Hi Ski. I hereby report an international example of drug-taking peer pressure. I was sitting happily on the couch and read that your coffee was kicking in. It's morning, and I've just got up. I usually have a big pot of very weak tea. I minimize my coffee as I consider it a brain spazzing drug and carcinogenic to boot, due to the roasting process.
During my time in the oil industry, dealing with carcinogens, oxidation and polymerization processes, and various health issues, I realized that the process of heating organic material above 160 deg C and exposing them to air makes a real brew of toxic chemicals, some of which are carcinogenic. 1 nitro pyrene for example comes out of diesel engines.
When people cook cooking oil in a frying pan, to cook bacon, for example, they brew up a bunch of chemicals, including tasty ones. Bacon has nitrites in it, which, if combined with amines one swallows [inadvertently normally], forms nitrosamines, which are nasty carcinogens. We stopped putting nitrites in cutting oils to avoid the problem. Mists in machine rooms get inhaled, coughed up and swallowed. Amines are also common in such environments.
It's ironic that nitrites are used in bacon and other cured meats [note that microbes can't survive in the cured bacon, which is why the bacon is cured, which should suggest that if the microbes can't survive, it isn't necessarily all that great for human cells either]. Bacon is intended to be eaten and cutting oils aren't. But cutting oils don't have the nitrites but bacon does.
It's also interesting that "Big Bad Evil-doing Oil" avoids harm to humans, but other people don't. Contrary to popular myth, people like me working in the oil industry are not out to despoliate the Earth, kill Gaia and all our grand children in a murky miasma.
Anyway, I have been got by peer pressure! Coffee nearly finished now.
On Sean Penn and the "doing good" tendency. I think we all have it. We don't have such a big stage, that's all. But some of us are quite opinionated and some of us less so. I notice for example, that when I suggest Saddam had been hung for a crime similar to the collateral damage of others, the "do gooders", full of their own importance, leap vituperatively onto the attack without engaging brains. Which is much the same as Sean Penn. I don't see why he should just sit in his house, or play golf. He might as well go exploring and invite people to see what he sees and tell them what he thinks. Which doesn't mean I have to agree with him.
Yum, poached eggs ready - without bacon [I would have it today if available - might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb].
Mqurice |
