This is interesting if you’re into reading stats and like them shown to you via youtube. Some samples from Did You Know?:
If you’re one in a million in China, there are 1,300 people just like you.
The 25% of the Chinese population with the highest IQs is greater than the entire population of North America.
Notice: not the United States…North America. We’re doomed, man…some simple math will tell you that we ain’t got shit on the Chinese. As one of the oilmen sort-of said in Syriana, the only recourse for the US is to deny them the resources they desperately need.
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I love this post highlighting the ingredients of McD*nald’s Chicken McFuggits, quoted from the Omnivore’s Dilemma:
“The ingredients listed in the flyer suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leeches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There’s some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola, or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market price and availability.
According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasiedible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but form a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed food possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the “leavening agents”: sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nugget from turning rancid. Then there are “anti-foaming agents” like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it’s also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to “help preserve freshness.” According to A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause “nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse.” Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.â€
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Anyone who knows or works with me knows the effects of my industry on sleep…some months (like this one) I get tons of sleep…7-8 hours a night plus a very indulgent nap. Other months find me working 16 hour days for weeks, or even just a day or two of starting at 10pm and working until 4pm the next day. Somehow, I’m still an insomniac, and have been since I was a kid. So reading this was eye-opening and fascinating at the same time. Some of his unedited comments from the last entry (sic):
my mental aptitude is completely shot. words that come out of my mout are completely random; nonsensicle. i have found a good way of keepng myself awake and active is wlaking around the neighbordhood. the fresh air, sun, and public environment somehow tells me brain it is not appropriate to fall asleep in the outdoor public setting, which somehow is relieving some of the severe urges to sleep. in addition to complete mental exauhstion, i am physically deprived. i cannot eat a thing, only takng in liquids. my appetite is completely gone, i havent eaten in 14-16 hours or so. time is beginning to drag, an percetion of it is slightly more difficult.
That “nonsensicle” sounds like something you could buy from an ice cream man in “Yellow Submarine.”
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I hate to admit how much television I can find myself capable of watching, but the next season of Deadliest Catch starts in a few weeks. As someone who actually seriously considered going to Alaska to fish for crab, I can’t get enough of that show. Arg.