We hear a lot about trans fats in food and the negative health effects of them. However, most folks without a background in chemistry do not really know what that means. Tonight the object is to clear that up, and to point out sources that are high in them so they can be avoided.
Contrary to the opening statement, not all trans fats have deleterious health effects. There are a couple that seem to be beneficial, but unfortunately they are sort of rare. They are also some of the few trans fats that occur naturally. By a huge margin, most trans fats consumed are artificially produced, and we shall get into that as well.
To understand the topic well, a chemistry lesson will first have to be given. However, this IS Pique the Geek!
The resistance continues at Liberty Square, with free pizza 😉
Keith Olbermann interviewed Matt Taibbi of Rolling about the movement and the lack of media attention.
Occupy Wall St. may be gaining strength but it’s not without its critics on the left. Many have applauded the movements support of the 99% in the lower rings of the ladder who will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption if the 1% on the top but the group had indeed yet to articulate any specific demands. While it may be performing a crucial roll in helpng to educate the uninformed abouthow they have been victimized by Wall St. and the “To Big To Fail” banks, the deliberate, almost lack of organization, the self-styles leaderless resistance movement and its refusal to articulate demands, could both hamper its growth and slow its being taken as seriously as it would like to be.
It’s unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive and scornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street. Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists. That’s just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives (which, by definition, includes establishment media outlets) are going to be hostile to those challenges. As the virtually universal disdain in these same circles for WikiLeaks (and, before that, for the Iraq War protests) demonstrated: the more effectively adversarial it is, the more establishment hostility it’s going to provoke.
Nor is it surprising that much of the most vocal criticisms of the Wall Street protests has come from some self-identified progressives, who one might think would be instinctively sympathetic to the substantive message of the protesters. In an excellent analysis entitled “Why Establishment Media & the Power Elite Loathe Occupy Wall Street,” Kevin Gosztola chronicles how many of the most scornful criticisms have come from Democratic partisans who — like the politicians to whom they devote their fealty — feign populist opposition to Wall Street for political gain.
One of the chief complaints, besides the “leaderless” and lack of a list of specific demands, that has been heard coming from the left is attire, as Kevin Gosztola noted in his FDL article:
Liberals have shown scorn, too, suggesting the occupation is not a “Main Street production” or that the protesters aren’t dressed properly and should wear suits cause the civil rights movement would not have won if they hadn’t worn decent clothing.
Even the liberal Mother Jones was critical:
Liberals have shown scorn, too, suggesting the occupation is not a “Main Street production” or that the protesters aren’t dressed properly and should wear suits cause the civil rights movement would not have won if they hadn’t worn decent clothing.
Both articles, Greenwald’s and Gosztola’s, need to be read in full to understand not just the reasons that the media is ignoring this movement but why and how Occupy Wall St. happened and continues.
Occupy Wall St. Is now spreading across the country:
The protest spread to other cities over the weekend.
A small group of “Occupy Los Angeles” demonstrators marched through the streets of downtown Los Angeles on Saturday to show their support for the protesters in New York City.
“Corporate interests seem to be controlling both parties,” one protester told LAActivist.com. “The ‘little man,’ the ‘American every man,’ just isn’t getting their voice heard. When you need $35,000 to donate to a campaign to get your voice heard, to have a meeting, that’s not democracy.”
“Occupy Los Angeles” protesters plan to begin a demonstration at City Hall on October 1. The “Occupy Los Angeles” Facebook page had nearly 2,000 likes as of Tuesday afternoon.
Another demonstration popped up in Chicago over the weekend. Around 20 “Occupy Chicago” protesters gathered at Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, on Friday and then marched to the Federal Reserve Bank. Some protesters have remained camped out in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the organizers said the “occupation” had grown from 4 people to about 50.
Other “occupation” protests are being planned for Detroit, Denver, Cleveland, Boston, Phoenix, Seattle, Kansas City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. The site occupytogether.org has been set up in hopes of coordinating the protests.
I have a message for the the so-called “Left”:
Get off your butts and get behind this movement because unless you are part of the 1%, they are YOU.
Find out why the College Republicans at UC Berkeley are WORSE; the heckler at President Obama’s fundraiser in Los Angeles is WORSER; and Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., is the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD for Sept. 27, 2011.
“Find out why a “peck” of Republicans comprised of Sen. Jim DeMint, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan and conservative columnist John Feehery is WORSE; FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly is WORSER; and Pam Olsen, Rick Perry’s new Florida campaign co-chair, is the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD for September 23, 2011.
The recent results from CERN (the acronym for the original name for the outfit, Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) about neutrinos being propagated faster than light speed has caught a lot of attention. I am still not convinced that the data are correct, but 15,000 individual measurements at the high certainty that is claimed certainly gets one’s attention.
I am not prepared to say whether or not these results are valid as of yet. The folks at CERN are begging other laboratories with comparable apparatus and expertise to verify (or to refute) the findings. That is how science is supposed to work!
However, 15,000 individual determinations are a LOT of data! Let us for the moment take the data at face value and assume that this is not a fluke nor a mistake, but an actual “violation” of the Special Theory of Relativity that indicates that no massive particle can exceed the speed of light, henceforth called c. Ready to do some thought experiments? I am! Let us go!
The silence of the traditional media on the Wall St. protest that has been going on for a week is deafening. As Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore point out of this were the Tea Party, it would be all over TV and the papers. Last, Mr. Moore expresses his outrage of over the murder of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia and his support of the Innocence Project and Get Out the Vote in Georgia.
This seems to be a topical topic (please forgive the confoundment of words) because of the controversial claims that the purported “Doctor Oz” gave last week about arsenic in apple juice. I shall give a couple of links later about that, but shall first describe the element in a Geeky way.
Then I shall dismember “Dr. Oz’s” credibility. Fair enough?
Before we get started, know that arsenic is all around us, at higher or lower concentrations, depending on where we live. I shall get into that a bit as well. The important thing to come away with from this post is that arsenic is almost (but not ALWAYS) a bad thing to ingest or to have for an injection. On the other hand, it likely is allowing us to communicate via the Internet as we read and speak.
