Space, Killer Wheaties, GM food, Catagory 5

Where or When

Sometimes I put a link or three on my page. Sometimes you click on it, sometimes you feel you don't have time, so in this post I will show the link, and a sample of what you can expect to find there.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6955261/

Slide shows of planets, Gaxies, rockets and more.

Sometimes I bookmark a site that I may want to use in my blog. Like The Daily Show.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/index.jhtml

Jon Stewart reviews the news with a comic angle like showing the different members of the Bush administration all saying exactly the same words on the same day. Word for word on different news releases, they each say what Karl Rove has written for them to say. I guess they get an e-mail each morning with the days' sound bite. Anyway Jon Stewart makes it funny instead of frightening.

I went out today to get a box of Wheaties,
thinking that I could avoid Genetically modified food.
(Monsanto is still having trouble creating, "Frankenwheat.)
Wheaties contained corn, soy products, sugar, corn syrup, and host of other ingredients that had nothing to do with wheat.

I got this organic wheat cereal...

It looks safe at first glance.

I wanted to know if it contained any GM products, so I began going to the websites on the box. First stop, theorganicreport.org. Sounds wholesome, doesn't it. The website was all about how good these products are for your kids, but nothing about Genetic Modification. They did have an article about hormones in milk, but most products are rBST free. (Except for Baskin & Robbins and Starbucks.)

Organic milk for my organic cereal.

The organic report had a link to aginclassroom.org. The site was Mass. Agriculture in the classroom. Not one word about GMO's! So I checked their board of directors and sponsors. USDA, food and nutrition program! This is one of our government programs that is run by people from Monsanto. So much for my GM free breakfast. Back to the box. I tried the distributer, Kashi.com. I mean, "Kashi", sure sounds organic. On their web site I searched for Genetically modified products and got this;

“Genetic Modification” returned 0 results

There were two other ingredients;
"Organic Evaporated Cane Juice", and, "Natural Flavor."
Let's start with the cane juice...It comes from sugar cane. Nothing in the articles about it that I read, mentioned GMO's. Not one word about whether it is or isn't Frankencane. But it is certified organic by, (You guessed it.), the USDA. The last update to their list of what is and isn't "organic", was in 2002. This was to provide a "Sunset" period for things on their list that might be disputed as not certifiable. There has been no more action from them since 2002.

I knew this "organic" box looked too fancy!

Alright, certified organic by the USDA appears to be meaningless, so let's find out about,"natural flavor." It is listed as an ingredient in just about anything with a list of ingredients. What is it?

So-called natural flavor is produced in laboratories to give flavor to processed foods that lose almost all flavor through the processes of freezing, dehydrating, and canning. It is made from infinitesimal amounts of chemicals, or more so a collection of gases.

A little more research and, (no surprise here.), "natural flavor", almost always contains MSG.

Now what do I do, for food that wont kill me? I suppose that I will eat less processed/packaged food and hope that the stuff at the farmers market isn't from Monsanto seeds. This is next to impossible, since Monsanto owns all the big seed companies and has genetically modified heirloom tomatoes and back yard vegetable seeds. I guess I will have to find an outlaw farmer who still uses his great grandfathers, "saved seeds", and whos crops haven't been contaminated by nearby GM farms. "Seed Saving", is now a punishable offence in countries around the world, including parts of the United States!

What about organic, grass fed, range cattle?

I bought this grass fed organic meat for dinner
I am going to wait until after I eat it to find out if the,"grass", was natural or genetically modified.

"...then they just lost their minds!"*
It is hard to think of a more cynical and contemptuous political act this year than John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. Having served as governor of Alaska for less than two years -- and as mayor of a small town before that -- her qualifications for national office are minimal.
But if Palin's résumé is limited, to put it politely, she possesses the only two qualities that McCain now seems to consider essential: She is a right-wing religious ideologue with female gender characteristics. Suddenly that is all anyone needs to qualify as a potential commander in chief of the world's most powerful military. We probably won't hear so much from now on about "experience" and "judgment," McCain's vaunted standard for the presidency until ... today.
___An exerpt from a Joe Conason article for Salon.com

*A thought from Happy Phil Seymour.

Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have been planning to go to war against Iran around election time so they can suspend the election and keep their simpleton monkey in office for a 3rd term. When Sara Palin gave her acceptance speech, she said that she and McCain are dedicated to stop the "new-que-lur", threat from Iran and Russia. Isn't this how Cheney got us into the Iraq mess?

Here is a video of Fox news reporters before the attack on Iraq, and now before the planned attack on Iran.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0japj2XWNwc

Why It's So Hard To Swat A Fly

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The brains of flies are wired to avoid the swatter, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

At the mere hint of a threat, the insects adjust their preflight stance to flee in the opposite direction, ensuring a clean getaway, they said in a finding that helps explain why flies so easily evade swipes from their human foes.

"These movements are made very rapidly, within about 200 milliseconds, but within that time the animal determines where the threat is coming from and activates an appropriate set of movements to position its legs and wings," Michael Dickinson of the California Institute of Technology said in a statement.

Today's relatively appropriate song;
Political Science, by Randy Newman

Sue's beach house on the Texas/Louisiana coast.
My sister sent me an e-mail to let me know they wouldn't be having the big yearly party at her place in Crystal Beach, this weekend. I should think not, the storm track for Gustav, is headed straight at her beach house. Chris and I went there a few years ago for a family reunion. We had a good time, I hope it survives the storm.

Also by Randy Newman, this song about the 1927 flood in Louisiana.
Louisiana 1927

We live in interesting times