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Year: 2007 (Page 6 of 11)

Natural Ingredients?

Just what exactly does “natural ingredients” mean? For example, the flavor we call vanilla comes from a chemical called vanillin that is extracted from vanilla beans. One can also make vanillin in a chemistry lab, and this vanillin is identical to the vanillin that comes from real vanilla beans but it must be called “artificial vanillin”. Okay so far, but it gets more interesting. Vanillin can also be made in the laboratory by means of a bacterial fermentation process and this product does not have to be labeled artificial. Huh? All three sources produce exactly the same substance.

(There is also imitation vanilla, which contains no vanillin at all but that’s another story.)

Then there is the question of product labeling. There seems to be no regulation of use of the word “natural”. Assuming that one has determined what is and what is not a “natural ingredient”, there is no definition of what constitutes a “natural” cosmetic or food product. Each manufacturer has its own definition. Some feel that 70 percent natural ingredients justifies the product being labeled as natural. Others feel that 50 percent is enough. Some feel that one percent is enough. It’s clear that without doing deep research on a each product, the word “natural” appearing on the label is meaningless. It tells you nothing more than showing you how to spell “natural”.

Now what I want to know, is water a natural ingredient? How natural is natural? What about water produced in a hydrogen fuel cell? What about the exhaust from the space shuttle’s main engines, which is 100 percent water? Is that artificial water? And how do you keep artificial water from mixing with real water? Curious minds want to know.

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Food in a McDonald’s Wrapper Tastes Better

Talk about brainwashing or Pavlovian training of our kids–a study was recently done with pre-schoolers that showed kids preferred foods that were wrapped in a McDonald’s wrapper or that came in a McDonald’s container. Not only did they choose it over other foods but identical carrots, identical apples, drinks, foods of any kind, were deemed to taste better when they came in packaging bearing the McDonald’s logo.

This is disturbing and also raises a question. This was a test of just one type of brainwashing but how else have we and our kids been brainwashed?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/08/06/mcdonalds.preschoolers.ap/

Anti-Terrorism

Amazing how the U.S. focuses such intense “security” that it becomes a theater of the absurd:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15012105/

…meanwhile, some real terrorist is probably floating a nuke up the Chesapeake Bay in a cabin cruiser.

It seems that nobody can face the fact that terrorist attacks simply cannot be completely prevented–certainly not in a “free” society. Even in an intensely guarded police state like the Soviet Union, they could not be prevented. The U.S. has a lot of coastline, a lot of unprotected border, hundreds of ships carrying hundreds of thousands of shipping containers entering the country every day, only a fraction of which can be inspected. We can’t stop the flow of illegal drugs–we can’t even make a dent in the flow of tons of illegal drugs. The street price of cocaine is now a quarter of what it was at the start of the “Drug War” Hello? It’s absurd to even talk about preventing a determined individual, or group of individuals, or dangerous materials from getting into the United States.

Instead of spending vast sums of money and manpower on the impossible task of protecting the U.S. from terrorist attacks, much better results could be obtained by changing our behavior in the global arena such that terrorists are no longer motivated to attack. By this, I am referring to curbing U.S. interference in the governments of other countries, curbing the use of foreign aid money as a form of bribe to get foreign governments to give special consideration to U.S. companies operating in those countries, curbing the criminal behavior of U.S. companies operating in foreign countries, and so on. A recent example of this was just in the news where Chiquita Brands was funding anti-government guerrilla fighters. Back in the 80’s, Coca-Cola operating in Guatemala murdered nearly 50 people who were trying to get a union started. These things happened with impunity because the U.S. government had already bribed the foreign government into allowing it, allowing U.S. companies to do as they please, pay no taxes, ignore local laws. The politicians in those foreign governments are happily corrupt and happy to pocket the “foreign aid” money from the U.S., and retire in style, but the populace that suffers ends up disliking the U.S. This sort of behavior has been going on for about 100 years now. Meddling in countries pisses people off and it’s starting to come back to haunt us.

For background on the sort of activities I refer to, the following two books are a good start:

The Central America Factbook by Tom Barry and Deb Preusch

Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano

And here’s a little kicker for you of Congressman Ron Paul citing the 9/11 Commission Report and CIA assessments that say the same thing I said above:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wAR9O0x6B4

Absurd Immigration Policies

Helena, Montana is growing like crazy with new businesses opening up right and left. In the window of every store and business are “Help Wanted” signs. Some businesses are having to close or curtail business hours and are losing money because they cannot find workers. Some businesses in Helena are now importing workers from Eastern Europe to fill positions.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14667831

Does this square at all with the Bush / Republican anti-immigration policies? Bush has gotten behind yet another ill-conceived xenophobic right-wing cause and is hurting the country again? Do the right-wingers study demographics and learn a little bit before acting or are they just following the loudest voice they hear yelling in the mob?

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