Bullshit!

Penn & Teller for the most part are fantastic but the second hand smoke thing being bullshit I find extremely interesting and very hard to believe (Season 1 Ep 5). Need to read more on this and report back!

My first problem with the episode is the evidence they present that they claim the government uses to justify banning smoking in public areas in the US. They present some EPA document and a WHO report I think. Both were reports probably written by a group of people who surveyed the literature. They may have missed things, not presented conclusions clearly enough or simply had so much conflicting information that it was difficult to know what was true.

But beyond all of this does it not make sense that if you accept that primary smoke causes lung cancer and heart disease that second hand smoke would provide a fraction of that damage? Makes sense I think, so reducing the risk has got to be a good thing.

Furthermore, reducing the areas that smokers can smoke is doing the smokers a favour by encouraging them to quit. Obviously not everyone would see it that way but for the most part I believe the majority of smokers would rather quit if not for the addiction.

Anyway that is all until I bother reading some literature.

cracking "cracked"...?

Discussing:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19433_the-6-most-horrifying-lies-food-industry-feeding-you.html
Firstly, I' not familiar with the site and perhaps the articles on here are completely satirical but I wasn't sure so I'm sure there's someone out there that would believe the entire thing.

#6 - Wood

- WHY on earth would they add 'wood'? it would change the flavour and appearance of the food.

- The pictures presented would lead you to think they put big arse wood shavings in their muffins, like the kind you would find on a workshop floor or something. Pretty sure if they did that you would notice it. It also probably wouldn't taste like nothing. (who is 'they' btw... 'the food industry'?)

- For people who don't know already, look up cellulose on wikipedia! I'm sure cocunut fibre would also contain cellulose. The 'fibre' you get from wheat is also cellulose.
- and after all that, who cares if they actually do anyway? did it taste different? did it make you sick?

#5 - Orange Juice

- "Zombie"? serioussly? anything that is preserved now has something to do with zombies? what a ridiculous image to present!
- Preservative aren't necessarily bad. Table salt can be used to preserve foods, many types of acids can be preservatives but you don't hear anyone whinging about them. Next they'll be whinging about the dihydrogen monoxide they add to everything!
- If all they do is "take the oxygen out" that wouldn't preserve the juice for a year! I'm also sure that if you brought your 'fresh' orange juice home and left it out of the fridge for a couple of days (without opening it) it would eventually show signs of microbial activity such as the bottle/carton swelling with gas etc. that's because it's not actually sterile and not very well preserved and depends mostly on refrigeration to keep it from spoiling quickly.
- Oranges are in season somewhere in the world all year round.
- Lastly, if the orange juice had been sitting in a vat somewhere for a year before you drank it and it still tasted good and it didn't make you sick, would you care? if all they did was "take all the oxygen out" and didn't actually add anything, I would call that an extremely clever way of preserving something. Oh and the reference to how flavours are made, look up "esters" on wikipedia, I made them in school once.
(just because something is synthetic, doesn't mean it's going to give you cancer!)

- #4 Ammonia meat

- of this I have been aware for a long time. Ammonia doesn't stay dissolved in water at high temperatures so when you cook the meat there would be no ammonia left in it.

- Just because a chemical is used in "fertilisers and oven cleaners" doesn't make it bad for preserving food. You know what else is in fertilisers and oven cleaners? oxygen. You know what else? water? etc. etc. Chemicals aren't bad because of association!!

As a diary

So I've been meaning to get a blogging app for ages as the things I want to post normally come to me when not near computer. I will enjoy finally being able to share my pics of funny people & other thoughts.

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Good way to start off - poking fun at grandma!