With 20% Fewer Mega Pixels

For Your Perusal

Breakfast at Happy Phil's. 1/27/09

Coincidence? You decide.

I began my day with a bowl of Heritage O's.
Some of you may remember I wrote about the staying power of the crunchiness in a previous posting. (September 7, 2007 )

Well, I have a box in the cupboard that I have been saving for when I want something incredibly crunchy, so I made up a bowl and set it on the counter. My next plan was to take a picture at ten or twenty minute intervals, until the O's lost their crunch. This is where it begins to get interesting.

Last night, my neighbor, Jo Anna, asked me to come over and look at my blog on her Web TV. She said the pictures from my new camera would not load. I took a look and, sure enough, the new picture files were just too much for the Web TV to handle. I knew that my blog couldn't support 10 mega pixel uploads, so I have been using grab, (A screen shot tool in my Mac), to reduce the file size of photos I want to upload. What I didn't know was those smaller png files were bigger than the photos from my 3.2 mega pixel camera.

With that new information in mind, I decided to take the cereal pictures with my Olympus 3.2 camera. It is in the car. Okay, I will use my cell phone cam and e-mail the picture to my computer. ( Stay with me now, we are coming to some of the good stuff.)

The picture above is from my cell phone. When I went to put it on here, I happened to run across an article about mercury in processed food that uses corn syrup. Corn syrup is made from Monsanto's genetically modified corn. I choose to eat breakfast cereals that don't use genetically modified anything. Hence, the Heritage O's.

Here is the spooky stuff;

Spooky, psychic graphic for illustration purposes.

This from NewsDaily

In one study, published in the journal Environmental Health, former Food and Drug Administration scientist Renee Dufault and colleagues tested 20 samples of high fructose corn syrup and found detectable mercury in nine of the 20 samples.

Dufault said in a statement that she told the FDA about her findings but the agency did not follow up.

This from The Grist ;

So how does mercury work its way into our food industry's favorite sweetener? It finds its way into Pop Tarts and the like through the stunning array chemicals required to transform corn into a cane sugar substitute. (As you read the following list, marvel that the FDA recently ruled that manufacturers can label HFCS-sweetened foods "natural.") According the the EH study:

Several chemicals are required to make HFCS, including caustic soda, hydrochloric acid, alpha-amylase, gluco-amylase, isomerase, ilter aid, powdered carbon, calcium chloride, and magnesium sulfate.

Two of those charming-sounding chemicals -- caustic soda and hydrochloric acid -- can contain traces of mercury.

Ubiquitous corn

The Corn Refiners Association responded with, "Those findings are outdated." (The Dufault investigation was done in 2005.)

By the time I finished reading about mercury in corn syrup, I figured my organic, corn syrup free, Heritage O's might be soft enough to eat. Ha, ha, just as crunchy after 20 minutes of soaking, but I felt better about eating organic, non genetically modified food. I don't think I could eat mercury laden Cheerios ever again. It just seemed odd that that article would appear just as I was preparing a healthy meal.


I Just Love New Discoveries

European scientific researchers have concluded a study that shows hearing loss in people who listen to loud MP3 players for extended periods of time. They want to put warnings on iPods and put a limit on the volume control.

I am surprised that they don't warn people about heavy equipment and leaf blowers. What are the chances of hearing loss for assembly line workers? How about using a jackhammer 5 days a week? Do you think they need to put a warning sticker on wood chippers, saying, "Repeated exposure to this machine may cause permanent hearing loss?

Pun From My Brother

Sir Cumference, the round knight. He had too much pi.

Today's Relatively Appropriate Song;
Sugar Sugar -The Archies

Patience