FOOD ALERT

TBHQ, tert-Butylhydroquinone – You might have noticed this new chemical in some food you buy and eat. It's a new food preservative being used, I presume, to replace or help lower the amount of hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils already being used. As you know, hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils decrease good cholesterol and increase bad cholesterol – a double whammy. (I avoid these foods like the plaque wherever possible.)

Anyway, butane (yes, that's lighter fluid) is used in the production of TBHQ and comes from natural gas and crude oil. Yuck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tert-Butylhydroquinone :
"In high doses, it has some negative health effects on lab animals, such as precursors to stomach tumors and damage to DNA.[1] A number of studies have shown that prolonged exposure to TBHQ may induce carcinogenity.[2] Other studies, however, have shown inhibition against HCA-induced carcinogenesis (by depression of metabolic activation) for TBHQ and other phenolic antioxidants."

Maybe it's just me, but I thought that food production was efficient to the point of no longer needing questionable preservatives. If I buy cookies, I know they wont last more than 2 weeks before they're eaten. So that brings the question, just how long are these foods sitting around before they are sold to the public? Months, years?

It's bad enough knowing what can go into the production of flour, eggs, butter, and sugar (very basic cake ingredients) let alone adding man made chemicals for the sake of making money.

Movie Ratings - IMO

This is a post not about the extremely flawed and outdated MPAA, but about what I feel a movie should actually be rated.

Take Talladega Nights, it's rated by Encore at 3 stars. This is by far too generous IMO. It should get no more than 2 stars. The first portion of the film is like pulling teeth for me and others. We had to force ourselves through it at different viewings until it took a 180 degree turn and became watchable.

(Actually it could be that the negative opinion of pay-tv movies channels showing mostly 2 stars or less movies most of the time is causing them to upgrade the rating on lesser movies.)

More later.

Movies/Films

Any movie that focuses on a woman crying over love loss is a chick flick. I was just watching The Holiday, when I decided to post this thought. Not that chick flicks are bad or negative, just pointing out an idea.

Frosted Mini Wheats Bite Size UPDATE

Kellogg's must have read my blog or have gotten wise to there own quality control. I have not seen "KBA" boxes for a while. Instead, boxes marked "KBC" are junk! There's the same old problem of overcoated/undercoated pieces.

Avoid KBC boxes.

The Financial Effect ii

This week started the new CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge.
I started playing on Monday and have done reasonably well, IMHO.

My 5 Portfolio results for the week ending May 16:

_______________GAIN_____TOP PERCENTILE____RANK
Portfolio 1.____ +5.8%________7.3%________44,320

Portfolio 2.____ +6.1%________6.6%________39,868

Portfolio 3.____ +6.7%________5.1%________30,823

Portfolio 4.____ +7.4%________3.9%________23,468

Portfolio 5.____ +5.5%________8.3%________50,558
All w/o any formal business training :)

For Poops & Giggles

Given the recent Mothers Day where my wife forgot to get a card, she asked if I could pick one up for her while picking up her script (prescription) at 9 pm the evening before.
Upon reaching Rite Aids surprisingly generous Mothers Day card section, there were four other young men perusing cards. I found this funny. So I went around to other side of the card wall for a B-day for our niece (also upon wife's request). Needless to say the section looked like a 5 year old went through mixing them all :P
So I got back to the Mothers Day side (still with the 4 young men) and was joined by yet another young man. I sidled to the end of the row for the best vantage point and wishing I had my camera. – THAT would have made the best Mothers Day card – 5 young men looking at Mothers Day cards, independent of each other.

TIP: When in a rush for an event card (b-day or whatever), and you don't have the time to read through them all, just do a once over to find the card slots that have the least cards left in them. Those are the popular ones that will likely satisfy your recipients needs in a pinch.

PS. I try to avoid cards because rarely do they satisfy my thoughts/feelings accurately.

POLITICS

I'M FOR CLINTON. She (& Bill) have the experience. Period.

Obama is a politican that America will not elect. It's a fact that America is still strongly racist.
I don't like Obama because he cannot think on his own. He cannot do live Q&A. He gives speeches, nothing more. And he talks "black/ghetto" to minority groups and "Kings English" to predominantly white groups – this is a typical politician.
Also, Obama wants to raise capital gains tax the highest (~28%) of all the candidates.

To me it appears that popular people, politically related or not, merely support Obama for their own personal publicity because it's the history-of-racism redeeming thing to do.

It's unfortunate that this democratic primary is about race and women.

I think the best opportunity to have a democrat in the White House is to have the Primary winner choose the other as a running mate.

Imagine either:
Obama – President

Clinton – Vice President

OR

Clinton – President

Obama – Vice President

UNSTOPPABLE!

I think the next best thing would be to have Edwards as the democratic running mate.