posted 08-11-2012 10:35 PM                       

quote:

---

What was once a light, airy, crunchy snack – even touted for its antioxidant powers – made headlines today for being a health hazard.

Turns out the artificial butter flavour used in popcorn – particularly the microwave and movie theatre variety – is linked to brain deterioration. The culprit is diacetyl – a chemical compound used to make that salivating butter flavour and smell, which is a contributing factor to the progression of Alzeimer’s disease, according to the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.

“So far, these effects have only been seen in test-tube studies,” writes Daniel J. DeNoo, who examined the study at Web MD.

Still, many are shocked (”I’m never eating popcorn again!” cried so many baffled poppers on Twitter) but we’ve got to question those who ever thought buttery microwaved or movie theatre popcorn was a good idea in the first place.

True, popcorn can be healthy and low-cal when popped at home. (But let’s be honest: who enjoys tasteless and unsatisfying dry crunch?)

And sure, healthy can sometimes be tasty too (try these kale chips and you will honestly never touch a Ruffles again). But when it comes to popcorn, the more decadent, we’ve found, is always the most rewarding (try this life-changing recipe for cinnamon-bun popcorn).

Other snacks that have the potential to be healthy but can get out-of-control bad-for-you? Yogurt (compare the fat-free Greek variety to cheesecake flavoured decadence), cereal (compare a bowl of oatmeal to chocolate-laced granola. Yikes!) and yes – even your trip to Starbucks (how quickly a latte can turn into a dessert).

Are you THAT surprised about artificial butter flavoured popcorn? Are you going to stop eating it?

---

posted 08-12-2012 08:29 AM                    

Funny... Diacetyl is a naturally occurring substance found in beer and alcoholic beverages. It is a natural byproduct of fermentation. I don't see anybody squawking about beer and wine.

Since diacetyl is the substance that gives butter it's buttery taste, it's also found in, guess what? Butter! It is added to margarine and buttermilk and other dairy products to improve the flavor. Especially artificially hydrogenated vegetable oil products because they don't taste like butter without it.

It's just so stupid the way people act!

Strangely enough, THIS ARTICLE has a blurb right in the middle of it that says, "Genetic mutation may protect against Alzheimer's, scientists find."

So, which is it?

quote:

---

Diacetyl chemical in artificial butter popcorn linked to Alzheimer's plaque build-up

---

(CBS News) An ingredient used in artificial butter flavoring for popcorn may worsen the effects of an abnormal brain protein that's been linked to Alzheimer's disease.

Pictures: 10 worst jobs for your lungs
Genetic mutation may protect against Alzheimer's, scientists find

A new study in Chemical Research in Toxicology examined diacetyl (DA), an ingredient used to produce the buttery flavor and smell in microwave popcorn, margarine, candy, baked goods, and even pet food. It is also created naturally in fermented drinks like beer, and gives some chardonnay wines its buttery taste, according to the study.

Scientists at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis conducted an analysis of DA, a chemical which previously has been linked to respiratory problems in employees at microwave popcorn and food-flavoring factories.

They found that DA has a structure that's similar to a substance that makes beta-amyloid proteins. Too much amyloid that clumps together to form plaques are a tell-tale marker of Alzheimer's disease in the brain. The researchers wanted to see whether DA would clump those proteins in a similar fashion to form plaques.

They found DA did lead to an increase in levels of beta-amyloid clumping, leading to toxic effects on nerve cells the scientists grew in a laboratory. The experiments also showed that DA easily penetrated the blood-brain barrier, a layer of cells that is supposed to keep harmful substances from entering the brain but allows other helpful materials to cross. The chemical was also found to mitigate the effects of glyoxalase I, a protein that protects nerve cells.

The study however did not show a cause and effect relationship between the chemical and Alzheimer's, and the results haven't been replicated in people, only in test tubes.

"In light of the chronic exposure of industry workers to DA, this study raises the troubling possibility of long-term neurological toxicity mediated by DA," the researchers, led by Dr. Robert Vince, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Drug Design, said in a written statement.[/quote]

In my studied opinion, this whole thing is little more than warmed over bullshit.

posted 08-28-2012 06:59 PM                       

quote:

---

Missing woman unwittingly joins search party for herself
By QMI Agency

A group of tourists spent hours Saturday night looking for a missing woman near Iceland's Eldgja canyon, only to find her among the search party.

The group was travelling through Iceland on a tour bus and stopped near the volcanic canyon in the southern highlands Saturday afternoon, reports the Icelandic news organization mbl.is.

One of the women on the bus left to change her clothes and freshen up. When she came back, her busmates didn't recognize her.

Soon, there was word of a missing passenger. The woman didn't recognize the description of herself, and joined in the search.

About 50 people searched the terrain by vehicles and on foot. The coast guard was even readying a helicopter to help.

But the search was called off at about 3 a.m., when it became clear the missing woman was, in fact, accounted for and searching for herself.

---

posted 08-28-2012 11:47 PM                    

quote:

---

Area Man Accidentally Responds To Own 'M4M' Ad
DECEMBER 5, 2006 | ISSUE 44•26 ISSUE 42•49 | MORE NEWS IN BRIEF

ATLANTA—A Craigslist personal advertising a "Hot WM Looking 4 Same – 28" was accidentally responded to this Monday by its author, wardrobebuyer Stephen Mallory. "He lives right in my neighborhood, he's a professional, and he loves to work out—he sounds sexy," said Mallory after discovering the ad he had posted 10 hours earlier seeking a "mature, open-minded, no drama VGL WM for drinks, maybe more…". "In three weeks of searching, I haven't found anyone who really appealed to me, but this guy sounds absolutely perfect." Mallory said that although the slightly taller man described in the ad is a few years younger, he hopes the would-be mate won't mind.

---

posted 09-01-2012 10:59 AM                       

quote: Daily Mail

---

A South Carolina man has died after demonstrating the proper way to shoot yourself in the head police say.

James Gagum, 43, was watching a movie at his home in Conway early Friday morning when a witness said he began to argue a character's handling of a gun, according to WPDE.

He said, 'that's not how it's done,' before pulling the trigger three times while holding it to his head, according to the witness.

Police say the death was an accident and Mr Gagum didn't realize the black handgun was loaded, firing off on the third squeeze.

He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to Emergency Medical Services.

According to local reports, Mr Gagum made news several years earlier for his quick trigger finger.

In 2010 he thwarted a home invasion, shooting one of three suspects fatally after they broke into his home and he claimed pointed a gun at him and his wife.

'It was him instead of me or me instead of him,' Mr Gagum told WTOC at the time.

Mr Gagum was not charged in that shooting.

---

posted 09-05-2012 04:31 PM                       

quote:

---

The fastest man-made object ever: A nuclear-powered manhole cover (true!)

The Holy Grail of space-minded dreamers and researchers has always been nuclear-powered propulsion. Nuclear-powered propulsion would be far cleaner, far cheaper, far more efficient, and far less noisy than current roar-and-a-fireball rocket propulsion. (Not sure the last is an advantage. I’m a big fan of roar-and-a-fireball in almost anything, including rocket launches, howitzers, and NASCAR races.)

And in fact we’ve had nuclear propulsion for some time. The small maneuvering engines of deep-space probes are typically nuclear-powered, but not in the way usually envisioned: They are tiny, nearly soundless (even on Earth) little fast-particle emitters that generate fractions of an ounce of thrust. That’s enough to rotate a spacecraft, given time, and their nuclear sources last virtually forever, but they’re hardly the earth-shaking monsters we envisioned blasting from Earth into space. Too bad we’ve not been able to accomplish that.

Or have we? In a round-about way I recently came across the Nuclear Weapons Archive, a wonder world of historical documents, photos, and personal accounts of the Nuclear Age as seen through the history of nuclear bombs and bomb tests. For the historian, the scientist, or the intellectually curious the whole archive is a trove of riches, every link and page another revelation. Jump in anywhere and start reading — you’ll be hooked. And it’s not just about the U.S. nuclear program — it has material covering every declared and non-declared nuclear power.

For illustration I’ll pass along just one event documented in the archives that by itself merits a whole book and a movie:

While all the early nuclear tests had been above ground (what could possibly be wrong with that, right?), by 1956 Los Alamos was working on how to contain radiation and fallout by detonating the bombs underground. Initially the concept was very simple: drill a deep hole, say, 500 feet deep by four feet wide, lower the bomb to the bottom, light the fuse and run. (Well, OK, not quite that simple. But the hole was.) Originally the idea was to leave the holes uncapped, the thinking being that even with the top of the shaft open relatively little would escape. (Which was largely true, though not exactly up to modern expectations.)

By mid-1957 Los Alamos scientist (and famed astrophysicist) Robert Brownlee was ready to try testing with a capped shaft (known as a “stemmed” shaft in nuke-speak). In a test known as Pascal-A, a cap of four-inch-thick solid steel — what one might call the biggest, baddest manhole cover in history — was securely welded to the top of the shaft. With nothing else in the way, that far from the bomb the plate would likely have popped off, but wouldn’t have gone very far.

But something else was in the way. Way down the shaft, hundreds of feet below the cap, was a collimator, a five-foot-thick, multi-ton plug of concrete with a small hole in the middle. The hole served as a small window through which a special detector attached to the inside of the steel cap could make measurements during the first few milliseconds of the explosion. After that first fraction of a second the detector itself would be annihilated, but its brief set of readings would have been captured by above-ground recorders.

It’s significant that what was being tested in Pascal-A was an experimental bomb that was designed to be “one point safe.” That meant that if it was accidentally detonated (a significant concern back then), it would only fire only one of its many trigger points around the explosive core, resulting in a tiny fraction of the yield, not the whole megillah. The explosion in the test was therefore expected to be (relatively) very small.

That’s not quite what happened.

At 10:35pm on August 27, 1957 in Area U3d of the New Mexico Nuclear Test Site, the bomb was detonated. But instead of the expected small yield the bomb detonated with a yield approximately five orders of magnitude greater than expected (that’s about 100 000 times greater). The blast instantly vaporized the entire multi-ton concrete collimator and shot it up the tube as a multi-ton wave of vaporized matter at extremely high temperature, pressure, and velocity. The shaft had, in effect, become a enormous 500-foot long, four-foot wide gun barrel with the energy of billions of pounds of TNT released at one end and, at the other end, the now insignificantly small metal cap, about the equivalent of a bottle cap on the end of a naval gun.

As it happens, a very high speed film camera was recording the event and was expected to capture in slow motion the path and speed of any ejecta from the hole. Unfortunately, the camera, which had quite a wide view of top of the hole and and the area around and above, recorded the “manhole cover” on only one frame. There was no malfunction of the camera, it’s just that the “manhole cover” blasted out of sight so fast that the camera only saw it for one frame. Later calculations showed that the heretofore mundane four-foot metal disk had been launched at six times Earth’s escape velocity. That’s one hundred fifty thousand miles per hour. Forty-five miles per second. Nine times faster than the Space Shuttle, six times faster than the fastest moon rockets. Faster than the Voyager spacecraft, which, having reached over 35000 miles per hour, are now leaving the solar system and have for years been claimed to be the fastest man-made objects ever. To which I now say: Pshaw and poppycock — the Pascal-A “manhole cover” in a fraction of a second achieved more than four times the speed it took Voyager 1 decades to attain.

The “manhole cover” was, of course, never found. And, to my deep disappointment, cold-sober calculations indicate it’s not on its way to the Hercules Cluster which, late on a summer night shot from a vertical hole in New Mexico, may well be about where it was aimed. Instead it almost certainly suffered a meteor’s fate in reverse: At such an extreme speed it would have created an enormous fireball (a fireball going up) and been slowed so much that what didn’t burn off would eventually have come back down.

Being such a tough and massive object, most of it would have survived its “reverse re-entry” (or just plain “entry”?), so it would have come down as a burned, edge-melted, and perhaps quite misshapen chunk of solid steel, a very formidable projectile that would have done very serious damage even to large buildings. Given that no one that night reported any macerated cars or demolished buildings and that the huge object had been launched nearly vertically, it likely came down in the desert somewhere in the wide vicinity of the test site in New Mexico. It would have had some serious hang-time, though.

So somewhere in the New Mexico desert, unknown and unmourned, lies an American relic, a piece of history like no other: the fastest man-made object ever. And I harbor the hope that, whether it’s found or not, our nation and the world of science will someday realize our error all these years and recognize that the Pascal-A Manhole Cover, not Voyager 1, is the fastest man-made object ever.

Here’s hoping.

---

posted 09-06-2012 12:41 AM                       

quote: Daily Wail

---

Stupid passengers who don't print off their boarding passes can 'b*****r off' says Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has launched an extraordinary rant against his own customers – branding those who object to paying a penalty for failing to print their own boarding cards as ‘idiots’ who should ‘b***** off’.

The outspoken chief executive of the budget airline said passengers who arrive for flights without a pass are ‘stupid’ and it is right they are charged £60 a time to have one printed at the check-in desk because it is their ‘**** up’.

His remarks came after passenger Suzy McLeod was forced to pay £236 to print boarding passes for herself, her parents, and her two children so they could fly home to Britain from Alicante, Spain.

Mr O’Leary said: ‘Mother pays £200 for being an idiot and failing to comply with her agreement at the time of booking. We think Mrs McLeod should pay €60 (£47.40) for being so stupid.’

Mrs McLeod, 35, from Newbury, Berkshire, criticised Ryanair’s rule and said she was unable to print her family’s passes while they were in Spain for 15 days last month.

She was backed by more than 350,000 Facebook users after complaining of her ‘unfair’ treatment by the Irish no-frills airline, which has been frequently criticised for its extra charges.

But Mr O’Leary said she should have printed the passes at an internet cafe or asked a friend to print and fax them to her.

Instead, he said, ‘she then comes home and gets on Twitter, God help us all, and somehow we are going to change our policies. No, we’re not’.

He said Mrs McLeod, who was staying at a rural villa without internet access, had written to him last week to ask for ‘compensation and a gesture of goodwill’.

Mr O’Leary, 51, said the airline has replied, ‘politely but firmly’, saying: ‘Thank you Mrs McLeod, but it was your **** up.’

He admitted she was not alone in complaining about the rule, but said the 0.02 per cent of his passengers, which equates to 15,800 of its 79million, who do not print off passes every year should ‘b***** off’.

Mrs McLeod said: ‘His comments say a lot about his airline. They’re so rude.

'Why should anyone have to spend their precious time abroad having to find a cafe or a hotel to print out a boarding pass?’.

---