Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin rumbled through Washington on the back of a Harley as she and her family began an East Coast bus tour Sunday that renewed speculation that Mrs. Palin would join the still-unsettled Republican presidential contest.
Wearing a black leather jacket and surrounded by a throng of cheering fans, Mrs. Palin and family members jumped on bikes …
You won’t find the bitterest taste in nature — it was created in a lab by accident. Bitter foods are inedible for some people, others barely notice — but kids are the most sensitive of all…
According to ABC (Australia), a genetics study coming out of the University of Barcelona currently published in the journal Biology Letters focuses on one particular [human] gene in the sequence that, when present, makes an individual sensitive to the taste of the organic compound phenylthiocarbamide.
This chemical is present in Brussels sprouts as well as cabbage and broccoli, and importantly from an evolutionary perspective, in many poisonous plants.
Love them or hate them, around 40% of the sprouts produced for the UK market are consumed in the weeks up to and including Christmas day. But the varieties on the table today are very different from those that we would have been eating in the past, according to Peter van der Toorn, head of R&D in the leafy vegetables section at agrochemicals major Syngenta.
‘We don’t have real bitter tasting sprouts anymore,’ Van der Toorn says. ‘Our product range has moved to a series of “classic??? tasting varieties and another series of super mild tasting varieties. But even the classic tasting sprouts are not as bitter as they were …
Some of the glucosinolates present in Brussels, for example, include glucoraphanin, glucobrassicin, sinigrin and progoitrin. Sinigrin and progoitrin relate to the bitter taste on eating Brussels sprouts. However, the story is complicated as a mixture of glucosolinates and other compounds are involved in the bitterness and flavour of Brussels, and this taste experience varies from person to person.
‘There are genetic differences between individuals that make us more or less sensitive to these bitter flavours,’ Mithen explains. ‘These genetic differences affect the expression of taste receptors that make the individual more or less sensitive to some of the compounds in Brussels.’
I’m apparently one of those people who perceive Brussels sprouts as irredeemably horrid. If force fed them, I gag.
Which is just what my mother used to do to me back in the Sixties.
When I was a kid dinner featuring Brussels was really to be dreaded. Just the odor of them cooking evoked a vague nausea.
My mother, never a reasonable person, took my perception that they were revolting as a personal affront. She would set the timer on the stove to five or ten minutes and threaten that I needed to eat the things before the alarm dinged.
If I couldn’t eat them, and such was almost always the case, the punishment was a leather belt and the rest of the evening confined to the bedroom.
“Look at the kid, he’s gagging, he’s gagging!” cackled the parents, insane with anger at the temerity of my reaction at the dinner table. Over forty years later it’s still fresh in the mind.
The man who brought the apex of high school social order and circle jerk to the world wide web, Mark Zuckerberg, dispenses more wisdom:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is buzzing in Yahoo! Search for an unusual reason: his eating habits. The social network pioneer told Fortune Magazine that he is challenging himself to eat more responsibly and sustainably. He’s not separating himself from meat; he’s getting closer to it. “The only meat I’m eating is from animals I’ve killed myself,” the 27-year-old billionaire told Fortune. “It’s easy to take the food we eat for granted when we can eat good things every day.” So far he’s slaughtered a goat, slayed a pig, and boiled a live lobster. The response around social media has been positive. Many say they applaud his thoughtful way of eating.
Michigan’s GOP rep from Livonia, Thaddeus McCotter, may or may not run for President.
However, McCotter’s brief appearance in the news this week does present an opportunity to write about someone who is not the usual run-of-the-mill Republican mortal-enemy-of-the-middle-class.
For example, McCotter is not anti-union, which is a requirement if you want to be part of the Tea Party and its GOP appendix.
In fact, he supports Detroit and US manufacturing as this video makes clear.
McCotter is shown in 2009 playing in his brother’s band, Dr. Zaius & the Bright Eyes, the name entirely chosen, rather humorously, from Planet of the Apes. (Follow the links.)
And here, at OpenSecrets, is McCotter’s political expenditures list with three entries for paying Zaius & the Bright Eyes at three political affairs. (Three gigs, $600 per pop.)
Likes Detroit, plays guitar.
A sort of anti-matter version of Ted Nugent.
While Nugent obviously plays guitar he can now regularly be found hating on unions, Detroit and the auto industry. (Although Ted still calls himself the Motor City Madman, it’s been proven by science — namely through citation of his own words here — that he detests these three things.)
The Livonia Republican said he’s “seriously” mulling a decision to join the Republican presidential field since candidates have failed to understand the importance of manufacturing. He said he wants to develop a growth agenda that will lead to prosperity and jobs.
Born in Detroit and valuing a strong manufacturing base, McCotter said he would take the Michigan message to America.
His decision should come “very soon.” “It’s going to be a very quick yes or no,” and not an announcement to form an exploratory committee, he said.
McCotter said it’s too soon to determine whether seeking a higher office would mean he’d bow out of a reelection bid for the House of Representatives, a seat he’s held since 2003.
“Why would you make a decision on something you haven’t decided,” he asked.
Need further proof of amusing deviation from orthodoxy?
Here’s McCotter in a short, seemingly intentionally cracked but enjoyable segment for the right wing Human Events website, called Rock Solid with Thaddeus McCotter:
Good news, lads! Good news! He’s unbelievably frisky and voracious in appetites!
Once your manly power is exposed to the world it can only grow bigger. A monster escapes from the lab to roam the land. The locals build great legends around it. Are they actually true? Who can say and does it even matter?
GIGI GOYETTE was on “Extra” last night, telling former Philadelphia news anchor Jerry Penacoli about her no-longer-secret lust affair with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
According to the former child star, the pair met on a Malibu beach in the late 1970s, when Arnold was best known as an oiled-up muscleman in a thong
Gigi told “Extra” they met for many secret romps, sometimes in the very hotel where Maria Shriver was staying with their children.
“Arnold is a very physical and sexual man,” she said, “with a voracious appetite that likes a lot of physical attention.”
* The London Sun went a step further, claiming Gigi landed in the hospital because Arnold liked his romps rough. A Sun source said after one “Raw Deal,” Gigi said she was left “hurt and embarrassed.”
Too much Vienna Wiener?
“[Gigi] said Arnold was unbelievably frisky and that she had to go to hospital he was so rough. She was embarrassed turning up with an injury like that,” a “friend” said.
Too much Vienna Wiener? Boy, what you’d give to have been able to write that line for a daily newspaper?!
Even better now — Hey Cutie — the new song, still guaranteed fresh three days from the oven, with featured Arnold singing.
Arnold’s taste for relentless fun between the sheets begged for a musical treatment, something to update “Carla Sandwich.”
Only something boffing bopping, manly and with a decent hook would do service to his thirst for women at the expense of family, fidelity, grace and common sense.
The trick was finding something Arnold had uttered, a “great” line, something that would imprint the basic story at once.
So I fell out of my chair laughing when I heard the big man say “Hey cutie pie!” from one of his movies. (Know which one? It’s out of context.)
Then it wrote itself.
So here we go — “Hey Cutie!” — with Arnold’s inimitable vocal contributions, easy pickings because of the omnipresence of his movies.
Gear wise, it’s mostly plain Adrenalinn III, used to set a Seventies glam-rock style.
Need a funny or sad rock ditty set to the headlines, on demand? Fast turnaround and timeliness, guaranteed.
Keywords: Schwarzenegger, maid, housekeeper, scandal, Arnold jokes
Good news, lads! Good news! We had this old song just waiting for news like this.
UPDATED
From the LA Times, on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s problem with other women and a child born out of wedlock:
“After leaving the governor’s office I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago,” Schwarzenegger said Monday night in a statement to The Times.
Although most of the online ribbing delivered through Twitter and blogs have poked fun at Schwarzenegger through lines he spoke in blockbuster films …
DD had a song for that in 2005. Posted to the Highway Kings bio page in March of that year, it was in response to news — again from the LA Times — on Arnold’s escapades as a serial sexual harasser of women on the sets of his blockbuster movies.
For that he was nicknamed the Gropinator. The story, which was published before his election, didn’t have much effect although it went nationwide and spawned many many jokes. Schwarzenegger became the Governator.
I Think We Should Make a Carla Sandwich — by DD under the nom de plume, Arnold & the Gropinators, is here.
It comes from material originally published in the Los Angeles Times, concerning Schwarzenegger and a woman named “Carla:”
[The song] is taken from a description in the The Times of an alleged movie set incident in which Schwarzenegger and his stand-in trapped [a stand-in named Carla] next to a food service table. Schwarzenegger supposedly said: ‘I think we should make a Carla sandwich,’ and the men squeezed her between them. After they released [the woman] … Schwarzenegger stuck his tongue in her mouth.”
Wunderbar! Everything old is new again for a few minutes!
“I vould like to vork you out! Your ass feels to me very stout!”
Arnold’s vocal contributions originally taken from prank telephone call sites.
Arnold’s election as governor of California came about as a consequence of something now dreadfully familiar in American elections: The voting public’s rage winding up misdirected into electing someone who becomes observably much worse than the person replaced.
In California the voters were enraged with bland Gray Davis. The budget was a mess and Schwarzenegger showed up, promising the public he’d take the Terminator to Sacramento and beat the government into line with a broom.
He also ran on repealing and refuning the “car tax.” No joke. And this appealed to the reactionary California voter.
Yeah! We wanted our trivial car tax refund from the state! And we got it!
With one of his first act’s as the governor Schwarzenegger made the budget deficit far worse than it had been. And as the state’s public sector economy continued to crater in the coming years his fellow Republicans, always in the minority, blocked all attempts to fix it because of the state law that requires a supermajority to pass any tax/budget legislation.
The Gropinators [explained] the politics behind the big man’s success, using rock and roll. Our leader’s election came not through reasoned judgment, but a good old angry and mentally ill snapout, a desire of the polity to strike, to lash out, to schlag — someone in government. We weren’t going to take it! Take what? Who cares? But someone, like Gray Davis, had to be made to pay and Arnold was the benefactor. Lyric: You sent him to Sac-ra-men-to; No rotten car tax, no, no! We sent ‘im to Sac-ra-men-to; We’re not gonna take it, no, no! Arghhh! Danger! Get out of the way, we might have to hit you.
This defines the instability of US government. In bad times, and we got them in spades, the people turn ugly. Instead of relying on thought when they need it most, they just take the fist to those in office even if the alternative is worse. When the poisoned product of their rage arrives, everyone suffers belated buyer’s remorse.
Electromagnetic pulse is now the official plot device for most invasion science-fiction or any drama the requires the nullification of the US military.
Paradoxically, the US military is hardened against EMP — the old Cold War thing, remember. Hadda be able to continue mutual assured destruction even if everything else had fallen down.
Anyway, the trailer is from Falling Skies, a new alien invasion series for television.
I made the point when reviewed Battle: LA that any “alien invasion” that has weaponry that relies on the same things we know — explosives, projectiles, with some directed energy thrown in on the side — is doomed.
No invading force with that level of technology can bring enough with it in supply to prevail.
Plus, there’s the mixing of the incompatible. If you have levels of armament only superior to western might by matters of degree, not orders of magnitude, than you can’t travel faster than light, either, and you’d never have been able to get here.
But if you have some miraculous faster-than-light travel then any civilization you encounter that doesn’t is like ants beneath the feet.
The Stargate franchise got around this by having found wormhole gates.
And Battlestar Galactica‘s science never impressed me. And Sanctuary,Eureka and V were and are just ridiculous.
But that doesn’t mean you still can’t have a good show. The trailer to Falling Skies doesn’t provide many clues to its dramatic quality.
Relief officials inundated with donations after the flurry of twisters that killed more than 300 people across the South are sorting through the broken toys and used underwear they don’t need while hunting for places to store mountains of vital supplies like canned food …
ith storage space scarce, most say they can’t handle any more used toys or cast-off clothing.
“That becomes the disaster within the disaster,” said Salvation Army spokesman Mark Jones. “When people make those mass donations … it causes the community to be overrun with them …
As for the Salvation Army, Jones said the agency only recently found warehouse space in hard-hit Tuscaloosa and still desperately needs new underwear, nonperishable foods, pet food and sports drinks.
Canned food and cleaning products are urgently needed ..
I know the first thing that always occurs to me when I see these kinds of things is to bag up some of my used underwear, socks and broken shit.
More nose gold from the fall of Osama bin Laden, jihadis are angry. In slow motion, apparently, because it takes awhile for the private sector industry devoted to translating their chat boards to deliver the goods.
From Morocco to the foothills of the Himalayas, the call for revenge echoes across the internet. Online forums associated with al Qaeda overflow with eulogies for Osama bin Laden, and with declarations that global jihad will continue. Even Facebook groups have emerged to mourn the demise of the world’s most wanted man.
There have also been calls in jihadist forums for al Qaeda to revive its experiments with weapons of mass destruction. The SITE Institute translated one such appeal on the Shumukh al-Islam forum: “We want to manufacture soman, ricin, mustard gas and VX nerve gas,” it declared. But there have also been calls for more basic attacks. “Go out at night in a targeted infidel compound with thirty canisters and a phone,” read one.
Old news. Wishing for ricin and poison gases doesn’t make it so. Neither do Internet recipes.
SITE Institute, in case you have forgotten, has been translating no account jihadi texts for a decade. Unlike the price of barrels of oil, the value has depreciated quite a bit, only enough to finance a small office now, maybe.
Readers note: “Treasure trove” used once in connection with the worldly refuse of Osama bin Laden.
What can jihadis do — right away — now that the ol’ man is dead? What’s suitable for the next chapter, The Revenge of Osama bin Laden.
