deadly toxins in food

I saw a Horizon TV programme 12? years ago which had identified the increase in colonic and other digestive cancers amongst first+ second world countries and it tried to identify what was causing them. I did write to the BBC to ask them to reshow the programme but they said no [or effectively ]

It looked at alcohol,olive oils, fish, vegetables and quite a few other nourishment items and then investigated if any of these were the culprits as to the increase in cancers associated with rising wealth.

Result : Total zero . The summary of the programme was that no-one knew.....

Then came the result that acrylamides are mutagenic, years later in other research .

To my mind, this seems to fit the facts. People in richer countries tend to eat more meat and chips and crisps.......

Unfortunately, the method of cooking these [usually - meat being an exception sometimes] is to use high temperatures to cook them.

This causes a chemical reaction in the foodstuffs which produce acrylamides.

OOPS.

It has been in the news off and on , but never more than 1 article at a time , ie never a 'shock, horror probe!' type reaction, but is to my mind extremely serious.

Come on scientific community , publish properly and lets get the world eating more healthily !

To any seriously worried reader please note toxins are not deadly in small doses [ you can die of salt [common or garden like you put on your chips ] poisoning. Its when large doses are used or build up when it gets to be a major problem

My proposal for helping global warming/globalisation of governments

Well, like we don't want global warming , but we sertainhly don't want a lower standard of living either ........ intractable problem?
Countries do not want to help/pay more than others to help- and why should they ?

http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=38605
The link says that EU CO2 emissions due to the aviation sector are about 2% of total but that doesnt take NOx emissions into account which are much more 'warming' - so planes are contributing maybe 10% of the total and its growing fast even though fuel use technology is getting better all the time.

people are using flights more due to the cost - its really ridiculously cheap- you can travel 1000 miles for about £2 [$3] since the arrival of low cost airlines. Absolutely crazy prices - I go to Spain and places for almost nothing [if you ignore airport dues].

A simple way would be to tax kerosene. This is hard to do piecemeal country by country, but if we had a global agreement that kerosene was taxed at 10% [or whatever], then this would be easy to do.

This money then would create a global pool which could be earmarked for energy saving schemes throughout the world - say paying Brazil to keep some forests alive- I know it could be abused, but done correctly would give us a little of what we need - MONEY - to help fight this problem.- and obviously slow down the rate of increase in airline traffic a little.

Its such an obvious win/win situation that I commend it to the house . Even Dubyer might go for it as it wouldnt affect car fuel prices !

camilla and Prince Charles

Wow.
How can people get excited about this one. 2 guys wanna get married? Well let them get on with it. The media seem to think its not a great event for some reason , but a royal event usually has some glitz about it for some reason, so why not this time ?
I dont care one way or the other , but people of England [ of which I am one], lets be consistent and cheer them on their way !

foxhunting ? why not cockfighting

Guess which first world country still has cockfighting ?.............
Yup- its the good ole US of A !
This 'sport' is still legal in 2 States - one is Louisiana, I forget the other.
Another state that banned it recently is planning on trying to get it back on the 'ok' list by putting muffles on their spikes and giving the cocks a sort of armoured waistcoat !
The idea is that if it's nice and ethically fine like that, then they could show fights during the interval at other 'sporting' events
Unfortunately as opponents of this proposal states - they could and would still try[and sometimes succeed] to peck out the others' eyes.
I guess our huntsmen over here are with you on this one guys - just think how much employment it would have ? :(

lovely? phrase .. well thanks anyway :)

I have just read this sentence from Terry Pratchett book 'Moving Pictures' ... or was it 'Goin postal' not importanat I guess.....
"inside the mind of every old man is a young man wondering ; 'what happened? ' "
Absolutely glorious

Iran again

What with the media interest about invading/not etc, it totally slipped my mind ....
If they have been cheating on the NPT stuff , is this actual justiification to go to war at all - certainly not without 100% UN approval in my opinion.... I think that it would be violating a UN treaty so should be treated soley within the auspices of the UN [ if Im wrong here - I still think the bottom line is identical - it needs world support]
Any argument that Iran might give the 'odd' nuke to unscrupulous people I dont think stands up to much- even after the treatment they got in the IraQ/N war by way of US help in WMD .
Bombing [a] nuclear installation[s] may be justified but a war NOT.

housing crisis in UK ?what crisis

There's always a crisis of not enough houses being built, or the 'wrong' sort or whatever.
To a simple soul such as myself, it seems it should be relatively simple to sort.
A) if needed , force local government to allot building spaces or whatever the correct phrase is, and allow said authority to rake of some of the windfall profit from that land as a tax.
b) allow the building companies to make money from building ! If this means that the 'social housing' bit of the law needs changing , then so be it........
Problem sorted QED :)