Brits unleash world's hottest chilli pepper

A British firm has claimed the world's hottest chilli pepper crown, a fearsome beast clocking 1,176,182 on the Scoville scale. Fire Foods of Lincolnshire is responsible for cultivating the Infinity Chilli, which tests at Warwick University confirmed as the planet's most potent. The previous record holder is the bhut jolokia, …

[Martin 19]

Yes, yes, yes

because I'm the sort of nutter that eats corned beef sandwiches liberally doused in the hottest chilli sauce I can get my hands on. My mouth is genuinely watering now thinking about it...

Bring it on!

/flames for obvious reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point?

It's just macho posturing. Nobody could eat them raw so why bother breeding them hotter and hotter?

It's just like those increasingly hoppy beers a lot of American microbrewers seem to be competing on. Who, other than a total brewing geek, actually cares? Likewise who cares how hot a chili pepper is if it's too hot to eat?

[Ball boy]

What's the point? Simple...

Just for a moment, imagine you're responsible for buying raw materials in a commercial food producer's factory. You need chilli and you have two products to choose from: 'normal' chilli - or this. Both cost about the same & both are in powdered form. You'll be quids in with the higher concentration, clearly.

Trouble is, if you /did/ get a bottle of this for home use, I think it'd be a challenge to measure out anything like the 'right' quantity 'cause it's so damn concentrated. I certainly won't be coming 'round to sample your spicy little number!

Why Paris? Another hot little numbe... oh, forget it ;-)

[John Bailey]

Come on..

Not many people actually eat raw chillis? The few that do, I'll agree are mostly doing the macho thing. In which case, I'd love to be around when someone handed them one of these. I seriously doubt it would be possible to eat a raw one.

For those of us who enjoy heavily spiced foods, the heat isn't really the attraction. Once you get used to it, the heat diminishes, and the flavour of the chilli comes out. You might just taste hot, I taste a whole range of flavours under the heat.

It's far more than just AAAARGH it's HOTTTT...... And most certainly is not a macho "who can take the most pain" thing. If it hurts, you used too much. If you get an enjoyable tingle, then you have found the right level of heat for you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sauce? Wimps!

Give us the chillis so we can cook some treats for ourselves!

Nothing beats mixing chopped Dorset Naga and Bird's Eye chillis, some normal red and green peppers with leaf salad, chuck in some grated cheese and little cous-cous and BLAM! The salad has zero ability to absorb the spice and nothing beats a good excuse to drink copious amounts of ice cold beer trying to reduce the burning that ensues from both ends!

[Sarah Bee]

Re: Sauce? Wimps!

Ice-cold beer to combat chili? Noob.

[Wize]

Don't forget to wash your hands before going to the little boys room too...

Paris - She can kiss it better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Paris....

Which end do you want kissed better? One costs more than the other.

[Annihilator]

@Wize

Oh you're not wrong there. You make that mistake exactly ONCE in your life, I can assure you. Got the most disgusted look from the missus when I came screaming into the kitchen and ruined a pint of milk...

[Anonymous Coward]

I, too, can attest to this

Shared a house once with 3 mates and a young lady who was romantically attached (in a semi-transient way) to one of the males (Ron) who was absent when we discussing (over a few beers) methods of maintaining male sexual arousal. Someone suggested a mixture of chilli powder & honey smeared over the male member.

A couple of nights later I'm sat on the bog when I hear a scream, the bog door caves in and Ron leaps in the bath sticking his appendage under the cold water tap.

Says a lot about her intellect.

[Sarah Bee]

Re: I, too, can attest to this

It seems to say more about his intellect.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I, too, can attest to this

1. He claims that, as far as he knew, it was honey (without additives).

2. Where was she planning on putting smeared appendage? What would the effect on her be?

[Annihilator]

@AC

Maybe, she assumed that "maintaining male arousal" was the same as "delaying his big finish". In her defence, it certainly delayed it - I imagine it was delayed by several days.

[Kwac]

wimp

Grated cheese?

Dairy products reduce the effects of chilli.

[Scorchio!!]

Dairy produce

Why, is Paris lactating then? ;-)

I have to go to work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Terrorist weapon!

And in theory, it would be possible to take a bottle of this on the plane as long as it was in a 100ml bottle, right? Wouldn't it practically eat through the fuselage?? Definitely disable the crew and allow a would-be hijacker or terrorist to take control!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know your trying to be funny...

... but please just dont. Some braindead troglodyte from the Home Office or Homeland Security Department might read this, and suddenly any and ALL liquids will be banned from flights and we will end up with an even more insanely stupid amount of security theatre at every airport then we already have...

[Nigel 11]

Be serious

Oh come on. There are many different liquids, a small bottle of which could kill everyone on a plane. Hot chilli sauce is not one of them. Not even MegaScoville hot chilli sauce.

Beer - the antidote.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had a jolokia chilli

I was sick the whole evening afterwards. It really was blistering.

So I'll give this one a miss I think.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

I mean seriously? I like hot food every now and then and I understand that the spicier the chilli the more endorphins released. But there has to be a law of diminishing returns associated with this. Developing something so hot that it will kill a horse at ten paces just seems mental - they're going to have to water it down before it goes to market, so seriously why spend the time and money on developing ever hotter chillis?

Or is it just a dick waving contest?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they can?

A lot of things in life appear to be fairly "pointless" but if we stopped doing them we'd only be left with boring practical stuff to do. I certainly wouldn't want to live in a world like that.

[Ben Rosenthal]

totally

a dick waving contest, have already passed it to the usual suspects when it comes to public cock brandishing in the office.

hand grenade, because your arse is going to look like you tried to smuggle one with the pin out >.<

[hplasm]

Consider this icon-

to be upside down, in a small tiled room.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes...

...where that porcelain was once white... :(

[Lloyd]

Scotch Bonnet

are around the right level at 35k on the scoville.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they were closer to

250,000

(post must contain letters......ABC)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultimate ring stinger.

Put some bog rolls in the fridge and pass me a bottle of that sauce.

Icon, DUH...

[Anonymous Coward]

Homeopathy in action?

> The final figure awarded represents the dilution required to kill the pepper's "heat", so the Infinity Chilli capsaicin must be "watered down" by a factor of 1,176,182 before it loses its effect.

The accuracy of this dilution looks extremely suspicious, being that at which five testers cannot detect the pepper taste. Are they seriously suggestion that they can taste it to one part in over a million? The figure isn't even a power of 2!

[frank ly]

What's so special about 2?

"The figure isn't even a power of 2!"

Why should it be a power of 2? If I was performing dilutions and I knew I'd have to go for over 1,000,000; I wouldn't dilute by factors of 2. I'd use a dilution of 99:1, three times. After that, I'd titrate a sample with dilutant and stop diluting when the testers reported no taste. After that, you note the final amount of dilutant and out pops your number.

I agree that the 'resolution' of the dilution is silly. Its accuracy is a different matter. The major contributor to uncertainty would be the preparation of the original source material; that is where any serious inaccuracy would most likely be introduced.

[Kubla Cant]

Right idea, wrong direction

@frank ly:

The problem with your method might be that tasting chilli probably reduces your ability to detect it in the short term. Better to start with an undetectable solution and gradually increase the concentration.

[Pablo]

They probably didn't actually do it that way

More often nowadays they use chromatography and convert it to an approximate Scoville heat unit value.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

The point of that

Totally escapes me...

Clearly, it cannot be used for any culinary purposes as you won't be able to taste any food for a considerable period of time after you try any of that "pepper".

Some kind of sex aid for masochists?

[TimNevins]

Ah. But does it beat...

The Guatamalan Insanity Pepper grown by inmates of a lunatic asylum and hot enough to melt icecream before it touches your tongue?

[kissingthecarpet]

Best Simpsons episode

ever

[Elmer Phud]

Why?

as per title

[Charles Calthrop]

as withnail would say:

BALLS! I'll swallow it and have a mile of runs

[Julian Bradfield]

Significant figures - what they?

1,176,182 ? Yeah, right. That factors as 2 x 7 x 29 x 2897.

We're expected to believe that somebody diluted something 29 times, and then 2897 times?

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Not how many times

It's the ratio.

If you guess it right you need only to dilute it twice - once in concentration 1,176,181:1 and again by adding another drop of solvent.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dodgy scale

They need a new scale and method I reckon.

This dilution business sounds a lot like homeopathy! :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Dilution factors?

the factoring is very close to 99 x 99 x 120

but there the preparation steps may account for strange factors.

[eg in sugar factories, there's a test where 100 ml of liquid is clarified with 10ml of lead acetate solution giving a 1.1 factor in the calculations. ]

[ScientologyIsACult]

Ah, but...

if you do it backwards, 2897 x 29 x 7 x 2 it makes a lot more sense, do it by a lage amount and the decreasingly smaller amounts. Though personally i'd do it by an even bigger factor (i.e the current record holders factor) then increase the factor by increments of 1.x.

[There's a bee in my bot net]

For the naysayers amongst you...

I think there is certainly an element of hotter chillis becoming a pissing contest. However it is more than possible to cook perfectly palatable foods with (from personal experience) a chilli as strong as a Dorset Naga.

That said I have never eaten raw, a chilli hotter than Birds Eye/Scotch Bonnet and would not have the balls to try anything hotter. But if you want to see a mental Aussie doing so, go here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR7jvw9W-TQ

[Hugh Jorgen]

I ate a chilli...now I can see through time....

My neighbour grows chilis and had a bhut jolokia, it could burn your skin if you handled it too long..... OMFG.

He put it on a string, dunked it in soup (sploosh, up down, up down, out) and binned it. The soup was a killer, I'd have wiped my mouth out with a vindaloo to get rid of the burning if it helped.

As for the "why bother" crowd....because we're English and we can, and some idiot somewhere will want to try it. I'd like to put my name forward as that idiot please.

That's it, the one with the burning ring of fire falling out the bottom......

[Ben Tasker]

Capsaicin

You want burnt skin? The NHS have got me rubbing capsaicin creme into my skin 4 times a day.

There's lots of tricks you can use to reduce the burning, but it'll stop the treatment doing what it should.

Don't even get me started on how hard it is to get the (invisible) oils off your hand. NEVER go to the toilet within 2 hours of an application. Trust me!

To start with it was OK, then it was like bad sunburn all the time, now it's not quite so bad as it's largely destroyed the nerves. Might even get to stop applying it before christmas.

[James Fox]

@Ben Tasker

Dude, you seriously have to tell us what's wrong with you to cause a doctor to prescribe groin-maming chilli cream as a cure. Or have you volunteered for some kind of experiment?

[Anonymous Coward]

Money

As I understand it the point for a lot of the violently hot chillies is not how much dilution before you can't taste it in suger water but how much before you can't taste is in a batch of supermarket own brand curry. The dorset naga is mostly sold seed stock I believe.

I could also be talking rubbish of course.

[DrXym]

50p goes to

The first person to rub their privates with this sauce and post the aftermath video up on YouTube.

[blackworx]

Time...

...to invest in a tanker of lassi and put the bog roll in the freezer methinks.

Nom nom nom! Bring it on!

Hang on... my mind has just wandered to what might happen if one were to, for example, nip for a swift toilet break following the careless preparation of these beasties. Doesn't bear thinking about. *Shudder!*

[Jason Bloomberg]

Killer Chilli

I am a great fan of chilli which 'makes your eyes bleed' but it's a delicate art of flavouring balanced against battery acid to have something actually edible and enjoyable. At some point it simply becomes ridiculous and perhaps even dangerous.

I suppose if it does make your dick drop off it will be easier to wave around :-)

[Shonko Kid]

Marketing.

To those wondering why, that's why.

It is just a macho pissing contest, of course, but it's damn good PR. They wouldn't sell many bottles of the sauce if it was made from the worlds 2nd, or 3rd hottest chili, not at £6.50 a go. And this is a Uni too, so they need the money to prop up the budget. Go on, even if you never open the damn stuff, do your bit and buy a bottle, it might come in handy with that persistent relative that keeps visiting!

[LinkOfHyrule]

Only a matter of time...

It's only a matter of time until the governtards will ban us from filming ourselves eating hot chillies as it will be classed as extreme porn causing life threatening injuries to a persons anus!

Notice I haven't used the joke symbol, I'm serious! They probably will!

[Cunningly Linguistic]

Shouldn't it be...

...Bum, Baby, Burn?

[Paul 129]

Nahhh

Willy Nelson had it down pat with his

"Burning ring of fire"

[Anonymous Coward]

May I be the first to say

Om nom nom nom.

What worries me about the "scoville scale" is that it absolutely disproves homeopathy. If you dilute a chilli down that much, then by homeopathic theory, you should be able to melt an entire human with a dilution...

Now, I'm off to see if I can persuade my local police to lend me some pepper spray, I feel like chilli tonight, and I'm out of Ghost Pepper Naga Jolokia Hot Sauce.

[SteveK]

Burning

"An alcohol extraction of capsaicin oil is mixed with increasing quantities of sugar solution until the burning sensation from the chemical is no longer discernible on the tongues of a panel of five testers"

Surely if you're starting strong and diluting until the testers can no longer feel it is flawed with something this strong? Surely after the first taste of the strongest solution, the testers will be unable to feel anything on their tongues?

Steve.

[blackworx]

Re: burning

Apparently they changed testers. At least they did back in the days when they still used that method. These days it's all labcoats and chemistry and machines and computers and other sciencey stuff.

[jake]

If there is no flavor, there is no point ...

Why not just bottle pure capsaicin & be done with it? The DSWs over "worlds hottest pepper" and "world's hottest hot sauce" are getting tedious, at best.

That said ... I make my own Habenero/Goat Pepper/Scotch Bonnet hot sauce, from peppers I grow here. Lovely stuff. Tastes of mango, banana, pineapple, a hint of apple, coconut & vanilla ... Is it hot? Yes! But it also tastes good ... if you can get past the heat. I spilled a little on my morning omelet just a little while ago. Doubles as pepper-spray ;-)

Take about a cup of good cider vinegar (I make my own from my gravenstein apple cider), put it in a blender with a dozen or so ripe Habeneros (seeds & all), a teaspoon of sea salt (not that nasty, metallic tasting, iodine-infused "table salt"), and about a tablespoon each of honey & turbinado/demerara sugar (muscovado or piloncillo also work, if you can find 'em). A tablespoon of chipotle powder adds a nice smoky note, but isn't required. Blend well. Add a little more vinegar if needed, to get a Tabasco-ish consistency. It's usable immediately, but bottle it & stick it in the back of your fridge for a couple months and it just gets better ... A turkey baster with the plastic bit from an eye-dropper stuck on the end works well for re-filling old Tabasco[tm] bottles.

[sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD]

Interesting...

Imma vote u up and try it

I agree... too much heat can ruin a dish, but also too little just doesn't cut it for certain people.

Nevertheless I would like to know how to get myself seeds for this super chilli plant.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why not just bottle pure capsaicin & be done with it?"

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PURE-Capsaicin-16-MILLION-scoville-chilli-sauce-1-8ml-/220663779897?pt=UK_Home_Garden_Food_SM&hash=item3360961239

[Richard Gadsden]

Wimp

Try finding pure Resiniferatoxin - 1 biillion SHU.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Jake

Everyone who ever played a note of prog rock called; they want their pretentiousness back.

[jake]

Re:AC 09:09

Eh? Sharing a recipe is considered pretentious in your world? I pity you.

Pardon me while I polish my Fender Big Block ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Re:AC 09:09

In a word, no. Sharing recipes isn't pretentious, but I'm sure that pity you just poured for me will taste more impressive than any pity I ever tasted before. Chin chin!

[jake]

@AC 23:57 ... Oh. I see.

You think that actually knowing how to find, grow, produce and combine ingredients to produce food is pretentious. I no longer pity you ... rather, I feel sorry for those around you.

Consider: Probably the biggest hack good old HomoSap has learned is how to play about with whatever food is local & current ... You are an omnivore, like it or not. Learn to feed you & yours with whatever you have handy. It's a life-skill. If you had a significant other, s/he'd love you for it.

Trust me kids ... Hacking about with food in the kitchen is more important than computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh. My. God.

Oh SNAP, you really are the worst kind of snob, aren't you? Perhaps instead of making wild assumptions about your critics' ignorance you should look up the meaning of 'pretentious'. For the record, I grow my own, cook my own and from time to time even manage to impress folk with the results. What I don't do is go around preaching from on high about "hacking" my food in a patronising and po-faced manner.

The funny thing is, I didn't even think you were being *that* pretentious to begin with. I actually thought your recipe looked quite nice and sent it to my brother who is the family "chilli farmer". I knew straight off the bat that *I* was the one who was being a bit of a dick for ribbing you about it, but you've well and truly blown your cover now.

My OH is a sous-chef and she has a story about your kind for every day of the year. You're the sort of person who would gleefully spout the phrase "oven baked" without even a hint of irony.

Now, if you'll excuse me I'm off to pick some of these lovely Marmandes. The OH adores 'em. Cheerio.

[jake]

@AC 23:49 YHBT, HAND :-)

Side note: Yes, I use "oven baked[0]". It's different than "bread oven[1]" baked, "pizza oven[2]" baked, "solar[3]" baked, "Kenworth[4]" baked, "BarBQ[5]" baked, "grill[6]" baked, etc.

[0] "Oven" being what you think of when you think of that sad little electric thingie with a door on it to (try to) keep the heat in in one corner of your kitchen.

[1] I have a 130 year old wood-fired bread oven ... I fire it up once a week or so. Can do ~50 24oz loaves an hour, if I have the need. Took me almost three months to get rid of the brambles and re-point the bricks. Worth the effort.

[2] What I call my "pizza oven" is built into the bread oven. It uses ~15% of the fuel to get hot ... I suspect it was a "small run" bread oven, but it makes a wonderful pie. Can feed a couple dozen people with it.

[3] The solar cooking stuff is used mainly by Scouts getting badges. Makes GREAT cookies!

[4] I can make a couple pretty good baguettes "underhood" in a couple hours when hauling horses for my wife ... Requires a couple stops during proofing & shaping, but hot, homemade Sourdough bread when on the road is worth it.

[5] My custom smokers all have a built-in oven. Sometimes "fast & hot" is useful, even when going "low & slow".

[6] I cook pizza on the grill when I'm only cooking for the wife & I, and maybe a couple friends. It's easy, tasty, and practically zero clean-up.

[Sarah Bee]

Re: @AC 23:49 YHBT, HAND :-)

Er, that's nice.

[jake]

@Sarah

I'm just tilting at windmills again ... pay no attention.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: @AC 23:49 YHBT, HAND :-)

You forgot to add:

tl,dr: sex with me is a bloody nightmare

[Dave Bell]

Hot Peppers

A few years ago, I made about a litre of peppered cooking oil, with some home-grown peppers. Nothing exotic, but a drop of oil was plenty for a recipe. The peppers were nothing special, according to the seed packet, but they were small.

Unfortunately, while I was recovering from a road accident, my father didn't read the label when he wanted to fry an egg.

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC etc.

"The accuracy of this dilution looks extremely suspicious"

Why so, it is just one part in how ever many, it is easy enough to do if you have accurate enough measuring toold.

"being that at which five testers cannot detect the pepper taste."

That was the original definition of the scale, nowadays it is done with high performance liquid chromatography and then converted to equivalent SHUs. Unfortunately for Mr. Scoville in 1912 when he developed the test he had trouble getting sufficient mainframe time to be able to accurately compute a scale - a problem we no longer have.

"Are they seriously suggestion that they can taste it to one part in over a million?"

Why not? 1 microgramme or 210 PO will kill an 80Kg person, which is a far less concentrated amount. OK you may not be able to taste it but I wouldn't like to try it out.

"The figure isn't even a power of 2!"

(a) many figures aren't whole powers of 2, they still exist though.

(b) any number is a power of 2 as long as you use the right power to a sufficiently accurate number of decimal places.

Hope that helps.

[david wilson]

@Lee

>>"...nowadays it is done with high performance liquid chromatography and then converted to equivalent SHUs"

And doing that, we can get results accurate to 7 significant figures?

And that's after somehow correcting for the various ratios of capsaicinoids in a sample?

It's really impressive if that's possible, but also seemingly meaningless, given the variation between one pepper and another, let alone one plant and another.

Basically, it would seem to make as much sense as measuring people's height to the nearest micron.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedant mode - on

"any number is a power of 2 as long as you use the right power to a sufficiently accurate number of decimal places"

Only when you take into account imaginary powers for negative numbers, for example 2^(4.53236014 i) = -1. But zero isn't a power of 2. Or the power is undefined anyway (probably approaches -∞)

*cough*

[Terry Dooher]

Good for them.

Surely if they kept diluting it down to 30C, then it would blow your head off?

Y'know, 'cause it has the, like, memory of chilli...

[david wilson]

@Terry Dooher

>>"Surely if they kept diluting it down to 30C, then it would blow your head off?"

No - you mad fool!!!

Have you learned *nothing* from Science?

It would, of course, be the world's most potent *cure* for having your head blown off.

[OffBeatMammal]

would the Arch Chancellor like it?

.... or would he still reach for the Wow Wow Sauce?

[Anonymous Coward]

friday lunch curry is back on the menu

..so all the network geeks can appreciate a damn fine curry with their friday lunch beers again - for the last few years they've become rather tepid ;-)

[Bob Foster]

Anti Terrorist usage

Read last year Indian Special forces where developing non lethal grenades for anti terrorist use containing powder from their most powerful chili's.

Worked somewhere last year where the guys were into how "hot can you get a chilli" one up manship, until someone brought in some Dorset Nagas. The expressions and after effects of them tasting microscopic specs of these raw is a sight I will always remember fondly, and as for the chilli produced from them well I don't think anyone got past a couple of mouthfulls lmao

[Tony Luck]

1,176,182 is a lot less than infinity

So expect some product labeling lawsuit when someone buys these "Infinity" chilies and discovers that are finite.

Poor planning too ... what will they call next year's even hotter chili? The "2xInfinity"? The "Aleph-1"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band

"Next week? But the sign outside says '24-hour Cleaners'".

"That's just the name of the shop, Sir".

[Anonymous Coward]

Weaponise

In regards to using it as a weapon on a plane surely you could utilise this stuff in some sort of pressurised handheld spray system. Wouldn't getting a blast of this stuff in the face incapacitate the target leaving you free to......

[Dan Herd]

All I want to know is...

...will a coyote speaking in Johnny Cash's voice tell me to try and find my soul mate if I eat this?

[Alphabet Soup 1]

Re: All I want to know is ...

Johnny Cash as in "Ring of fire"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dorset for ever

The Dorset Naga has been independently tested at 1,598,227 Scovilles, soundly beating this pathetic pretender.

[Flaco Dude]

quick calc

Whoa -- one drop of that stuff needs to be diluted with over 58 liters... !?!

~ ( 1176182 / 20 / 1000 )

[asdf]

why the brits?

Why the heck would the Brits be the one to come up with this when Jalapeños are more than adequate for their crap fried cuisine. My only guess would be for the Indians in the UK. Still being in the southwestern US in the desert and often making trips to Mexico I can tell you nobody eats as many peppers as often as they do. I still find peppers there I have never seen before. The Indians (from India, dots not feathers as we say) have caught up nicely though considering they didn't even have peppers until the Euros came to the Americas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha

You really have bought into the outdated, stereotyped view of British food haven't you? Sure we eat a lot of crap, but take a look at yourself - you're talking to us from the country that gave the world spray on cheese for chrissake.

[asdf]

basically 1 million scoville

would be stronger than pepper spray (think averages like 650,000 scoville). Still their nice for bragging but extract based pepper sauces tend to suck on flavor (will take good Mexican chiltepin sauce over Dave's Insanity Sauce any day).

[Someone Else]

What?!? No spell checker?!?

There are only 2 'l's in "chilli" [sic] when you're talking about an environment where you need a coat to stay comfortable...quite the opposite of what's being discussed here, I think.

[TomatoQueen]

Dear Me

There is in fact ONE and only ONE L in chili. Add another L and you identify yourself as a dick-waving ponce.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Anonymous pedant

" But zero isn't a power of 2. Or the power is undefined anyway (probably approaches -∞)

*cough*"

Zero isn't a number if you are truly being pedantic. Nasty cough you have there.

[jake]

@Lee

"Zero isn't a number if you are truly being pedantic."

Yes, it is. Zero is the number between the set of positive integers and the set of negative integers. It is also the number that your computer uses as a baseline.