-A 2000 review found that large doses of MSG given without food may elicit more symptoms than a placebo in individuals who believe that they react adversely to MSG. However, the frequency of the responses was low and the responses reported were inconsistent and were not reproducible. The responses were not observed when MSG was given with food.
-A 2002 report found that rats fed on diets supplemented with 10% and 20% pure monosodium glutamate suffered retina degeneration, possibly through glutamate accumulation in the vitreous humor. However, such extreme amounts are more than one order of magnitude higher than those used for flavoring or found in foods.
For the ignorant, one order of magnitude = 10 times. More than an order of magnitude = 10 times, 100 times or more. At 10 times of the amount described, you would have to consume about a ladle of that stuff.
In conclusion, it's all in your head! MSG IS SAFE!
However,
-Prevalence of overweight was significantly higher in MSG users than in non-users.
This can easily be explained by that fact that food just tastes... heck, life just tastes better with MSG. It is no wonder they get fat. And here's something to back my point:
- The epidemiological survey of 4,938 ethnically Japanese men drawn from the Honolulu heart program in Hawaii found that self-reported dietary monosodium glutamate consumption was not statistically linked with obesity. Researchers furthermore found that frequent monosodium glutamate consumption did not significantly affect blood sugar or serum cholesterol levels among the participants.
See? Even if you gain weight quickly, it's not directly due to the MSG. You just like eating more!
I have just been screwed by Borderlands. I opened it a few minutes ago and discovered all my skill points are gone and weapon proficiencies have been reduced to zero. I googled this and discovered that this is a bug of moderate frequency. MODERATE FREQUENCY!
There is no fix. They are gone. Time to either get a new character or delete the game.
Democracy. Democracy is an illusion. You would be surprised by what people want without proper guidance.
People don't want a lot of things they seem to want today. They don't want meritocracy; they want wealth without work. They don't want a smart man who seem to know how to run a country; they want "one of them" with 20 years experience as an office worker, doesn't know shit about government but understands their troubles. People want the facade of being civilized, not actual civilization.
Without being told who to vote for, democracy would kill.
It is stupid to assume everyone likes what you like, think what you think and believe in everything you believe in. Some people don't care for technology, others don't want people with degrees to get better pay just because they spent a couple of years in an university.
Write down a list of things you assume is important in the government of a nation and someone's bound to disagree with you. Lots of someone's. That is democracy.
Uncontrolled democracy is chaos. Or rather, democracy is controlled chaos. Just look at games. Game are never designed by democracy. Gamers don't vote for what they want in a game. Few features are ever derived this way. The number of repeated support posts for an idea does not reflect the probability of it being implemented.
In Empires, democracy decides what maps we play in the server I frequent. Very often, people would vote for maps that generally considered bad and stupid. Other times, people would just hit the 1 key no matter what map it is.
The internet is an excellent place to see the thoughts caused by free will.
Read the Wiki article on the Siege of Leningrad, which occurred during WWII when Hitler made the mistake of attacking the USSR. If you thought Russia had it easy back then, you were very wrong.
Now renamed as Saint Petersburg, the city was large, being the ex-capital of the Russian Empire. There were 3.5 million people excluding unregistered (and there were lots of those) civilians in the city before the Germans arrived. 1.4 million were evacuated. 872 days later, only 700,000 people were left. 500,000 were civilians.
872 days = 28 months = 2.5 years. 8 September 1941 - 27 January 1944.
Things were so bad, children were deployed to fight fires after the frequent bombings. 15,000 children were later decorated for their actions during the seige.
Food was a huge problem. Within 5 days of the seige, all restaurants were cleared of their leftovers and had to close. Money became worthless since it couldn't buy food any longer (note how food supply affects the value of money).
At the beginning, the analysis was already very grim.
It was calculated that the provisions both for army and civilians would last as follows:
| grain and flour | 35 days |
| groats and pasta | 31 days |
| meat and livestock | 33 days |
| fats | 45 days |
| sugar and confectionery | 60 days |
Food rationing was the only option. It started in July 1941 before the city was encircled. On the 2nd of September the same year, it was reduced to:
manual workers had 600 grams of bread daily; state employees, 400 grams; and children and dependants (other civilians), 300 grams per day
Then due to the successful bombings of most of the warehouses by the Germans between August to October that year, it was reduced again on the 12th of September to:
the workers received 500 grams of bread; employees and children, 300 grams; and dependants, 250 grams.
Rations were reduced yet again in Oct, followed by two more cuts in November. By the last reduction, the rationing was as follows:
250 grams daily for manual workers and 125 grams for other civilians.
That's almost as bad as being a POW. 125g of food is like... 3 slices of ham? A handful of rice?
By the winter of 1941, all rats, pets and birds were consumed. Anything that walks was food, and reports of cannibalism began from that point on. The severity of this problem led to a special unit of police being created to fight cannibalism.
It is estimated that this siege did more harm than the nuclear bombs dropped in Japan. Not only was the city as good as razed, it had contained several of the most beautiful palaces from the Tsarist era (it was the ex-capital, as mentioned before). Many of the palaces were looted and destroyed by the Germans before they left.
A diary of an 11-year-old girl who lived through the siege still exists in a museum in Russia, though the author passed away from intestinal tuberculosis after being rescued. Tanya Savicheva was born on 23rd January 1930 and had 2 brothers and 2 sisters. Also with them were 2 uncles and a grandmother. Of her entire family, one brother was outside the city before the siege while a sister was evacuated without their knowledge. Her father passed away before it happened and everyone else perished during the siege.
Excerpt from her diary:
Grandma died on Jan. 25th 3:00 P.M. 1942
Leka died on March 5th at 5:00 A.M. 1942
Uncle Vasya died on Apr. 13th at 2:00 after midnight 1942
Uncle Lesha on May 10th at 4:00 P.M. 1942
Mother on May 13th at 7:30 A.M. 1942
Savichevs died.
Everyone died.
Only Tanya is left
In May 1942 when she wrote her last entry, she was only 12 years old and worked as a trench-digger and fire-fighter. She was rescued in August that year, found to be very ill and eventually died in July 1944.
All in all, this event caused the most casualties ever in a modern city.
At first I read this report about a discussion on what is unacceptable when using human genes in animals to grow human parts. Then I read the next report on rabbits that were given lab-grown penises that mated better and I thought Reuters was being very humorous here.
Kraft is getting warmer. It just offered $16.2 billion for Cadbury, or 709 pence per share. Cadbury investors rejected it of course, saying they will consider no offer below 800 pence per share. (1 pound=$1.6713)
No one else is competing against Kraft. Not Nestle, not Hershey, not PepsiCo.
From the report:
Pepsi, which owns snack-maker Frito-Lay, is buying its two largest bottlers and may have little appetite for a new deal.
Nestle has said it plans no big acquisitions. Hershey has been interested in Cadbury, but cannot afford it on its own and is hampered by the control structure of the Hershey trust.
Two titans are about to merge. Pretty dramatic.
China lends US$10 billion to African nations at below-market interest rates, among several other things it is doing to help Africa. It looks to me like China wants to take over the domination of African resources from Europe.
I think Africa is deliberately being kept in such poverty so that Europe can exploit their resources cheaply, and now China wants a large portion of this pie.
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