h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Again, I will drink espresso if there's enough milk to dilute the bitter taste.

Here's a link regarding bitterness:
http://www.coffeeresearch.org/science/bittermain.htm

Here's a link that argues for bitterness as a result of staleness [see point #5]:
http://atlanta.eater.com/2013/3/14/6467363/10-things-you-probably-dont-know-about-coffee

Finally, there's just a difference in the way people taste things. Some of us lose taste buds, or see a changing distribution of them as we age. Espresso is a dark roast, which actually has *less* caffeine than lighter roasts. Different types of coffees may have different distributions of chemicals, affecting the taste.

So, enjoy your espresso if that's what you like. Enjoy instant coffee or decaf if you like them. I will gravitate to the milder Gevalia house blend, or French roast, or chocolate cappuccino* or even something with bit of mint.

[Not literally a cappuccino, but a mild roast that pretends to taste like cappuccino, with an emphasis to a mild chocolatey taste ]

I can't remember where I read/heard it, but I seem to remember someone opining on tea and the contradiction of boiling leaves to make a bitter drink and adding milk and sugar to take away the bitterness.

Could it have been U42? Maybe when Arthur is battling the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser?

Paul, you're right about Italian coffee. The problem is that they designed the blend in the mid-20th century when people in Italy were poor. They included a lot of robusta to reduce the cost and it tastes bitter and nasty. Outside of Italy it is accepted that there are plenty of better blends.

Jamaica Blue Mountain is the same as Mountain Kenya but dearer. It's a bit milder than French roast, which I find a bit oover-roasted.

I tried roasting coffee in the oover, but it came aat a bit dusty. Me cockney mates didn't like it.

Hi ITIWBS (post 74)

I knew that - it was your cultural references I didn't get - but maybe they're male/female misunderstanding rather than US/UK?

Please explain:

>>noticed that the gals attached, who'd been out all day training hard in the hot sun were giving off a strange, peppery odor, wondering for a moment what it might be, not unpleasant at all, rather like black pepper.

Then I realized I was swaying on my feet and only narrowly stayed on them as one by one, the guys started dropping in their tracks around me.<<
by "dropping in their tracks" do you mean fainting?

I must admit I have never noticed a strange, peppery odour from sweaty women (and I used to play tennis, pre-children days).

I wonder if this is the opposite effect of the "dirty dog" smell I always noticed about my teenage sons when they stomped through the door after PE at school/football/general running around fields. I once heard that mothers were offended by their post-puberty sons to discourage incest ()

But I don't think this is the case as you say you found one such female attractive, and you would not have got in that confined space with her (the smell offended). [I am presuming she was not in any way related to you].

Finally: >>Even though it was only flim being shown on television, it gave me an aura.<<

By "aura" do you mean you could smell the same smell you smelt previously? (A memory of the smell). Or that you were aroused? (Trust me, I'm not giggling at the back, these are genuine queries). I *have* run this by my partner Ian, and he said his teenage daughters always smelt nice but neither were particularly sporty. No pepper to report.

Thanks in advance for your clarification

GB

'dropping in their tracks', yes I mean fainting.

I very nearly did myself.

I think it may have been something pheromonal one doesn't ordinarily notice consciously except in extreme concentrations.

Definitely not estrogenic odor, that's something I'd recognize easily.

Women in close proximity usually have a slight estrogenic odor, like the odor of an estrogen based skin ointment, but that spicy, peppery odor is something distinct I've noticed only with female performers and athletes, including those who go in for strenuous outdoors activities, other than swimming, in the latter case.

That odor is not at all unpleasant, even pleasantly spicy.

I remember wondering momentarily whether it might be a perfume or scent from some cosmetic preparation.

Its unusual in my experience, apparently something that only comes with very prolonged and strenuous physical exertion.




That entire day in basic training, from dawn to sunset, on a long summer day, had been spent on alternating running and calisthenic training, with stints on the firing line of the rifle range serving for rest breaks in between and only half an hour for lunch.

Also everyone was significantly dehydrated by the end of the day.

With the performer I mentioned, she'd apparently put in overtime on a full day of filming a strenuous dance routine.

I'd surmise that by that time she was thinking of nothing except getting home and resting.




No, not someone I'm related to, only someone I was slightly acquainted with, just enough to have some sense of her occupation.




I didn't really find the odor offensive so much as frightening.

One of the frightening things about it is that despite the rather devastating effect it can produce on a male, it is not unpleasant, except perhaps the way one of Pavlov's dogs might react to the sight of a juicy steak after being conditioned with repeated electrical shocks.

Significantly, a little 'itchy' synesthesia associated with that peppery odor.




'locker room' & "dirty dog odor", something entirely distinct.




I've often noticed women complaining of odor from males when I don't notice any myself.

There may be a gender restricted process of sensory adaptation at work, on the principle that after a time one stops noticing a sensory stimulus that's constantly in the background, male odor tending to be lost from the male point of view and feminine odor from the feminine point of view, at least in the ordinary case.

Its like the case of the tetrachrome female who's got a visual cone in the retina which men always lack getting fussy about shades of pink between which I can see no difference, or with other color matching tasks.

I don't argue in such a case, I cooperate, as best I can.

That I can't see in a range like that doesn't mean its not to my advantage to take advantage of the perceptions of someone who can.

I've an unusual visual capacity somewhat like that myself, shared by about 10% of the population, though most people who've got the trait don't know it and it does take a measure of training and practice to use it, a full octave of color vision for near infrared illumination, down to about 1500 nm, which depends on night vision rod function, only operates in conditions in which night vision operates.*



My brother has also tested for this, independantly of myself, and the trait, which depends on transparency of the lense in the eye, also includes the ability to see in the first 50 nm of the ultraviolet.

For example, I see a narrow black fringe below the violet fringe in the flame of a well tuned bunsen burner and that is something which is visible in daylight conditions.




I don't think the ability to sense that strange peppery odor is at all unusual at least for males though.

There was some discussion about it in the barracks after the basic training incident.




On the term 'aura', used the same way its used in connection of epilepsy.

I don't suffer from epilepsy, I've had a comprehensive neurological evaluation that showed intead that I suffer from a distantly related condition called 'sleep paralysis', which is rooted in pituitary function, can be stimulated by a bright flash of light in the eyes or a strobe test, stimulating respectively sneezing or uncontrolled and convulsive contractions of the scalp and facial muscles, and an 'aura' that feels kind of like electrical shocks in the nasal passages.

The synesthesia produced by the movie passages is more like a strong memory than an actual sensory experience and is accompanied by a little of that electrical sense in the nasal passages.




Meanwhile, that harem scene from DG's link, from the John Huston film "Kismet", I can't help wondering if the Islamic customs aren't to some extent conditioned by the often waterless conditions of the mideast.

Europe once had rather similar institutions that were gradually relaxed with the advent of modern sanitation.




*One of the things that can be seen in this range is the ashen light of Venus, on the dark side of Venus, due to infrared emission at the surface temperature of the planet.

Quality quartz or quartz glass lenses are required since common glass will not pass infrared in this range.

"Jamaica Blue Mountain is the same as Mountain Kenya but dearer. It's a bit milder than French roast, which I find a bit oover-roasted." [Gnomon]

Thank you for mentioning that. I believe that French Roast is a medium roast. I tried light roast yesterday, and it was perfect.
I'm pretty I've tried Mountain Kenya and Jamaica Blue Mountain, but don't remember what they tasted like. The only varietal I remember the taste of is Kona, which grows in Hawaii. I loathe decafs like Brim. Sanka I can tolerate once in a while, but I'd rather not have to.

Here in Ireland, French roast is a very dark roast. We get a lot of coffee from Ethiopia, Sumatra, and Java, which tend to be dark roast, and GuatemalA and Colombia which are usually medium roasted. Here in Europe, light roast is very rare.

Thanks for your explanations ITIWBS I envy your abilities in the colour spectrum and wish I'd known about this earlier. I'll ponder more on the subject/s.

My partner is colour blind but he likes me to describe the sunset to him, although he got a bit upset as I tried to describe one particularly beautiful belt of Venus and he explained he could only see ordinary sky. When I said there was a thick band of pink, he said he had never seen pink, but he knows it's lighter than red (which he struggles to distinguish as well). After two years of being with an astronomer who also appreciated the beauty of nature, he now appreciates the benefits of my descriptions and says he can "see" them through my eyes. He also says I use a different tone of voice when describing such things, no-one has ever said that to me before, so I've learned something new about myself. As for my cat voice, that makes him

On the ashen light of the dark side of Venus, the observation was one of my first experiences in astronomy.

I'd read about the phenomenon and wondered if I could see it.

Talking with a friend who had a quality quartz glass refracting telescope, we set it up to do an observation of the crescent Venus and sure enough, both he and I could see it, a pallid white or greyish glow on the dark side of Venus.

The sensitivity is registered primarily on the night vision rods and ability to see it it depends entirely on the transparency of the lens of the eye

With 90% of the population the lens is opaque in the first octave* of the infrared**, with the remaining 10% its transparent.

Using the capacity does take a measure of training, but in principle its also accessible to the color blind in 10% of cases.

My second experience with the ashen light was a campfire experience on a moonless and somewhat overcast night.

The fire had gone out, it was getting cold and I wanted to build it up, but at first I couldn't see anything.

Then I realized I could see a pallid white glow coming from the firepit and suddenly the derivation of that term, 'the ashen light' became clear.

Next I realized that in close proximity to the firepit, bits of charcoal, the charred ends of sticks of firewood and also the indigo blue dye of my blue jeans appeared that same pallid white.

That enabled me to find a stick of firewood with a charred end to stir up the coals a bit and start rebuilding the fire, so the trait does have some survival value in primitive conditions.

Somewhat later, one of my high school teachers had a cataract operation replacing the damaged lense of his eye with a quartz glass lense and was entranced by the fact that he was suddenly seeing in a range where he hadn't been able to see before.

This particular effect is frequently reported with cataract operations and there's considerable literature on it, most of it relating to the increased sensitivity in the near ultraviolet.

Though there is a night vision rods involvement in that, resulting in increased sensitivity to glare, the blue sensitive cones in the retina are also involved, and that's where one picks up the ability to see a black or prussian blue fringe in the Bunsen burner flame, below the violet fringe, from which the terms 'blacklight' and 'ultraviolet' are derived.

Where this comes up in nature, in heat wave conditions there is a faint, evanescent and lightning fast mottling in the ozone layer where momentary flashes in the UV range break through.

What I can see with the eye matches closely what I've seen with UV photography of ozone layer weather.

When I see weather like that, I take care to stay out of the sun and usually notice elevated rates of sunburned noses the following day.

Also tornados and whirlwinds often radiate strongly in the band, so strongly the effect can resemble black smoke.

In technology, the effect sometimes comes up as a secondary or accidental effect with some kinds of electronics.

Though that's less common with contemporary microelectronics than with the older generations of electronic apparatus, it can somtimes still be an issue in microcircuit design.




A classic experiment, under a hooded black body lamp radiating at a temperature like about 875F/468C, hooded so that the test subject cannot see the lamp directly, the illumination shining on a checkerboard painted in black and white tiles, using powdered charcoal and diatomaceous earth for pigments, the test subject who's been given a set of poker chips or checkers, painted on opposite sides with the same pigments, who has spent at least fifteen minutes in total darkness to allow their eyes to adjust, is to arrange the poker chips or checkers on the checkerboard so that each is presented with a face up contrasting with color of the square its placed on.

When they're done, one turns on the ordinary room lights.

This produces a dramatic reversal of appearance of the board and counters, what appeared to be black now appears to be white and vice versa.




'tetrachromes' are females who've got a fourth type of color sensitive cone in the retina, besides the commonplace red green and blue sensitive cones, sensitive in a range overlapping that of the more common red sensitive cone in the eye and extending into the very near infrared.

The trait is unusual and restricted to females.

The genetic etiology is entirely different from the traits described above, entirely compatible with them, and about 10% of tetrachromes have both kinds of endowments.




The first time I met a tetrachrome I was puzzled by what seemed to me excessive fussyness on color matching tasks.

Even though I didn't understand at the time, didn't understand that there is an unusual genetic endowment at work, I decided simply to cooperate and humor her.




*An octave on the chromatic scale is made when wavelength is doubled and frequency is halved, or vice versa, when wavelength is halved and frequency doubled.

**The discovery of the infrared is credited to William Herschell, who did it with a thermometer.

He was taking temperature readings from adjecent bands in the visible spectrum projected by means of a prism and comparing the temperatures with those of an unilluminated field.

Then he placed the thermometer adjacent to spectrum next to the red below the limit of the visible and found he was getting a corresponding temperature increase.

So, what colours did you see in that picture that went round the internet recently - was it blue and black or white and gold, or something else completely?

A reminder:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/11439192/Dressgate-Do-we-all-see-colour-differently.html

I thought it was blue and black.

It appears to be in alternating bands of powder aquamarine and dark grey to me.

The grey bands are not simple monochromes.

They're mottled with gold, especially in the one on top and the same blue that appears in the blue bands in several of the others.

I can see how this might appear white and gold to someone who lacked blue sensitive cones in the retina but had otherwise normal or better color vision.




On regional differences, on a basis of studies in the American railways industries, people derived from what is nowadays the Republic of Ireland have a greater sensitivity in the green bands of the visible spectrum than the Scotch-Irish dervived from Northern Ireland.

Myself, I've got strong strains of both types, respectively on my Father's and my Mother's sides of the family, and I can see 22 distinct chromatic hues in the range between yellow and cyan (sky blue), a band only about 100 nm wide of the entire 350 nm of the normal visible spectrum.

One of the color vision tests employed by the US Army is actually a saturation contrast test rather than a test of ability to distinhuish

My mother often had problems distinguishing greys and greens of the kind characteristic of her Scotch-Irish antecedants.

Okay, now this is just insulting.

You mean, on top of prosopagnosia, progressive deafness, a speech defect, and Neandethal teeth, those awful Scots Irish ancestors of mine have given me second-rate colour perception?

The nerve!

[Pardon the premature post above. Software glitch, probably, due to new software.]




It appears to be in alternating bands of powder aquamarine and dark grey to me.

The grey bands are not simple monochromes.

They're mottled with gold, especially in the one on top and the same blue that appears in the blue bands in several of the others.

I can see how this might appear white and gold to someone who lacked blue sensitive cones in the retina but had otherwise normal or better color vision.




On regional differences, on a basis of studies in the American railways industries, people derived from what is nowadays the Republic of Ireland have a greater sensitivity in the green bands of the visible spectrum than the Scotch-Irish derived from Northern Ireland.

Myself, I've got strong strains of both types, respectively on my Father's and my Mother's sides of the family, and I can see 22 distinct chromatic hues in the range between yellow and cyan (sky blue), a band only about 100 nm wide of the entire 350 nm of the normal visible spectrum.

My mother often has had problems distinguishing greys and greens of the kind characteristic of her Scotch-Irish antecedants.




One of the US Army color vision tests is actually a saturation contrast test rather than a test of ability to distinguish between different chromatic hues.

I failed on that one the first time I took it and wasn't able to pass until someone gave me a little coaching and I practiced a bit with sample color vision charts.

Proof positive that at least a part of visual perception is learned and does not come natural, as suggested in the article attached to the link in TC's post above.

You can probably see red, white and blue better.

I can't abide any shade of orange, though...

"Proof positive that at least a part of visual perception is learned and does not come natural, as suggested in the article attached to the link in TC's post above." [ITIWBS]

That's encouraging to know, but it doesn't help my brother, who inherited some degree of red-green color-blindness. I was spared...

A part of it is natural endowment.

So far as that goes, my own two eyes don't quite match in size of the irises, eye color, visual acuity or color sensitivity, with the consequence that one of the areas I'm weak is depth perception.

On the other, hand my eyeballs are more than twice the average diameter, I've got more than 4 times the visual cortex most people have and can read newsprint by moonlight from 2nd quarter to 4th quarter where the new moon marks the begining of 1st quarter.

My Pennsylvania Dutch stepfather always had trouble understanding how I could read in conditions which were imposdibly dim for him.

Have you been out reading newspapers by moonlight?

I suspect that somewhere, that's probably prohibited by municipal ordinance...