News that makes us laugh, cry, or both

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 7:53 am

The UK Racist party cocks up

"Remember how Polish pilots defended Britain in WW2? We hate Polish people."

Now theres a great campaign slogan, comedy gold.

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Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 8:02 am

Effectiveness studies are hugely important. They do something in large aggregate that a single doctor would not be able to do.

I've been treated for the same thing for over ten years now. In that time, science has found new risks, new delivery systems, twice over. One hugely increased my cost and decreased the efficacy while not delivering any proof of lessened risk. And yet... I can't very well not continue treatment.

So someone ought to pay for these studies, because the for-profit industries want to freeze information the moment they get the go-ahead to sell their product.

-Crissa

PS, Kaiser sucks rocks, and I won't step foot in one of their facilities. They get paid more money to do the same things with less people. So what? They don't actually use the newest studies or technology, unless they reduce costs. They bend to the will of christian hospitals and donors, just like any other and refuse to treat a wide swath of patients when they can. From Intersexed to AIDS or mental disorders, if you don't have a company policy, it is corporate policy at Kaiser not to recommend you for treatment, saying they don't recognize those conditions.

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 5:34 am

Warcrack is in fact crack

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 5:44 am

ckafrica wrote: Warcrack is in fact crack

I can smell the outcome based funding from here.

Like the study that determines that MDMA was hazardous to your health and addictive... Because instead of MDMA in their study they used a methylamphetamine. And yet, the name attached to the study still gets money from the government and concerned parents to create more studies.

-Crissa

Beth_Naught · Post by **Beth_Naught** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:27 am

Christian salt, not kosher salt.

Mommy, what's "kosher" mean?

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:46 am

Pepper spray is customs way of saying please

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:10 pm

ckafrica wrote: Warcrack is in fact crack

Sigh. The moment a "study" bases its findings on "anecdotes" I walk away in disgust. There are actual biochemical measures of addiction, and peoples' verbal description of how they want to play a game are not on that list.

I genuinely don't know whether Warcrack is as, more, or less addictive than crack. You could do an actual controlled study. But they didn't do that, and I don't understand why it gets into news.

-Username17

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 6:30 pm

Beth_Naught wrote:Christian salt, not kosher salt.

Mommy, what's "kosher" mean?

This is so unbelievably stupid. Unless they're actually just re-labeling mildly coarse salt (aka kosher salt), then this product is garbage. Finely ground salt has too much iodine in it, tastes like shit because of this fact and is useless for cooking.

The article gives me really scary visions though. The christian-foods brand idea mostly.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 8:48 pm

JE wrote:Unless they're actually just re-labeling mildly coarse salt (aka kosher salt), then this product is garbage.

Kosher salt isn't iodized. It's supposed to be minimally processed. So yeah, the're taking plain salt, having it blessed, and calling it Christian. But the guy doing it is one of those inventor-ish, entrepreneur types. If this succeeds, he'll be making a line of bagels and pickles and stuff.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:16 pm

Apparently it's not koshering salt they're using, but sea-salt, which has a different taste and crystalline structure.

So while it'll sell, it'll just not work for any recipes that ask for 'kosher' salt.

-Crissa

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:37 pm

Finely ground salt has too much iodine in it, tastes like shit because of this fact and is useless for cooking.

This is in fact: not true.

Iodized salt generally has too little iodine in it for people to even taste, well before one gets into the fact that salt is usually mixed into foods thereby diluting the iodine taste even more. Table salt is finely ground and dissolves easily and is the preferred salt for most baking and other projects that require salt to spread evenly. Kosher salt is coarser and holds its form better, which makes it the preferred salt for sprinkling on top of food at the last minute as a flavor enhancer.

There are a few times when non-iodized salt makes any god damn difference. Iodine in virtually any quantity will darken pickles and thus it is suggested that the brine water used to preserve gerkins be iodine free. But seriously, UNICEF fucking studied this shit. And the amount of iodine required to affect flavor is orders of magnitude larger than what people actually use.

If you dissolve salt into your food, and you think you can tell the difference between table salt and kosher salt, then I have a seven letter word for you:

PL_C_B_

Feel free to start buying vowels.

-Username17

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 10:00 pm

Now, I wonder if they have kosher sylvite...

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 10:04 pm

Koshering salt naturally has more iodine in it, anyhow. None added, that's how it starts.

You add iodine to table/baking salt so that there is iodine in your diet.

If you're tasting a difference in your salt, most likely you're tasting the difference between NaCl and other types of salt - sea salt, for instance, can include large combinations of many non-sodium salts.

-Crissa

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 10:20 pm

I can taste a difference when I place both on my tongue in their raw format.

Sea Salt, table salt and kosher salt all taste different when I try a pinch of them. So much so that I can eat kosher salt on it's own and really like it. Sea salt is bearable, and iodized salt is the worst.

I tend to have a pretty low salt diet, so sometimes I get really bad cravings for salt, and then I actually take the bowl of coarse salt and eat pinches of it until the craving is gone. If I'm not actually in need of salt and still eat a pinch of salt, I'll gag and retch and need to wash the salt on my tongue off with water. Which is sort of a relief, since it means that something is regulating how much salt I want to consume, and when I've got enough I can't eat any more.

Most of the foods that I cook that have salt as an ingredient involve the salt being dissolved in water, so dispersal is fine. Pasta, soup, stew.

When already cooked food I can't say that I can tell if there's a difference, since the salt is such a small part of what is in the food I'm eating, but yes, when it's raw, I can tell the difference.

I tend to want to use ingredients that in their raw format taste good. Which is why I prefer kosher salt to cook with, and why I relegate iodized table salt into the "last choice" option. My kitchen seriously has 2 types of salt in it. Medium-coarse kosher salt, and very coarse sea salt. We stopped buying sea salt and iodized salt about 4 or 5 years ago.

Does that clarify what I was talking about?

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 11:16 pm

JE, they're different salts; with different minerals, differing levels of potassium chloride or magnesium chloride (also salts), and different crystalline structures.

...And like I said, Koshering salt naturally has iodine in it. Sure you can use it on your table if you really want to.

Of course you can taste the difference between different salts. Our kitchen probably has five salts, plus many salt flavorings like soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, bouillon, etc. They all contain large amounts of salts. Even magnesium sulfate and sodium bicarbonate are salts which are used in cooking and contribute to the salt flavor of foods; try doubling the baking soda in your cookies and taste them... They're 'salty'.

Also, you said you continue to have sea salt and stopped buying sea salt. That's just weird.

-Crissa

Judging__Eagle wrote:I tend to have a pretty low salt diet, so sometimes I get really bad cravings for salt, and then I actually take the bowl of coarse salt and eat pinches of it until the craving is gone. If I'm not actually in need of salt and still eat a pinch of salt, I'll gag and retch and need to wash the salt on my tongue off with water. Which is sort of a relief, since it means that something is regulating how much salt I want to consume, and when I've got enough I can't eat any more.

That's absolutely normal. However, if you lived or worked in a high salt environment, ate many salty foods, you'd lose your taste for salt and need to consume more to sense that you'd 'consumed' salt. Which is why workers from salt mines tend to eat high salt diets - they can no longer discern that they're eating salt, and therefore crave more.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 12:47 am

Table salt is much finer than coarser kosher salt. If you put it on your tongue in its raw form it dissolves much faster and tastes much more strongly. Of salt. Salt is a pretty overpowering taste, and in its pure form is more than a little bit gross.

JE, your studies on this subject are ass retarded.

-Username17

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 12:51 am

JE wrote:I can taste a difference when I place both on my tongue in their raw format.

So can I.

JE wrote:Sea Salt, table salt and kosher salt all taste different when I try a pinch of them. So much so that I can eat kosher salt on it's own and really like it. Sea salt is bearable, and iodized salt is the worst.

In my experience, kosher salt is usually (not always) just sea salt that's more coarsely ground. And sea salt comes from a wide variety of places around the world (including the middle of North America), which also makes a difference in taste.

In the last brand of salt I bought, there were a whole bunch of exciting things in my salt. So much so that the company actually has a PDF file with the chemical analysis of their product on their website. I don't know how much I really care what exactly it contains (as long as it's not deadly), so long as it tastes good. Normal table salt is great for scrubbing my face, but I don't like eating it.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 1:05 am

Maj wrote: In the last brand of salt I bought, there were a whole bunch of exciting things in my salt. So much so that the company actually has a PDF file with the chemical analysis of their product on their website. I don't know how much I really care what exactly it contains (as long as it's not deadly), so long as it tastes good. Normal table salt is great for scrubbing my face, but I don't like eating it.

Yeah, looks like they just went to an evaporite deposit, dug it up, and crushed it.

Sodium and Chloride make halite (table salt)

Potassium and Chloride make sylvite, which you can also taste. It's more bitter than halite.

The rest...I'd have to dig out my mineralogy notes on the evaporites, but it looks like the common evaporite elements, plus trace amounts of random shit.

Sir Neil · Post by **Sir Neil** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 1:52 am

ckafrica wrote:Pepper spray is customs way of saying please

Beth_Naught · Post by **Beth_Naught** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 2:17 am

Judging__Eagle wrote:The article gives me really scary visions though. The christian-foods brand idea mostly.

Made with real Christians? [/Wednesday Addams]

One for Lago, via Pam's House Blend.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 2:46 am

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/06/obama.stem.cell/

Looks like Obama's getting around to doing stuff now.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 2:48 am

Bah, those salts are weaksauce. REAL MEN* have REAL salts, like KCN. Taste that slightly metallic bitter almond tang!

*Yeah, and you'd take MY word on that.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 3:23 am

Beth_Naught wrote:One for Lago, via Pam's House Blend.

Muahahaha!

Sadly, there does come a time when the laughter must stop.

I heard that there are calls from the RNC staff for Michael Steele to resign after making two major gaffes and ruffling the feathers of the establishment within the span of a month.

I really hope this doesn't happen anytime soon. I hope he lasts in his position for as long as he's being amusingly clueless. Then we get the crazy racist guy.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 2:57 pm

Oh, what the fuck?

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 6:47 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Oh, what the fuck?

You know just when I thought the moral depravity of the Catholic church (the institution rather than the followers) could get any worse, you read some story like that and realize that someone does need to form an organization actively seeking to bring it down by any means possible.

I mean you almost wonder if this is cover for the nazi bishops being recommunicated.