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Can You Take the Heat ?

 

 

This post might fall under the useless information category for some people however I find this interesting and educational.

A friend of mine grows hot peppers, some of the hottest peppers in the world, he starts these in January from seed and harvest’s them in September. The chemical in hot peppers that causes them to be ‘hot’ is called capsaicin. It is the same chemical that is used in police and military grade pepper spray.  This chemical binds to the heat sensors in our face and causes the sensation of pain.  The body is tricked into thinking it is being burned but in reality no damage is inflicted

Capsaicin (/kæpˈseɪ.ɨsɪn/; 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) is an active component of chili peppers, which are plants belonging to the genus Capsicum. It is an irritant for mammals, including humans, and produces a sensation of burning in any tissue with which it comes into contact. Capsaicin and several related compounds are called capsaicinoids and are produced as secondary metabolites by chili peppers, probably as deterrents against certain mammals and fungi. Pure capsaicin is a volatile, hydrophobic, colorless, odorless, crystalline to waxy compound.

I ate a portion of a ghost pepper just to see how hot it was.  Doing this caused a pain in my tongue which felt like someone drilling into my tongue with a drill press.

Some people however have a high tolerance to pepper pain, not sure how they are able to do this, it may be a capsaicin tolerance or a genetic predisposition to not feel this sort of pain.  Carolina reapers are among the hottest if not the hottest pepper in the world at 2,000,000 scoville units.

Several of the hottest peppers with capscacin scores.

Several of the hottest peppers with capscacin scores courtesy of David Maack.

Here is how my kid reacted when I whipped out the hottest pepper in the world at the dinner table.

Carolina Reeper... at the Dinner Table

Carolina Reeper… at the Dinner Table

It is fun to watch tough-guys bravely eat these peppers then be in agony for 30 minutes on youtube.

 Thank you to David Maack for supplying the peppers and the pepper education!  

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A Type of Creativity That Few Will Acknowledge

 

 

A friend recently was amazed how easily that I solved a problem, he was amazed that he didn’t think of it years ago, he had been engineering and inventing around a certain technology for decades, his knowledge is impeccable on the topic.  He had explored and thought and pored over a problem for years.  To compare us intelligently on the topic is laughable.

I came in with total ignorance, completely unfamiliar with the problem.  I didn’t know the rules, I didn’t know the restrictions, I didn’t know how it had been done for decades so it was very easy for me to see the obvious problem and therefore the obvious solution.

Glaring me in the face was key to the solution and I casually solved it not fully understanding what I had done.

Sometimes the most stubborn problems are solved with a fresh, and ignorant set of eyes.

Ignorance is not necessarily a weakness, in creativity sometimes ignorance is a strength because you’re not chained down with the excessive knowledge of rules or perceived restrictions.

There are two types of creativity, intelligence-based, knowing every detail, every angle, every boundary and all the history. But there is also ignorance-based creativity with fresh eyes that are too naïve to know that “I couldn’t solve the problem that way.”

Those who have all their eggs in intelligence and experience and knowledge baskets don’t always like to acknowledge the strength of ignorance-based creativity but it is powerful and useful.

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Turning Your Working Teams into Creative Mobs

 

 

 

Creative people are all over the place.  Most people are able to create but when they team up things get ‘complicated’ and  problems can arise.

Organizations with teams of creative people are not always able to create up to their potential.  Competition, incompetent leadership, low morale, office politics all can work against the “creative mob.”  The power of a mob is shocking, especially when they work together, when they’re organized and united.  Mobs can work together to quickly do what only large groups can do, destruction of property, sending messages, building homes, or impacting politics.  But, when a mob competes and is fractured it ceases to be a mob and is just chaos.   Imagine the possibilities of hundreds or even thousands of creative mobs working together, cooperating and not competing.

Nothing would be impossible for them.

Individual Creativity + Organizational Health = Large Scale Human Creativity

 

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