[conspire] Golden Penguin Bowl, LinuxWorld Expo, NYC, 2001

[Rick Moen]

I wrote:

> The reason the guy with the black polo shirt and goofy grin was
> unbeatable on buzzer reaction time, by the way, is that he'd had half
> a tin of Penguin Mints that morning.  Nobody told him this would dose
> him with about the same amount of caffeine as 10 cups of coffee.

That was a lazy guesstimate.  How about some actual data?

  Penguin Mints is a brand of caffeinated mints made by Seattle-based
  "ifive brands". [...]  All three varieties of caffeinated mints
  contain 7mg of caffeine per mint.  Five mints are approximately equal
  to one 12 ounce can of cola.[1]

Each 1.75 oz Penguin Mints tin holds about 75 mints.[2]  Assume 40 mints
mindlessly munched by yr. present correspondent that Feb. 2001 morning
at Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.  40 mints * 7 mg/mint = 280 mg
caffeine dose.  That's actually about the amount of caffeine from _three_
(not ten) cups of brewed coffee, all hitting the bloodstream at once.[3]

For whatever reason, anyway, I became totally buzzed -- like, with my
eyeballs vibrating (see .sig), and thus rendered lightning-fast on the
game-show buzzer.  (However, I recommend against the equivalent of
guzzling a trenta[4] if unaccustomed to caffeine, as clearly I was then.)


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Mints

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Caffeinated-Peppermints-Frustration-Packaging/dp/B010C8OO8S

[3] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/caffeine/art-20045678

[4] http://www.dictionary.com/e/starbucks-trenta/
(Reference in no way implies endorsement of Starbucks corporate methods
of preparing what they comically believe to be coffee, or anything else.)

-- 
Cheers,           Day 4278 of my caffeine LD50 field test experiment.  Eyeballs
Rick Moen         are vibrating.  Can hear colors.  Caught a hummingbird.
rick at linuxmafia.com                             -- Matt Watson (@biorhythmist)
McQ! (4x80)