Usefully Useless

So I’m eating a bag of “Kettle Chips”, with “sea salt and crushed black pepper”. Proudly on the front of the bag is “absolutely nothing artificial”.

Now I wonder, did these crisps come from a salt and pepper crisp tree? Let’s check those ingredients.

Select potatoes, sunflower oil, potato maltodextrin, potato starch, sea salt, black pepper, yeast extract, citric acid from sugar beet molasses, black pepper extract

How many of those are natural? Answer is not too many.

Potatoes are an artificially engineered version of a nightshade family plant once native to South America. They bear little resemblance to their natural ancestor and do not exist in nature.

Sunflower oil? You need to specially and artificially process sunflower seeds to get it.

Potato maltodextrin is made in large steel reaction vessels by the partial hydrolysis of potato starch. It is entirely artificial.

Potato starch is extracted from mashed up potatoes using solvents.

Sea salt is specially treated to remove all the things in seawater which will, given a chance, make you very ill. So again, it’s artifically refined.

Black pepper, for a change, is actually natural. Well, after we artificially process it. The berries of the pepper plant piper nigrum are dried in large factories which use giant fans to blow hot air over them. Once dried, they’re peppercorns ready for use.

Yeast extract is used because it contains massive amounts of monosodium glutamate and glutamic acid, two nutrients essential for life and good tasting. Flavourings, basically. It’s made by either hydrolysis or autolysis: Kill the yeast, filter off the cell walls and the contents of the yeast cells are the “yeast extract”.

Citric acid from sugar beet again requires extensive refinement to filter off the vegetable matter and the sugar. Artificial citric acid is much purer, as is citric acid from citrus sources – Sugar beet is just far cheaper.

Finally, black pepper extract. This is probably some piperine or some concentrate of it. Piperine is the slightly toxic chemical in black pepper that gives them their characteristic heat. This is used because it’s dirt cheap and means that less actual black pepper is needed to give it the same hot taste. It’s a cost-cutting measure, that’s all.

On the back of the pack are even more bold statements:

We don’t add MSG

Yes you do. What on earth do you think’s in that yeast extract? Yep, the exact reason you’re even using yeast extract – Because it contains huge amounts of MSG and that’s a flavour you just can’t get any other way.

We never use artificial flavours or colours

Calling cultured, processed and refined yeast “natural” is rather like calling a steel bar natural just because the iron ore was. Yep, that’s a flavouring.

We don’t use hydrogenated fat

I’m sure you don’t use diamonds either. Why are you telling us this? Hydrogenated fats would be unsuitable anyway!

We know the origin of all our ingredients

So what? As long as they meet quality standards, does it matter if they come from Surrey or Scotland? Better yet, why aren’t you telling us the origins?

We only use sunflower oil

Because it’s cheaper than the other suitable oil, olive oil.

The colour of our chips is determined by natural sugars in the potatoes we use

Same with everyone else’s.

Exactly how abstracted from nature do we need to get before something becomes artificial? Kettle Foods seems to think that drying, washing with solvent, filtering off the solvent and all different kinds of refinement means the resulting chemicals are still “natural”? Indeed, processing potato feedstock until it no longer contains any naturally occuring components means the end product is still natural?

By that logic, a car is perfectly natural. The aluminium came from natural bauxite, the steel from natural iron ores, the plastics from natural oil.

Hard-line extremism seems to be everywhere. Stop them talking about who’s god is bigger than who else’s, and you’ll find the BNP and Iran have a lot to agree on. Far-right extremist parties are popping up all over the place, typically playing on the hyped-up “Islamisation” card to convince people that doing as the Muslims do is a good thing, sacrificing your own freedom for some “greater good”. It doesn’t make much sense when put like that, does it?

The latest band of gullible idiots comes to you from Switzerland. Newcomers to the extremist brigade, the Swiss have recently decided that they’re going to ban minarets. Yes, you read me right, minarets. So much for the Swiss’ muchly bragged about “direct democracy” protecting the rights of the people, how can it protect the minorities from the tyranny of the majority?

The Swiss apparently agree with Iran that banning the construction of religious buildings they don’t like is the way forward. As Iran doesn’t permit the construction of Christian churches, the Swiss believe the Muslims are worth copying, so have pretty much banned the construction of Mosques.

Here’s a hint, you idiots, if you want to fight something you don’t generally accept and copy their beliefs!

So while Europe seems to be busy converting to extremism, is there really any need for external threats like the Taleban anymore? We’re quite capable of destroying ourselves, thankyou very much.

TV, newspaper, magazine, even online, ads for companies offering cash for old gold jewelry are everywhere.

The blaze of publicity is new, but the service isn’t. Gold can be melted down and re-used over and over again – and it is. Most jewellers, even high street names, will take your unwanted gold and pay cash for it. They don’t advertise that because they don’t make much from it.

Trading Standards decided to check out the new guys. In one case, a company claiming to “own its own foundries” did nothing of the kind, instead using a Swiss foundry. Another offering the “best prices possible” offered…well, let’s see.

They sent in a gold bracelet, which jewellers (yes, jewellers on the high street) had valued between £40 and £60, and got back £5.31. That’s right, one tenth of the value.

The Trading Standards officer then attempted to send the offer back and retrieve her bracelet; But the “seven day satisfaction guarantee” turned out to be not worth the words it was spoken with on the TV. There wasn’t an address to send it to and the company didn’t answer the phone. When the officer finally did get through to someone (after I’m guessing a Herculean effort), the seven day period had passed and the bracelet had been destroyed already. The company then increased their offer to £30.62, still barely half what a jeweller had originally valued it at.

The companies also only care about the gold. Any jewels, such as diamonds or rubies, aren’t even included in the valuation.

So what can you do? If you really need to get rid of jewelry for money, then go to the high street. If you can’t, then bear in mind that 9 carat gold is worth £8 per gram as scrap and a good offer to the consumer is around £6 per gram.

Jewelry which takes its value from set stones should NEVER be sent to these gold cowboys, the stones are simply discarded. With a spot of help, I took some gold to a “Gold Party”, where a “dealer” would offer cash on the spot for gold – I did this because sending it off to some company means you don’t get the option to walk away and say no. I’d previously valued these items (I’m not stupid) at the local jeweller’s shop who offered £7 per gram for 9ct and £15 per gram for 18ct, a good price as of October 2009.

If I’d have sold those items at the party, I’d have walked out with £173. This compares not at all too favourably with the price I’d have got at the high street jeweller, a cool £1066.75 – In fact the rep there offered me £1,100 for all of them after handing me the valuation sheet. The offer from the “specialists” was a mere 16% of the true value.

The price of gold as a commodity (e.g. bullion) has gone through the roof since 2007, enabling the kinds of scam operated by the companies you see on TV to be very profitable. The demand for gold is phenomenal and the big three refineries, all in Switzerland, get through half a ton of scrap gold each year, a figure up ten fold from what it was in 2003.

Two factors conspire against the seller here. First off, the company sending you your cheque has to make money for all those flashy adverts somehow. They need to take their cut.

Secondly, and most importantly, jewelry is worth more than its weight in gold. A gram of 9ct gold has a retail value of around £12 to the consumer. As a ring, it can be upwards of £100. Craftsmanship, set stones, engraving and the production of the jewelry add to the value, but the gold melters don’t give a damn about that, they’re not in the business of reselling the jewelry, they care about melting it down.

The bottom line, then, is to get your jewelry valued professionally by someone who actually sells the stuff and have a rough figure researched already.

This post’s title? Pyrite is fools’ gold.

After a lunatic who should never have been given a licence in the first place shot up a school (Hamilton, Dunblane), the knee-jerk political reaction was to ban handguns and further tighten firearm laws.

It’s resulted in this. A former soldier is now faced with 5 years in jail for handing a shotgun, which he found laying around outside, handing it in to the police.

The police immediately arrested him for possessing an unlicenced firearm and the judge has no option: The law is very clear that ANYONE, regardless of intent, holding a firearm is guilty with a minimum sentence of five years.

This man served his country as a soldier, then tried to serve his country again as a good citizen. Then they locked him up for no good reason. The Government wants to get firearms off the streets, so why is it that if you hand one in to the police, you’re guilty of a crime carrying a minimum term of five years?

We need a Government able to make laws which do not carry harsh, knee-jerk sentences in emotionally charged times. We do not have one. It’s time for democracy to work for the people rather than against them.

Two more members of the ACMD have resigned over political interference in the scientific process. Alan Johnson, Home Secretary, is increasingly in an ever more beleagured position after his blundering reaction to Prof. Nutt has disturbed a hornet’s nest.

But that’s not why this post is here. This post is for the most hilarious, backwards, reality-denying piece of “journalism” I’ve ever read. Yes, it’s the Daily Mail.

Go on, read it.

It essentially boils down to “The problem with science is that it’s based on facts”.

At no point does the Daily Mail tell us why we shouldn’t trust facts, indeed about half way down it Godwins itself by pointing out that the Nazis used facts too.

So then, Daily Mail, if we are not to use facts, then what are we to use? Hunches? Wild guesses? Chicken entrails?

Do people really fall for this blatant propoganda?

Now led by B-list actress and fringe lunatic Jenny McCarthy, “Antivax” has become a spiritual movement rivalling Scientology for lawsuit hilarity and anti-truth beliefs.

It’d be easy to go light on them and point to a simple misunderstanding fifty years ago or something like that, but it’s not possible. The whole thing started, simply, as fraud.

In 1990, a crooked researcher falsified some data to publish a strong correlation between the MMR vaccine with autism. Why? Wakefield never told anyone, but the fact he was taking money from malpractice lawyers who were suing vaccine makers may be relevant.

The “autism link” just wouldn’t go away, even after numerous follow-up studies failed to find any correlation. Eventually someone pointed out that thimerosal, a preservative used in vaccine preparation, contained mercury and the whole thing went to hell. This reached a crescendo in 1999 and doctors asked the pharmaceutical industry to replace thimerosal, which they did.

This is taken as solid proof by the anitivax faithful that something, somewhere was wrong.

It breaks down into two facets. First is the mercury containing thimerosal, surely this has to be harmful in some way, right? Mercury is toxic stuff! However, toxicity is all about the chemistry. For example, chlorine was used as a poison gas in the first world war, yet you have no problem using table salt, which contains extremely high levels of chlorine – 60.7% by mass to be precise, with the other 39.3% being sodium, a flammable alkali metal which catches fire on contact with water.

With mercury again it is the chemical form of it which is important. Thimerosal contains ethyl mercury, while the toxic form is methyl mercury. The difference is that methyl mercury is soluble in fats and tends to accumulate in the body, where ethyl mercury is not soluble in fat, doesn’t accumulate and is rapidly excreted.

If thimerosal is so harmless, then, why did they remove it in 1999? This is the second facet of the antifax faithful’s argument. Doctors were scared of a health-craze meaning babies wouldn’t get their immunisations – They feared it would (and, sadly, eventually did) mean dead babies.

The antivax cult was without a leader, a charismatic high priest, until the early 2000s when Jenny McCarthy’s child was diagnosed with autism. Immediately she went, to a word, batshit insane. Not a scientist and without any healthcare background, she saw the fraudulent 1990 study and blamed anyone, everyone, who made vaccines for her kid’s autism. The cult snapped up their new messiah without delay and there you have it today, busy killing babies to further their agenda.

Most people would like to see a smaller TV licence fee from the “no shit, Sherlock” department.

Originally the TV Licence was a fair means to pay for the BBC, back when the BBC was state owned (though the BBC has never been state controlled) because private broadcasting was very slow off the mark. If you had a TV, you watched BBC, it really was that simple. The BBC isn’t the Americans’ PBS, a bottom of the barrel generic crapshoot with no quality intended to be uncompetitive, the BBC makes some of the greatest television in the world, it really is that simple. What’s the best ever nature documentary? Living Planet or Planet Earth? Either way, they’re both BBC.

Nowadays, however, the license fee is not fair. I can get all the quality programming I want without ever touching a BBC channel using satellite (Sky) or cable (Virgin Media). Does that mean I wouldn’t touch a BBC channel? No. I certainly would. Does it mean I should be forced to pay for BBC channels? No, it doesn’t. I’m not forced to pay for Sky One or Sky Sports, why should I be forced to pay for BBC One or BBC News 24?

The solution becomes painfully obvious. BBC becomes a commercial paid broadcaster – which it already is – relying on viewing cards and subscriptions. Digital TV makes the use of viewing cards trivial and every digital compatible TV or set-top box I’ve ever seen has a card slot. I then get the choice, if I want the BBC, then I get it. It’s a no-brainer, the BBC’s programming is around £10 per month currently, much cheaper than Sky. If I don’t want BBC, I still get ITV, 4 and 5 as well as the many free-to-air Freeview channels.

Revenue collection then works much like mobile phones or satellite TV. I can get a contract and my card’s valid for 12 months. I can pay monthly, perhaps via direct debit, or I can buy pre-paid cards. If I don’t want BBC programming, I then do not get it and I’m not hit with a stealth-tax.

Stealth tax? What the hell am I talking about? Yes, it is a tax. £5.50 of the licence fee goes to the digital TV switchover, not to the BBC. Not only that, but the fee is legally mandated and controlled by the government, it’s not a willing purchase of service, it’s much closer to a tax. If I don’t pay that tax, I may not own a television, regardless of whether that television is used to view BBC or not.

The solution’s clear. The question is whether the government has the balls to do something right for a change.

This post is likely to sound Daily Mail (a right-wing nuttery tabloid) to many readers.

A paraplegic woman circumnavigated Britain. Or, she would have, except she did so in numerous stages with a six-strong shadow crew who followed her continuously.

The “circumnavgation” then was a series of hops from port to port requiring no more than an RYA Day Skipper certificate (which I personally hold).

We bend rules for the disabled all the time, out of charity, compassion or simple goodwill, but here have we gone too far? The woman did no such thing, she did not sail around Britain, she sailed from one port to another in succession, just so choosing them so as to complete a circle around the island.

Countless otherwise-productive hours have been spent discussing the nature of religion and its gods, spirits and other associated invisibles. This thought is very old, but still manages to entertain discussion. I forget who originated this, possibly Voltaire.

If we take that evil exists, then…

Is your god unwilling to prevent evil and unable?
Then he is powerless, evil and thankfully irrelevant.

Is your god willing to prevent evil, but unable?
Then he is powerless and irrelevant.

Is your god unwilling to prevent evil, but able?
Then he is evil.

Is your god willing to prevent evil and able?
Then why do we have evil?

News: The US Senate has cancelled the F22 “Raptor” project.

My thoughts: About flippin’ time. The F22 was a disaster to begin with, an extremely temperamental superiority fighter (i.e. a Cold War relic) with an utter dislike of anything moist (the radar absorbing paint was ruined by rain, mist, fog, clouds!) and needing upwards of one day’s maintenance for each flying hour.

The only reason it got to production was the contractors spreading the work piecemeal out to almost every state in the US to maximise their lobbying opportunities! This, of course, increased expense and maximised the economic impact of the contract being cancelled. Used to sucking from the government teat for so long, shielded from the realities of a free market, military contractors are reportedly in disarray.

News: Ireland outlaws blasphemy

My thoughts: This will not end well. Ireland’s constitution is a legislative nightmare, guaranteeing free speech with one sentence and outlawing it with the next. The constitution itself both guarantees the right of free speech, but at the same time criminalises blasphemy.

Until last week, Ireland had quietly brushed it under the rug. If they were to define blasphemy by Catholicism, they’d have a whole bunch of very angry Protestants, Jews and Muslims who were outlawed. Define it by any one faith and you’ve just outlawed all the others. So the Irish legislation, mandated by its idiotic constitution, plain criminalises free speech, anything that causes “outrage among a substantial number of the adherents”. Now I don’t know about you guys, but there’s not a lot out there that DOESN’T cause outrage among a substantial number of adherents of ANY religion. The Northern Irish lot have been at it for GENERATIONS!

So who wanted this law? Crazed Catholics? Postal Protestants? Mad Mullahs? Rabid Rabbis? Violent Vicars? Well, no. The Irish politicians realised that their constitution demanded it and so put it into law. This is the danger of having a constitution in the first place, changing it is much more difficult than changing a ruling party, especially when it’s holding your nation to ransom. Worse still, a “paper dictator” always reflects the views and ideals of the time it was created, regardless of how outdated they may be today.

The Irish constitution is fundamentally incompatible with a free society and must either be discarded or amended. The Irish constitution weighs in with the following: The preamble says that all state authority is derived from the “Most Holy Trinity” and that public homage is due to “Almighty God” and that blasphemy is an offence that shall be punishable by law.

In more detail, the constitution is actually incompatible with itself.

Article 40.1 guarantees equality under law, protecting one group by oppressing another is not equality under law. Article 44.2 states the state shall not make any discrimination on the grounds of religious profession, belief or status which is clearly going on here. Article 44.2 further states that the people have the right to freedom of conscience and religion. The law moves the burden of proof to the defendant (who must prove he did not intend to cause outrage), a violation of the Irish constitution’s Article 38 and of the European Convention on Human Rights (Schedule 1, Article 6).

So as mandated by the Irish constitution, Ireland must violate the Irish constitution!