You can read for the sake of enjoyment while still reading reasonably complex literature. Asimov is a somewhat decent example of that. Seriously, take a shot at some of the people I've mentioned (and having not read any Phillip K. Dick, you don't get to call yourself a sci-fi fan - fix this immediately.) Further, to some extent I define it more by the *capability* to read and understand complex literature than by the actual doing so. I am, I admit, deeply suspicious of people who enjoy Star Trek and Dragonlance novels to the exclusion of all else, but am willing to allow people to read the occasional pulp book if they mix it in with other fare.
And yes, I defensibly think that anyone incapable of reading and comprehending complex literature *does* lack intelligence. This isn't like an idiot savant ability, which amounts to nothing more than a rapid manipulation according to rules. I can do anything an idiot savant can, albeit somewhat slower. More importantly, a *computer* can do anything an idiot savant can. Things that computers can't do tend to be a good seperation between calculation and intelligence, and reading comprehension is near the top of that peak. Even the natural language problem, understanding normal word usage in normal sentence structure, is currently more or less beyond computers; adding the problem of all the literary tricks humans have come up with on top of that problem is probably the hardest problem in AI. Comprehension and critical reading of complex literature requires an ability to think both synthetically and analytically, the hallmarks of human intelligence. Without an analytic mind, you can't derive structures from apparent randomness. Without a synthetic mind, you can't really comprehend complex structures as a whole. Without the two (and a creative mind, needed for the production of the complex literature in the first place), humans are really nothing more than apes with hatchets.
Fritz Leiber's "Changewars" collection, James Morrow's trilogy "Towing Jehovah", "Blameless in Abaddon", and the third one, title slips my mind.
Christopher Hitchens' "Trial of Henry Kissinger".
Hunter Thompson's "Rum Diary" and the third volume of the Gonzo Papers, in observance of the great man's passing.
Isadore Twersky's Maimonides primer.
Stanislaw Lem's "His Master's Voice."
Brian Michael Bendis' comic book series "Powers" and "Alias". Other comics on the list: "Y The Last Man", "100 Bullets", "Ex Machina". "Transmetropolitan" is done with, unfortunately, but worth reading for the Slashdotter who hasn't read them yet.
I wanted to read C.S. Lewis' Narnia books again, since it's probably been 10 years since I read them and I don't remember them at all, but the library didn't have them when I stopped by.
God, I love the library. My reading habits would bankrupt me otherwise.
I have nothing against digitizing works; however, a dead tree remains an incredibly good way to enjoy static printed matter. Ebooks and the like are fine in concept, but the execution still seems lacking to me, in terms of convenience, portability, and durability. Ever dropped an ebook reader in the bath and gotten it working again? I've dropped books that came out with no damage worse than an irritating waviness to the paper when they dried, and a tendency for the pages to stick together until the book had been read a couple times through. So while I have nothing inherently against digitized works, I absolutely condone the use of dead trees - they're still the best solution to the problem.
If your friends want to read on the go, I suggest two innovations to them: a paperback in the back pocket, and a bookmark to go with the book.
As to the second point: are those who don't read classic literature inferior, lowly, ill-educated, and unintelligent? Well, yes and no. Does not reading "Ulysses" make you an imbecile? No. Hell no. Does reading a diet mainly of science fiction make you one? Possibly. I'd have to distinguish. Are you reading Star Trek books? Or are you reading something like James Morrow, Stanislaw Lem, Phillip K. Dick, and Vernor Vinge? Some bibliophiles are entirely too narrow in their definition of literature. But I absolutely do think that people incapable of reading reasonably complex literary works (whether they be 'classical' literature or not) lack quite a bit in the intelligence department.
(That was a joke. Laugh. Or don't, it wasn't all that funny, I won't feel hurt. But I have to say, I think you aren't laughing because I'm Jewish. Fucking anti-semite.)
Could I record what I hear at the Mall, and sell it?
You're not familiar with the concept of a "field recording", are you?
I would point you to, as a fine and interesting example, Lionel Marchetti's "Portrait d'un Glacier (Alpes 2173m)", released on Ground Fault Recordings. It's a piece composed near entirely of a recording made, as the title would suggest, on the Alps at 2.173 km altitude.
Those of us who aren't gigantic assholes to our coworkers often actually have conversations with them. Sometimes, in those conversations, believing us to be interested, the names of current popular shows will come up. Odd how that goes, isn't it?
You'll never understand how saturated our culture is in popular TV until you cut the cord for a while and realize - you *still* know what's on, even though you're trying not to.
Most cars don't ignore traffic lights (much), that does not mean it is sensible to cross without looking just because you know the lights are with you.
Most is not good enough when major injury is a possibility.
No, this is more like the following circumstance: when you have a green light, and it isn't the first 5 seconds after the green, do you check to see if there's oncoming traffic before entering the intersection? 99.99% of the time you'll be right, and the other time you'll get t-boned.
Similarly, if I assume coffee is hot enough to be a problem but not so hot as to scald me instantly, I'll be right 99.99% of the time. Most is *absolutely* good enough when major injury is possible.
We are clearly not going to converge any more here, you want to assume others are looking after you, and hope you live to go to court when you are proved wrong. I think this is clearly insane, and would rather take responsibility for my own life, but clearly you reflect the US majority, which was where this discussion started.
And you are clearly fine with the idea that no one should take any responsibility for others' safety. I'd like to assume that people around me are making a reasonable effort, yes. And yes, if people aren't making the minimal effort, I am fine with the idea that they be taken to court for it. In the aforementioned car situation, would you sue for medical bills and repairs to your vehicle? I sure as hell would, assuming insurance didn't cover it, and I doubt you wouldn't.
I take responsibility for my life, but I ask that others take some responsibility for their actions as well. If their actions create an unnecessarily dangerous situation, yes, they have responsibility. And yes, serving coffee at a temperature significantly higher than that which is customary, and at a temperature so high that you create a risk of major injury, is creating an unnecessarily dangerous situation.
As I said, there has to be a happy medium; I shouldn't be required to assume that everything near me is a hazard to life and limb, nor should other people be responsible for everyone's little screw-ups. But it isn't too much to ask that in a situation of obvious danger, if there is a *easy*, *reasonable* fix - like lowering the temperature of the coffee you serve by 25 or 30 degrees - that that fix be put in place.
I would think that a cup with it's inner surface warmed with boiling water (the easy option) would have a large effect on the rate of drop. Certainly enough to prevent a 25 degree drop in a few seconds.
I have neither the time nor desire to do a thermodynamic heat transfer equation, but a quick warming of the surface with boiling water is unlikely to put enough heat into the cup to prevent a significant temperature drop from pot to serving. It will mitigate the drop, but by no means eliminate it - as I said, I would expect 5-15 degrees here, depending on the cup's temperature, in a time frame of 30 seconds or less.
It can take an arbitrary amount of time, but from the POV of what you should expect, and hence your behaviour WRT safety, you have to remember that you may be the first person served. So your cup could be at the hot plate temperature, or indeed there may have been a slip and the coffee is still at brewing temperature, so you should always act as if it was scalding hot until you have determined otherwise.
No, I shouldn't, because *most restaurants don't serve scalding coffee*. I should not have to be wary that a restaurant is violating typical practice. Should I have to beware that knives are sharp? Sure, because knives generally *are* sharp. However, almost no restaurants serve 190 degree coffee; therefore, your argument fails.
Now, if the design of the cup had been such that a reasonable test would have wrongly indicated the coffee was already cold and so you thought you were just risking stained clothes, that would be different.
No one I'm aware of can tell the difference between 160 degree coffee in a cup (styrofoam or ceramic) and 190 degree coffee in the same cup. Our nerve temperature discrimination just isn't that good. However, that 30 degree difference is the difference between near-instant burns (2 to 7 seconds for 3rd degree burns) and having a minute to get the soaked clothing away from your skin. It's the difference between a reasonable hazard and an unreasonable one.
Although I understand your goal, I have to admit I feel some suspicion regarding your methods.
You claim you're trying to stamp out the commercial threat to your business created by IP theft, but you're committing IP theft (trademarking someone else's copyrighted image) to do so. You're filing a bad faith claim to trademark MAME as well.
Surely you could think of something less illegal, or at least less hypocritical, to defend your business model with?
You should not keep the cups at 190F. While warming them will reduce the drop in temperature, it will not eliminate it.
Er, if it takes you a minute to hand the cup to the customer you must be very very arthritic, or have a quarter mile long restaurant.
Obviously you've never worked in a restaurant that doesn't bring the pot to the table. This is a somewhat rare circumstance, but they exist. Pour cups at the waiter's station, move them to the table. If you're serving more than one person, it can take a minute from pour to delivery.
And I would argue that serving at 160F instead of 190F doesn't make life noticably worse for non-stupid people.
Well, IIRC you said you liked your coffee cold and drank it fast, so perhaps your arguments shouldn't hold much weight. You can always let yours cool down a bit.
My argument was based more on the UC Davis study that showed that the optimum serving temperature, according to a study of the preferences of a large group of people, was 161.8 degrees. Thus, it does not make life worse for most people. You could even argue the 155-160 range, which many restaurant people feel is the ideal balance between economics, taste, and safety, is also the preferred temperature by taste reasons for a majority of coffee drinkers.
Yes. I am definitely advocating newspeak, as opposed to phonetic spellings and regularizing the conjugation of such verbs as "to be" (am, are, is - and that's just present tense, let's not forget was, were, and will - the verb is totally irregular).
Having a large vocabulary has nothing to do with the difference between a technical understanding of a language's grammatical structure (diagramming a sentence) and an innate understanding of the language structure, where you simply look at a sentence and *know* what needs to change, and why it needs to change. I share GP's view towards this; I can barely tell you the difference between the subject and the object of a sentence, but have always been able to write properly, and to do proofreading and editing to a standard acceptable for anything up to a full journal. I don't know if my standard is good enough for a journal, not having submitted anything to one, but I suspect it is.
If only we did a "clean re-write" of English spelling.
English grammer is mostly not too bad, although some of the tenses are, in that we have some very strange irregular conjugations, but English spelling is more or less a random act of violence committed on an unsuspecting alphabet.
A Mersenne number is all ones when written in binary. If its prime, it is a Mersenne prime.
Hey. Idiot. The "it" refers to a Mersenne number, not to the set of all primes.
I.E. if it is a Mersenne number, and prime, it is a Mersenne prime. I know that the grammar of the GP was a little sloppy, but I think you owe him at least a little inference in that it was pretty obvious he was referring to the subset of primes within the set of Mersenne numbers, and not the set of primes within the integers.
Er, because I've usually seen 95-98 degC as a good brewing temperature.
I don't really define a drop of 5 degrees C as "rather lower". Rather suggests a large differential.
Which is what I said. It's not ging to drop 25 degreesin the time it takes to pour and hand over a cup. So if you keep it at 180-185 you will be serving it at 179-184 or something close to that.
It'll drop when it hits the cup, due to heat transfer to the cup, unless you keep your cups at 190F. It'll drop during the pour, and it will lose heat to the surrounding air surprisingly quickly. Try it. Measure, pour, measure a minute later (time from serving station to customer), and see if it hasn't dropped more than a degree (I would bet on more like 5-10, personally).
Where did you dredge that 160 figure up from? I did a quick google to see if I could find a reputable source reccomending serving coffee that cool and found only some references to the temperature for steamed milk and lots of stuff related to the McDonald's case where it seems to have originated with a doctor talking about at what temperature it would be safer to pour the coffee over yourself.
Ted Lingle's "Basics of Brewing Coffee", pp. 27-28, recommends a temperature of between 155 and 175 degrees for serving, with a temperature of around 160-165 being ideal if the coffee will be drunk immediately (as most McDonald's drive-thru coffee is, a fact they acknowledged during the trial.) Ted runs the SCAA, the Specialty Coffee Association of America. He knows his grounds, generally. A UC-Davis study pointed out that approximately 161.8 is the preferred serving temperature for coffee by most people.
Indeed, and it is around the point where the protection of stupid people makes life noticably worse for non stupid people. Maybe a sign saying ``if you are a klutz, please order our special `tepid coffee' '' would have been an apropriate level.
And I would argue that serving at 160F instead of 190F doesn't make life noticably worse for non-stupid people.
Er, coffee is a lot heavier than tea for the amount needed to make a cup (6-10g vs ~2g). For the record, the world's most popular beverage, unsuprisingly, is water.
Yes, but water is free and therefore totally uninteresting to economics types.
How the *hell* do you get "rather lower" than most estimates? Water boils at 212F, so at max you might get a 22 degree underestimate, assuming you were brewing with *boiling* water. Are you brewing with boiling water? Hell no, because you are a lying sack of shit. Further, NAC does not recommend 180-185 for serving. The exact quote is "If it will be a few minutes before it will be served, the temperature should be maintained at 180 - 185 degrees Fahrenheit." I.E. they recognize that there will be some cooling between removal from brewing apparatus, pouring into a cup, and delivery to the customer. I have never once seen someone recommend an in-cup temperature higher than 165 degrees.
Do you also assume that if she accidentally stabs you in the eye with a fork you won't need to go to hospital?
I reasonably expect that in order for her to do that she would have to remove my glasses and intentionally thrust a fork into my eyeflesh, which is a damn sight different from a typical situation (to whit: a drink being spilled).
There is a reasonable standard of care. I wouldn't blame the restaurant for the waitress for stabbing me in the eye with a fork fro the table. However, had the restaurant created a dangerous situation (i.e. hung forks by strings from the ceiling), I would blame them for me getting stabbed in the eye. People have a right to expect that their environment is not outright dangerous in general, and that when it is it will be properly labeled. I work in a laboratory; anything that's likely to be hot, we *label* as hot. If its something that's always hot, we place some form of insulation to make it difficult to burn oneself accidentally, whether that be thermal insulation (a layer preventing the outside becoming hot) or physical insulation (barriers preventing physical contact with the hot surface). We don't have to protect against the unusual case of someone opening a temp chamber and thrusting their hand against the heating elements, or the hot surfaces. We do provide gloves, and try to make sure that nothing is exposed that is likely to cause third degree burns. Reasonable care. That's the issue. Mcdonald's failed to exercise a *reasonable* standard of care.
Like I said, you shouldn't generalise from your weird and self destructive world view to `most people'. ``Most people'' are more likely to drink tea than coffee, since it is the more popular drink worldwide, and that is brewed and served even hotter! Remarkably few adults seriously damage themselves with it.
At least 700 people managed to damage themselves with Mcdonald's coffee alone in the 10 years or so before that lawsuit. Those, of course, are just the ones who contacted Mcdonalds to complain. I think that expecting Mcdonalds to reduce their serving temperature to a range that doesn't cause permanent damage within 5 seconds of exposure isn't unreasonable. Especially given their statements at trial that they:
a) Knew the temperature they were serving at was dangerous. b) Knew other restaurants served at lower temperatures to reduce injury potential. c) Knew that people were being injured, and elected to ignore their injuries in favor of making a little more money by serving their coffee at a higher temperature.
There is a reasonable balance between "stupid people deserve what they get" and "protect people from themselves". Dropping the serving temperature 30-40 degrees is part of that reasonable balance. The reasonable balance for fork stabbing is that the restaurant would not *create* situations unnecessarily that are likely to lead to eye-stabbings.
And for the record, while sturdy black teas are recommended to be brewed with boiling water, it is not recommended to be served boiling. And for green teas, the recommended brewing temperature is in the 150-190 range, with the better teas requiring lower temperatures.
Also for the record, coffee is the most popular beverage worldwide (7 million tons to tea's roughly 3 million tons). Wrong again, my friend.
Coffee should not be *served* at that temperature. The optimum brewing temperature for taste reasons is right around 190 degrees; check it your own damn self. I did.
Further, the issue is not the brewing temperature, but the serving temperature. They aren't the same. At a restaurant, if I'm handed coffee, I may need to let it cool to drink comfortably (I tend towards gulps rather than sips, which provides less opportunity for cooling, so I need my coffee cooler than the average guy), but I can reasonably expect that if my clumsy-ass friend knocks the coffee into my lap, I won't have to go to the hospital for in-patient care. Hell, I won't have to go at all, because I *will not be severely injured by the coffee*, because the restaurant realizes that they have a responsibility to not serve items of food that are in and of themselves dangerous.
Shove your basic life skills up your ass, by the way. Mcdonald's corporate policy dictated that the coffee be held at that temperature prior to serving. Not that it be brewed at that temperature, but that it be served at that temperature. Whatever claims you may make, typical serving temperatures range from 130-160 degrees. 160 is considered the optimum serving temperature by gourmands.
By the way; at 160 degrees, the risk of severe burns from the coffee is nearly nil. And what temperature did McDonalds start serving coffee at immediately after they lost? 155 degrees, +/- 5.
Like I said - most people don't expect coffee to be *served* at a temperature hot enough to cause potentially fatal injuries.
In other news, car accidents are harmful. If you get into a car which contains brakes sufficient to stop the car at low speeds but insufficient to stop the car at high (but typical) speeds, are you going to say "Oh, well, cars are dangerous and some brakes are better than others" when you wind up in the hospital because someone made an abrupt deceleration on the freeway? Same argument. There is a minimum standard of care, and McDonald's violated it.
Just saying, there is actually a specific reason for the attachment of Detroit to Qatar; Detroit suburbs are the largest concentration of Arab-Americans outside of the Middle East. Dearborn alone has around 25,000, in a city of only 90,000. 350,000 in the metro Detroit area. That's a lot of calls home. It wasn't at all a ridiculous statement by the GP poster, linking the two.
Only if they don't know how to make coffee. IIRC the coffee in question was substantially cooler than normal coffee brewing temperature.
So, the best you can say is that people might have an expectation that fast food places let the coffee go tepid by the time it gets to the customer.
Oh my, do you have your facts Wrong. The coffee in the McDonald's case was served at 180-190 Fahrenheit. At that temperature, flesh will suffer third degree burns within 2-7 seconds of exposure. Ever seen a third degree burn victim? Their skin looks *charred*. They can be fatal.
A normal temperature for coffee to be served at is, at most, 150 Fahrenheit, and even that is considered quite hot. Home-brewed coffee is usually served around 120-130 degrees Fahrenheit, maximum. Shriner Burn Institute (people who know about burns) had told McDonalds that they should not serve their coffee above 130 Fahrenheit. McDonald's had over 700 cases of severe burns inflicted by spilled coffee, which they chose to ignore. Liebeck asked for her medical bills to be paid; only when McDonald's refused, did she take them to court.
I think most people have an expectation that the coffee they are served won't be capable of burning their skin clean down to subdermal tissue. I think that's reasonable.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking for everyone who has *ever* worked tech support, cntusr() is precisely the right name.
You can read for the sake of enjoyment while still reading reasonably complex literature. Asimov is a somewhat decent example of that. Seriously, take a shot at some of the people I've mentioned (and having not read any Phillip K. Dick, you don't get to call yourself a sci-fi fan - fix this immediately.) Further, to some extent I define it more by the *capability* to read and understand complex literature than by the actual doing so. I am, I admit, deeply suspicious of people who enjoy Star Trek and Dragonlance novels to the exclusion of all else, but am willing to allow people to read the occasional pulp book if they mix it in with other fare.
And yes, I defensibly think that anyone incapable of reading and comprehending complex literature *does* lack intelligence. This isn't like an idiot savant ability, which amounts to nothing more than a rapid manipulation according to rules. I can do anything an idiot savant can, albeit somewhat slower. More importantly, a *computer* can do anything an idiot savant can. Things that computers can't do tend to be a good seperation between calculation and intelligence, and reading comprehension is near the top of that peak. Even the natural language problem, understanding normal word usage in normal sentence structure, is currently more or less beyond computers; adding the problem of all the literary tricks humans have come up with on top of that problem is probably the hardest problem in AI. Comprehension and critical reading of complex literature requires an ability to think both synthetically and analytically, the hallmarks of human intelligence. Without an analytic mind, you can't derive structures from apparent randomness. Without a synthetic mind, you can't really comprehend complex structures as a whole. Without the two (and a creative mind, needed for the production of the complex literature in the first place), humans are really nothing more than apes with hatchets.
I would argue that short skirts and big black leather boots puts it *squarely* within the realm of weird Germans.
Someday, I hope to reach the holy grail of offensiveness and insult everyone, everywhere, simultaneously.
Just call me Kiryat Malachi the Infinitesimally (in the grand scheme) Prolonged.
Fritz Leiber's "Changewars" collection, James Morrow's trilogy "Towing Jehovah", "Blameless in Abaddon", and the third one, title slips my mind.
Christopher Hitchens' "Trial of Henry Kissinger".
Hunter Thompson's "Rum Diary" and the third volume of the Gonzo Papers, in observance of the great man's passing.
Isadore Twersky's Maimonides primer.
Stanislaw Lem's "His Master's Voice."
Brian Michael Bendis' comic book series "Powers" and "Alias". Other comics on the list: "Y The Last Man", "100 Bullets", "Ex Machina". "Transmetropolitan" is done with, unfortunately, but worth reading for the Slashdotter who hasn't read them yet.
I wanted to read C.S. Lewis' Narnia books again, since it's probably been 10 years since I read them and I don't remember them at all, but the library didn't have them when I stopped by.
God, I love the library. My reading habits would bankrupt me otherwise.
I would consider myself a bibliophile.
I have nothing against digitizing works; however, a dead tree remains an incredibly good way to enjoy static printed matter. Ebooks and the like are fine in concept, but the execution still seems lacking to me, in terms of convenience, portability, and durability. Ever dropped an ebook reader in the bath and gotten it working again? I've dropped books that came out with no damage worse than an irritating waviness to the paper when they dried, and a tendency for the pages to stick together until the book had been read a couple times through. So while I have nothing inherently against digitized works, I absolutely condone the use of dead trees - they're still the best solution to the problem.
If your friends want to read on the go, I suggest two innovations to them: a paperback in the back pocket, and a bookmark to go with the book.
As to the second point: are those who don't read classic literature inferior, lowly, ill-educated, and unintelligent? Well, yes and no. Does not reading "Ulysses" make you an imbecile? No. Hell no. Does reading a diet mainly of science fiction make you one? Possibly. I'd have to distinguish. Are you reading Star Trek books? Or are you reading something like James Morrow, Stanislaw Lem, Phillip K. Dick, and Vernor Vinge? Some bibliophiles are entirely too narrow in their definition of literature. But I absolutely do think that people incapable of reading reasonably complex literary works (whether they be 'classical' literature or not) lack quite a bit in the intelligence department.
DMCA. If you're not an American, you have an excuse for being wrong, but nonetheless, the law is DMCA.
Yes, but unlike all of you, we speak it properly.
(That was a joke. Laugh. Or don't, it wasn't all that funny, I won't feel hurt. But I have to say, I think you aren't laughing because I'm Jewish. Fucking anti-semite.)
Could I record what I hear at the Mall, and sell it?
You're not familiar with the concept of a "field recording", are you?
I would point you to, as a fine and interesting example, Lionel Marchetti's "Portrait d'un Glacier (Alpes 2173m)", released on Ground Fault Recordings. It's a piece composed near entirely of a recording made, as the title would suggest, on the Alps at 2.173 km altitude.
Those of us who aren't gigantic assholes to our coworkers often actually have conversations with them. Sometimes, in those conversations, believing us to be interested, the names of current popular shows will come up. Odd how that goes, isn't it?
You'll never understand how saturated our culture is in popular TV until you cut the cord for a while and realize - you *still* know what's on, even though you're trying not to.
Most cars don't ignore traffic lights (much), that does not mean it is sensible to cross without looking just because you know the lights are with you.
Most is not good enough when major injury is a possibility.
No, this is more like the following circumstance: when you have a green light, and it isn't the first 5 seconds after the green, do you check to see if there's oncoming traffic before entering the intersection? 99.99% of the time you'll be right, and the other time you'll get t-boned.
Similarly, if I assume coffee is hot enough to be a problem but not so hot as to scald me instantly, I'll be right 99.99% of the time. Most is *absolutely* good enough when major injury is possible.
We are clearly not going to converge any more here, you want to assume others are looking after you, and hope you live to go to court when you are proved wrong. I think this is clearly insane, and would rather take responsibility for my own life, but clearly you reflect the US majority, which was where this discussion started.
And you are clearly fine with the idea that no one should take any responsibility for others' safety. I'd like to assume that people around me are making a reasonable effort, yes. And yes, if people aren't making the minimal effort, I am fine with the idea that they be taken to court for it. In the aforementioned car situation, would you sue for medical bills and repairs to your vehicle? I sure as hell would, assuming insurance didn't cover it, and I doubt you wouldn't.
I take responsibility for my life, but I ask that others take some responsibility for their actions as well. If their actions create an unnecessarily dangerous situation, yes, they have responsibility. And yes, serving coffee at a temperature significantly higher than that which is customary, and at a temperature so high that you create a risk of major injury, is creating an unnecessarily dangerous situation.
As I said, there has to be a happy medium; I shouldn't be required to assume that everything near me is a hazard to life and limb, nor should other people be responsible for everyone's little screw-ups. But it isn't too much to ask that in a situation of obvious danger, if there is a *easy*, *reasonable* fix - like lowering the temperature of the coffee you serve by 25 or 30 degrees - that that fix be put in place.
I would think that a cup with it's inner surface warmed with boiling water (the easy option) would have a large effect on the rate of drop. Certainly enough to prevent a 25 degree drop in a few seconds.
I have neither the time nor desire to do a thermodynamic heat transfer equation, but a quick warming of the surface with boiling water is unlikely to put enough heat into the cup to prevent a significant temperature drop from pot to serving. It will mitigate the drop, but by no means eliminate it - as I said, I would expect 5-15 degrees here, depending on the cup's temperature, in a time frame of 30 seconds or less.
It can take an arbitrary amount of time, but from the POV of what you should expect, and hence your behaviour WRT safety, you have to remember that you may be the first person served. So your cup could be at the hot plate temperature, or indeed there may have been a slip and the coffee is still at brewing temperature, so you should always act as if it was scalding hot until you have determined otherwise.
No, I shouldn't, because *most restaurants don't serve scalding coffee*. I should not have to be wary that a restaurant is violating typical practice. Should I have to beware that knives are sharp? Sure, because knives generally *are* sharp. However, almost no restaurants serve 190 degree coffee; therefore, your argument fails.
Now, if the design of the cup had been such that a reasonable test would have wrongly indicated the coffee was already cold and so you thought you were just risking stained clothes, that would be different.
No one I'm aware of can tell the difference between 160 degree coffee in a cup (styrofoam or ceramic) and 190 degree coffee in the same cup. Our nerve temperature discrimination just isn't that good. However, that 30 degree difference is the difference between near-instant burns (2 to 7 seconds for 3rd degree burns) and having a minute to get the soaked clothing away from your skin. It's the difference between a reasonable hazard and an unreasonable one.
Although I understand your goal, I have to admit I feel some suspicion regarding your methods.
You claim you're trying to stamp out the commercial threat to your business created by IP theft, but you're committing IP theft (trademarking someone else's copyrighted image) to do so. You're filing a bad faith claim to trademark MAME as well.
Surely you could think of something less illegal, or at least less hypocritical, to defend your business model with?
You should warm the cup, or keep the cups warm.
You should not keep the cups at 190F. While warming them will reduce the drop in temperature, it will not eliminate it.
Er, if it takes you a minute to hand the cup to the customer you must be very very arthritic, or have a quarter mile long restaurant.
Obviously you've never worked in a restaurant that doesn't bring the pot to the table. This is a somewhat rare circumstance, but they exist. Pour cups at the waiter's station, move them to the table. If you're serving more than one person, it can take a minute from pour to delivery.
And I would argue that serving at 160F instead of 190F doesn't make life noticably worse for non-stupid people.
Well, IIRC you said you liked your coffee cold and drank it fast, so perhaps your arguments shouldn't hold much weight. You can always let yours cool down a bit.
My argument was based more on the UC Davis study that showed that the optimum serving temperature, according to a study of the preferences of a large group of people, was 161.8 degrees. Thus, it does not make life worse for most people. You could even argue the 155-160 range, which many restaurant people feel is the ideal balance between economics, taste, and safety, is also the preferred temperature by taste reasons for a majority of coffee drinkers.
Yes. I am definitely advocating newspeak, as opposed to phonetic spellings and regularizing the conjugation of such verbs as "to be" (am, are, is - and that's just present tense, let's not forget was, were, and will - the verb is totally irregular).
Having a large vocabulary has nothing to do with the difference between a technical understanding of a language's grammatical structure (diagramming a sentence) and an innate understanding of the language structure, where you simply look at a sentence and *know* what needs to change, and why it needs to change. I share GP's view towards this; I can barely tell you the difference between the subject and the object of a sentence, but have always been able to write properly, and to do proofreading and editing to a standard acceptable for anything up to a full journal. I don't know if my standard is good enough for a journal, not having submitted anything to one, but I suspect it is.
If only we did a "clean re-write" of English spelling.
English grammer is mostly not too bad, although some of the tenses are, in that we have some very strange irregular conjugations, but English spelling is more or less a random act of violence committed on an unsuspecting alphabet.
A Mersenne number is all ones when written in binary. If its prime, it is a Mersenne prime.
Hey. Idiot. The "it" refers to a Mersenne number, not to the set of all primes.
I.E. if it is a Mersenne number, and prime, it is a Mersenne prime. I know that the grammar of the GP was a little sloppy, but I think you owe him at least a little inference in that it was pretty obvious he was referring to the subset of primes within the set of Mersenne numbers, and not the set of primes within the integers.
Er, because I've usually seen 95-98 degC as a good brewing temperature.
I don't really define a drop of 5 degrees C as "rather lower". Rather suggests a large differential.
Which is what I said. It's not ging to drop 25 degreesin the time it takes to pour and hand over a cup. So if you keep it at 180-185 you will be serving it at 179-184 or something close to that.
It'll drop when it hits the cup, due to heat transfer to the cup, unless you keep your cups at 190F. It'll drop during the pour, and it will lose heat to the surrounding air surprisingly quickly. Try it. Measure, pour, measure a minute later (time from serving station to customer), and see if it hasn't dropped more than a degree (I would bet on more like 5-10, personally).
Where did you dredge that 160 figure up from? I did a quick google to see if I could find a reputable source reccomending serving coffee that cool and found only some references to the temperature for steamed milk and lots of stuff related to the McDonald's case where it seems to have originated with a doctor talking about at what temperature it would be safer to pour the coffee over yourself.
Ted Lingle's "Basics of Brewing Coffee", pp. 27-28, recommends a temperature of between 155 and 175 degrees for serving, with a temperature of around 160-165 being ideal if the coffee will be drunk immediately (as most McDonald's drive-thru coffee is, a fact they acknowledged during the trial.) Ted runs the SCAA, the Specialty Coffee Association of America. He knows his grounds, generally. A UC-Davis study pointed out that approximately 161.8 is the preferred serving temperature for coffee by most people.
Indeed, and it is around the point where the protection of stupid people makes life noticably worse for non stupid people. Maybe a sign saying ``if you are a klutz, please order our special `tepid coffee' '' would have been an apropriate level.
And I would argue that serving at 160F instead of 190F doesn't make life noticably worse for non-stupid people.
Er, coffee is a lot heavier than tea for the amount needed to make a cup (6-10g vs ~2g). For the record, the world's most popular beverage, unsuprisingly, is water.
Yes, but water is free and therefore totally uninteresting to economics types.
Actually, it isn't even your battery you need to worry about.
Worry about how long the UPS/generator system at the cell tower will last. I almost guarantee you that number is lower.
Bah. Missed closing a tag. Sorry bout that.
How the *hell* do you get "rather lower" than most estimates? Water boils at 212F, so at max you might get a 22 degree underestimate, assuming you were brewing with *boiling* water. Are you brewing with boiling water? Hell no, because you are a lying sack of shit. Further, NAC does not recommend 180-185 for serving. The exact quote is "If it will be a few minutes before it will be served, the temperature should be maintained at 180 - 185 degrees Fahrenheit." I.E. they recognize that there will be some cooling between removal from brewing apparatus, pouring into a cup, and delivery to the customer. I have never once seen someone recommend an in-cup temperature higher than 165 degrees.
Do you also assume that if she accidentally stabs you in the eye with a fork you won't need to go to hospital?
I reasonably expect that in order for her to do that she would have to remove my glasses and intentionally thrust a fork into my eyeflesh, which is a damn sight different from a typical situation (to whit: a drink being spilled).
There is a reasonable standard of care. I wouldn't blame the restaurant for the waitress for stabbing me in the eye with a fork fro the table. However, had the restaurant created a dangerous situation (i.e. hung forks by strings from the ceiling), I would blame them for me getting stabbed in the eye. People have a right to expect that their environment is not outright dangerous in general, and that when it is it will be properly labeled. I work in a laboratory; anything that's likely to be hot, we *label* as hot. If its something that's always hot, we place some form of insulation to make it difficult to burn oneself accidentally, whether that be thermal insulation (a layer preventing the outside becoming hot) or physical insulation (barriers preventing physical contact with the hot surface). We don't have to protect against the unusual case of someone opening a temp chamber and thrusting their hand against the heating elements, or the hot surfaces. We do provide gloves, and try to make sure that nothing is exposed that is likely to cause third degree burns. Reasonable care. That's the issue. Mcdonald's failed to exercise a *reasonable* standard of care.
Like I said, you shouldn't generalise from your weird and self destructive world view to `most people'. ``Most people'' are more likely to drink tea than coffee, since it is the more popular drink worldwide, and that is brewed and served even hotter! Remarkably few adults seriously damage themselves with it.
At least 700 people managed to damage themselves with Mcdonald's coffee alone in the 10 years or so before that lawsuit. Those, of course, are just the ones who contacted Mcdonalds to complain. I think that expecting Mcdonalds to reduce their serving temperature to a range that doesn't cause permanent damage within 5 seconds of exposure isn't unreasonable. Especially given their statements at trial that they:
a) Knew the temperature they were serving at was dangerous.
b) Knew other restaurants served at lower temperatures to reduce injury potential.
c) Knew that people were being injured, and elected to ignore their injuries in favor of making a little more money by serving their coffee at a higher temperature.
There is a reasonable balance between "stupid people deserve what they get" and "protect people from themselves". Dropping the serving temperature 30-40 degrees is part of that reasonable balance. The reasonable balance for fork stabbing is that the restaurant would not *create* situations unnecessarily that are likely to lead to eye-stabbings.
And for the record, while sturdy black teas are recommended to be brewed with boiling water, it is not recommended to be served boiling. And for green teas, the recommended brewing temperature is in the 150-190 range, with the better teas requiring lower temperatures.
Also for the record, coffee is the most popular beverage worldwide (7 million tons to tea's roughly 3 million tons). Wrong again, my friend.
Coffee should not be *served* at that temperature. The optimum brewing temperature for taste reasons is right around 190 degrees; check it your own damn self. I did.
Further, the issue is not the brewing temperature, but the serving temperature. They aren't the same. At a restaurant, if I'm handed coffee, I may need to let it cool to drink comfortably (I tend towards gulps rather than sips, which provides less opportunity for cooling, so I need my coffee cooler than the average guy), but I can reasonably expect that if my clumsy-ass friend knocks the coffee into my lap, I won't have to go to the hospital for in-patient care. Hell, I won't have to go at all, because I *will not be severely injured by the coffee*, because the restaurant realizes that they have a responsibility to not serve items of food that are in and of themselves dangerous.
Shove your basic life skills up your ass, by the way. Mcdonald's corporate policy dictated that the coffee be held at that temperature prior to serving. Not that it be brewed at that temperature, but that it be served at that temperature. Whatever claims you may make, typical serving temperatures range from 130-160 degrees. 160 is considered the optimum serving temperature by gourmands.
By the way; at 160 degrees, the risk of severe burns from the coffee is nearly nil. And what temperature did McDonalds start serving coffee at immediately after they lost? 155 degrees, +/- 5.
Like I said - most people don't expect coffee to be *served* at a temperature hot enough to cause potentially fatal injuries.
In other news, car accidents are harmful. If you get into a car which contains brakes sufficient to stop the car at low speeds but insufficient to stop the car at high (but typical) speeds, are you going to say "Oh, well, cars are dangerous and some brakes are better than others" when you wind up in the hospital because someone made an abrupt deceleration on the freeway? Same argument. There is a minimum standard of care, and McDonald's violated it.
Just saying, there is actually a specific reason for the attachment of Detroit to Qatar; Detroit suburbs are the largest concentration of Arab-Americans outside of the Middle East. Dearborn alone has around 25,000, in a city of only 90,000. 350,000 in the metro Detroit area. That's a lot of calls home. It wasn't at all a ridiculous statement by the GP poster, linking the two.
Only if they don't know how to make coffee. IIRC the coffee in question was substantially cooler than normal coffee brewing temperature.
So, the best you can say is that people might have an expectation that fast food places let the coffee go tepid by the time it gets to the customer.
Oh my, do you have your facts Wrong. The coffee in the McDonald's case was served at 180-190 Fahrenheit. At that temperature, flesh will suffer third degree burns within 2-7 seconds of exposure. Ever seen a third degree burn victim? Their skin looks *charred*. They can be fatal.
A normal temperature for coffee to be served at is, at most, 150 Fahrenheit, and even that is considered quite hot. Home-brewed coffee is usually served around 120-130 degrees Fahrenheit, maximum. Shriner Burn Institute (people who know about burns) had told McDonalds that they should not serve their coffee above 130 Fahrenheit. McDonald's had over 700 cases of severe burns inflicted by spilled coffee, which they chose to ignore. Liebeck asked for her medical bills to be paid; only when McDonald's refused, did she take them to court.
I think most people have an expectation that the coffee they are served won't be capable of burning their skin clean down to subdermal tissue. I think that's reasonable.