have the country going down a rat hole the way GB was under Labour governments than admit a conservative like Thatcher was right.

Cheers,
Dave

Bzzzzzzzzttttttttt Wrong.

From a CSX press release today (13 March 2014):

"The company said the reduced operations will be partly offset by higher demand for coal to warm homes and businesses, as it carried "several million new tons of domestic coal" during the quarter."

Other railroads such as Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific and BNSF have all said about the same thing. There is an engineering tradeoff between transportation costs of coal (surprisingly cheap) and transmission losses. The solution seems to be to ship the coal to someplace relatively close to where the power will be needed.

Cheers,
Dave