Coss

As noted, I'll be returning from the alternate universe that is the Glorious People's Republic of Idiocy, to attend. Thx to Kong for suggesting this meet. BTW I haven't been to Patpong for more than a decade, so the afternoon could follow on.

From what I understand - and that's from the media - there was a cargo of containers, that was 2 or 3 times over the limits and this shifted in the turn causing the imbalance. But " The adults and children on board were told by the captain to remain in their cabins while the ferry was listing. " This is the cause of all the deaths...

This has similarities to Air craft pilot training that was commented on in the media in the past. The best co-pilots were apparently Aussies because they wouldn't worry about second guessing the pilot or acting independently. The worst were the Koreans and the Japanese because they'd defer to the pilot always and never suggest he was wrong/drunk/asleep/absent. It all changed though and I'm told that now pilots are trained to have initiative. Maybe ship personnel should have similar training in Asia. I am also told that one year, in Nong Khai, there were big floods one year , because the sluice gates (or similar) were not opened. The reason was the boss who had the key to the padlock on the door was away for the weekend. No-one was prepared to break the padlock or the door or contact the boss. This could be sheer laziness or another example of face saving for the boss, who would have had to admit that he forgot to leave the key with someone, indicating that he was not only unfit for the job but a dolt of the first order that could be out-thunk by a Western 5 year old.... but I rant...

MPs used to resign in NZ over points of honour, but the internet age has seen that behaviour become scarce. Though one high profile guy resigned the other day, because he was fed up, with the useless bag of dead dog parts his political party had become.

Whilst I don't think I've offered an opinion on Aspartame, I do so now. When I was about 14 and tubby, I decided that diet Coke was the answer and I drank many litres of the stuff each week. No I didn't lose weight. I did, however get nodules on the cartilage ridges of my ears, not many, 3 or 4 about the size of half a pea. When I stopped drinking diet Coke, the nodules went away. Subsequently, if I drink diet Coke or anything else with Aspartame in it, more than say once a week, the nodules come back. Not scientific, but now I know about nodule control.

Here in the glorious people's republic of idiocy, I always get conversations between the Lao on the fact that I can eat 98% of the Lao food put on the table.

But the real unexplained conspiracy is, why are they all out to get me?

It'd have to be a new one, how about "Orient" Plot development - Kim Jong Haircut's motive is to keep all the passengers captive for future bargaining chips, whilst repurposing the plane as a nuclear bomb delivery vehicle with 5 devices on board.

It'd make a great James Bond movie, Kim Jong Un steals plane and doesn't tell anyone, the world looks for plane, whilst 007 trawls the seedy streets of Asia's nightlife to track down the clues...

Incompetence

You're safe now, as Dumsoda says - no longer made.

I used to really like Kloster

You mean the GMO stuff wasn't green with two heads and oozing slime?

Well yes that's exactly what you're doing - Composition of chalk Composition of Calcium tablets The occurrence of enzymes etc, with a chemical, does not change that chemical's molecular structure. Putting enzymes, dust and pepper in sugar just gives you sugar with enzymes, dust and pepper. The sugar itself is the same, man made or no. I'll bet you a beer, that it's an excess of MSG you're getting, too much keeps me awake at night. The 'natural' stuff on kelp etc is present in really small quantities, so you're unlikely to get the same leg pain. To test this, you could get boxes and boxes of the kelp and scrape off all the white powder until you had about a tablespoon of it. Put that in yer Som Tam, it's about how much they put in here, way too much. Whilst you cannot 'invent' a naturally occurring chemical, you are essentially correct: Kikunae Ikeda from the Tokyo Imperial University isolated glutamic acid as a new taste substance in 1908 from the seaweed Laminaria japonica, kombu, by aqueous extraction and crystallization, and named its taste "umami". He noticed that dashi, the Japanese broth of katsuobushi and kombu, had a peculiar taste that had not been scientifically described at that time and differed from sweet, salty, sour and bitter. To verify that ionized glutamate was responsible for the umami taste, Professor Ikeda studied the taste properties of many glutamate salts such as calcium, potassium, ammonium, and magnesium glutamate. All salts elicited umami in addition to a certain metallic taste due to the other minerals. Among those salts, sodium glutamate was the most soluble and palatable, and crystallized easily. Professor Ikeda named this product monosodium glutamate and submitted a patent to produce MSG. Suzuki brothers started the first commercial production of MSG in 1909 as Aji-no-moto, meaning "essence of taste" in English Wiki woo

if we're to descend into Cat memes...

Sorry Cav, but 'natural' and 'chemical' MSG are identical - exactly the same - indistinguishable. There is no difference, except perhaps in the amount of adulterants found in the naturally occurring version, like diatoms, algae etc. This is a common misperception amongst some in our societies, that a compound, or molecule, is some how different from a naturally occurring version, if it has been made by man. e.g. Salt is salt (NaCl) whether it is scraped off sun heated rocks at the seaside or made from a chemical reaction in a test tube. There is no difference. If there was a difference, it wouldn't be salt. The anti "man made" argument goes something like this: Some chemicals are harmful to health and living organisms, like 2,4,D and 2,4,5 T (agent orange) or concentrated industrial waste. Because they are made by man, ergo anything else made by man is bad too. Like houses, forks and underwear. So to say that MSG as it occurs on Kelp, is OK, but if it comes from a factory, it is not. Is risible. The concern around MSG in the diet, IMHO seems to have come from a time when it was first being produced in quantity and chefs started over-using it (notably in Chinese cuisine). As with anything else, too much is too much. Just like adding too much salt to your steak. Or vinegar in your salad dressing. Here in The Glorious People's Republic, they use it in everything, it's ubiquitous. And yet apart from a dose of the communisms, they are quite a healthy bunch, indeed some of the women... well that's another story. I often have to tell the food vendors to put only small amounts of MSG in the food, not because I don't like it, just because they use too much. Now if they were putting a harmful chemical, like cyanide (man made) in my food, that would be another story. And yet anyone who has eaten bamboo soup/salad/curry in this part of the world, has eaten trace amounts of a cyanogenic glycoside that makes cyanide in your gut -{Although the shoots (new culms that come out of the ground) of bamboo contain a toxin taxiphyllin (a cyanogenic glycoside) that produces cyanide in the gut, proper processing renders them edible.} But hey, that's naturally occurring so it's OK! ​Actually, I reckon there's a link between the local's tolerance of intestinal parasites and the like - and eating bamboo with the trace amounts of cyanide that get produced.

I take issue with this kind of info (not you Flashie) Ever eaten Corn? Then you've eaten the first three on the list. The fact that they may be derived from Genetically modified organisms, doesn't make them bad. A carrot is a Genetically modified organism, the original version was purple, many years of traditional selective breeding allowed the genetics of the carrot to be modified to produce orange carrots, all of this, a long time ago, before the green movement. Ever eaten fish soup/curry/jeow in Thaland/Laos/Cambodia ? Then 90% chance it had fish bladder in it. And Fish bladder is? a bit of skin. Propylene glycol is considered generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and it is used as an humectant (E1520), solvent, and preservative in food and for tobacco products, ... ..... Propylene glycol is used as a solvent in many pharmaceuticals, including oral, injectable and topical formulations, such as for diazepam and lorazepam which are insoluble in water. (see Wikiwoo) Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) - Good sushi rice is made (in part) by boiling a bit of Kelp with white powder on it (naturally occurring MSG) with the rice. Glutamates are present in many foods naturally. Natural Flavors, well hell, you wouldn't want any of those would you? GMO Sugars - See argument on Genetically modified organisms above. And while we're at it, how do you genetically modify a molecule of sugar? Caramel Coloring - again very scary, sugar, slightly burned, like toffee, got to be poisonous - right? Insect-Based Dyes - If you ever had a cake with pink icing prior to, say, the '50s, you had red food colouring made from beetles. Half the world eat insects what's the problem? Carrageenan - made from seaweed - Carrageenan is a vegetarian and vegan alternative to gelatine -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrageenan - actually, if the Vegans like it, there could be problems with this one... BPA ? Boricua Popular Army? Mind you, that doesn't mean to say that we should approve of the business practises of Monsanto and the like, they're c*nts.

MH370 Search Planes Spot Floating Rohingya Refugees, Dismiss As “Unrelated Debris†28 Mar 2014 SOUTH INDIAN OCEAN – The ongoing saga of locating Malaysia Airlines flight 370 took another disappointing turn today as search planes discovered that many of the large objects seen by satellites were just floating rafts full of Rohingya refugees. At approximately 8am this morning Perth time, a US navy P8 aircraft passed over what initially appeared to be a large floating object, the first human contact with a possible piece of the missing Boeing 777 jet, which vanished from radar on March 8. However, once the plane got close enough, the pilots realized that the object was in fact several hundred starving, dehydrated, stateless persons waving from large pontoon. “Disappointment†as mysterious object at sea revealed to be unwanted humans “It’s disappointing that we didn’t find any wreckage, but we’re determined to keep looking,†said Lt Commander Adam Shantz. “There’s a lot of unrelated debris floating in the ocean, and we knew that from the start.†The US navy reported that while there were some corpses floating in the sea nearby the raft, it was assumed that the bodies were Rohingyas, and therefore of no interest to the search effort, or to any of the 25 nations involved. Once it was established that the refugees were unrelated to flight MH370, the navy plane flew on and headed towards other coordinates that matched promising satellite data. “We don’t want to waste any resources, not even for an hour,†added Shantz. “People are depending on us.†The news was shared with the grieving families of the missing passengers at a news conference. “We are saddened to report that some of the satellite photos provided by the French authorities turned out to be several hundred living persons who are not material to our investigation, rather than dead persons who might be,†said Malaysia’s acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein. “However, with every lead eliminated, we are in fact narrowing our search field and hope to recover a piece of the plane soon.†With grieving family members already initiating lawsuits against the Malaysian government, which they accuse of withholding key information, and with the Chinese state demanding access to all data used in the investigation, pressure is mounting on the Malaysians to come up with at least a single confirmed piece of the actual wreckage to verify their conviction that the plane crashed in the south Indian Ocean. Many family members expressed anger at the discovery of the floating Rohingya refugees. “If these satellite images can’t tell the difference between our loved ones and these dark-skinned people, then the technology is suspect,†said one woman whose husband was aboard flight 370. “The ocean could be full of floating refugees. We could be chasing phantoms for weeks.†According to oceanographer Martin Teel, the south Indian Ocean contains several areas known as “gyres,†or swirling eddies of currents where garbage and other items disposed of by human society end up, floating in endless circles indefinitely. A closer look at the ocean debris, which is of no value to investigators, families, governments, or media “It’s not surprising that these Rohingyas appeared on satellite images, causing confusion to the search efforts,†he said. “From what I understand, they have been thrown out of Bangladesh, Burma, and Thailand already. They’re exactly the kind of detritus that ends up in international waters.†“The solution going forward is clear,†he added. “Stop disposing of refugees at sea. That’s no way to treat our oceans.†Despite the setback, the Malaysian government expressed confidence that the combined efforts and assets of the searching nations would soon find something of value. “A piece of wing, a life jacket, even a floating body,†said one official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the investigation. “We know that it’s out there, and we can’t let any distractions prevent us from focusing on what’s important.†No Rohingyas were available for comment. http://notthenation.com/2014/03/mh370-search-planes-spot-floating-rohingya-refugees-dismiss-as-unrelated-debris/

What is the difference between a chickpea and a lentil? I wouldn't pay $200 to have a lentil on my face

We had an outage at my place this morning and my PC, laptop, TV, DVD, iPad & my new surround sound music system were all shut down. Then I discovered that my iPhone battery was flat and to top it off it was raining outside, so I couldn't play golf. I went into the kitchen to make coffee and then I remembered that this also needs power, so I talked with my wife for a few hours. She seems like a nice person.

What's the difference between an Afghani Military Base and a Pakistani Elementary School? I don't know, I just fly the drone.

What do you call an Afghani who owns a camel and a goat? Bisexual.

I heard they found the plane, well at least, Sarah Palin tweeted, that she could see the wreckage from her house.

Quite, many theories, no winners yet. My only thoughts are that if it was terrorist or suicide or another intentional reason, whomsoever did it would have said something, left a note, whatever. In the apparent absence of this communication, it would likely be accidental, but then there's all that manoeuvring - so - still a mystery.

I wonder if they'll know how to breed?