Scientific Diet

As we all know, it takes 1 calorie to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree centigrade. Translated into meaningful terms, this means that if you eat a very cold dessert (generally consisting of water in large part), the natural processes which raise the consumed dessert to body temperature during the digestive cycle literally sucks the calories out of the only available source, your body fat.

For example, a dessert served and eaten at near 0 degrees C (32.2 deg. F) will in a short time be raised to the normal body temperature of 37 degrees C (98.6 deg. F). For each gram of dessert eaten, that process takes approximately 37 calories as stated above. The average dessert portion is 6 oz, or 168 grams. Therefore, by operation of thermodynamic law, 6,216 calories (1 cal./gm/deg. X 37 deg. X 168 gms) are extracted from body fat as the dessert's temperature is normalized.

Allowing for the 1,200 latent calories in the dessert, the net calorie loss is approximately 5,000 calories.

Obviously, the more cold dessert you eat, the better off you are and the faster you will lose weight, if that is your goal.

This process works equally well when drinking very cold coke in frosted glasses. Each ounce of coke contains 16 latent calories, but extracts 1,036 calories (6,216 cal. Per 6 oz. Portion) in the temperature normalizing process. Thus the net calorie loss per ounce of beer is 1,020 calories. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to calculate that 12,240 calories (12 oz. X 1,020 cal./oz.) are extracted from the body in the process of drinking a can of coke.

Frozen desserts, e.G., ice cream, are even more beneficial, since it takes 83 cal./gm to melt them (I.e., raise them to 0 deg. C) and an additional 37 cal./gm to further raise them to body temperature. The results here are really remarkable, and it beats running hands down.

Unfortunately, for those who eat pizza as an excuse to drink coke, pizza (loaded with latent calories and served above body temperature) induces an opposite effect. But, thankfully, as the astute reader should have already reasoned, the obvious solution is to drink a lot of coke with pizza and follow up immediately with large bowls of ice cream.

We could all be thin if we were to adhere religiously to a pizza, coke, and ice cream diet.

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World's Most Expensive Smoke

MADRID (Reuters) - It's the world's most expensive cigar -- $440 each and it only comes in boxes of 40 -- but is it the best? Nobody knows because no one has smoked one.

The Cuban havanas from the Cohiba brand are so precious that no one has actually lit one yet. Although the blend was tested by a group of tasters before the cigar went into hand-made production, according to Norma Fernandez, the "torcedora" or cigar-roller from the El Laguito factory in Havana.

The cigar was launched in Spain on Thursday by Altadis, the exclusive importer of Cuban cigars into Spain.



When they say "hand-made", they mean it. In this case there were only two hands involved and they both belong to Norma -- she rolled all 4,000 cigars in the strictly limited edition -- a labor of love.

"I've been doing this for 39 years but I still love it," said Norma who admits to smoking cigarettes and the odd Cohiba panatella and was selected from the senior rollers for this special task.

Fernandez also had the honor of deciding on the tobacco blend to be used which was designed to honor 40 years of the Cohiba brand, being true to the house style but giving this cigar a special touch.

"But I'm not going to reveal the formula," she told reporters.

The Cohiba "Behike", named after a tribal chief of Cuba's indigenous Taino tribe, can only be bought in special humidors -- $18,860 for the 40 cigars.

A lot of money. But maybe not for someone who can appreciate this delicate blend of the world's most selected tobacco leaves. Either way, just like the cheapest old stogie, it'll be up in smoke.

A Bosnian Muslim in Europe

Middle East (3000 BC - 2006)

Oil still cheaper than Coca Cola !

ROME, Oct 7: Current oil prices are not very high and crude is actually cheaper than Coca-Cola, the chief executive of Italy’s oil company Eni said in an interview with the New York Times.“Sixty dollars a barrel is not very high,” Paolo Scaroni said in the interview published on Saturday.“Today, a barrel of oil is worth half a barrel of Coca-Cola.So you should put things into perspective,” he said, adding that the fact that consumers had not significantly changed their behaviour proved that they were not particularly feeling the pinch.“It has been clear to everybody that the Western world can live with oil above $30, $40, $50, $60, $70 a barrel and economies expand, inflation is low, and consumers continue to drive SUVs and air-conditioners are so high in American restaurants that you have to put on a coat otherwise you get sick,” he said.Asked whether he feared economic sanctions would be imposed against Iran, where ENI is involved in a series of projects and lifts 30,000 barrels of oil per day, Scaroni said companies had to live with the fact that oil is often found in potentially risky places.“I often say that unfortunately you don't find oil in Switzerland. I cannot choose. Since oil is not in Switzerland but it is in Russia, in Iran and Kazakhstan, we have to be there,” he said.“Then we modulate our presence according to terms and conditions. Terms and conditions that change all the time. But if you are not there, you are out,” he said. He added that the faltering production rates in Iran was probably linked to the limited foreign investment in the country.Scaroni also appeared to suggest that oil firms should be ready to renegotiate agreements they have with producing countries at a time when some governments are making access to their reserves more difficult for foreigners.“When oil prices move from $50 to $60 you cannot expect that this $10 difference falls into your pocket. You'd be happy if half of it went to you. All over the globe there has been a big push to change the terms of agreements over the past three years,”Scaroni said.“The same thing happens when prices fall. This time we renegotiate. When oil prices went down in the 1990s, we renegotiated. But if renegotiation goes too far, and international oil companies leave, then production starts to drop,” he said.—Reuters

Shwok da mull !

TOKYO, Oct 4: A Japanese man seeking a world record on Wednesday spent a sleepless 16 hours reciting by memory the mathematical number pi down to the 100,000th digit.

Akira Haraguchi, a consultant in suburban Tokyo, started on Tuesday at 9:00am and did not rest until 1:30am as he read out pi — the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter which has an infinite number of decimal points.

The 60-year-old took only a 10-minute break every one to two hours as he read out pi at a public conference hall in front of local officials, who took turns monitoring his progress.

“He had a special way to remember the numbers by thinking up names to accompany sets of digits,” said an official in Chiba prefecture’s Kisarazu city whose city hall hosted the feat.

Haraguchi had previously recited 83,431 digits and would apply to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Although onlookers were amazed at his memory, Haraguchi himself apparently was not.

“I didn’t feel anything particularly sensational. I just poured out what was in my mind. But I am happy about the achievement of 100,000 digits,” Kyodo News quoted him as saying.—AFP