I was a bit surprised to see some familiar faces at the funeral today. I thought I’d already been to theirs. Must have dreamt it. Next time I’ll make sure. I’ll take a hammer.
I don’t know if I should keep going to people’s funerals. I bet none of them will come to mine.
The sofa bed arrived. The ad said ‘some assembly required’ so I thought okay, if they get it into the house I can take it to its room bit by bit and assemble it there. Turns out ‘assembly’ means fitting the legs. It arrived in one bit. One big, very heavy bit.
Fortunately CStM was on hand to guide them through the house by the most difficult route possible. I was so proud. They could have taken it round to the greenhouse end and carried it a quarter of the distance with no awkward corners but they’ll never know.
I have the stuff to make an Irish coffee but I’ll make it tomorrow. With a blend, not a malt. Tonight it’s just plain whisky. Coffee and whisky and a smoke. Everything that’s evil in the world and still my funeral seems far away.
Which is good. I can’t decide whether to be stuffed with popcorn and tobacco and cremated (the popcorn is for the sound effects, and to make sure I get a bigger urn than Cyril Smith) or to be buried with a recording, speaker and proximity sensor that says ‘Fuck off!’ every time someone tries to dance on my grave. Decisions, decisions…
What’s that? Coffee isn’t evil? Oh yes it is and the idiots who wrote it missed a trick. They also seem to have skipped research, editing and proofreading but then they don’t bother with facts so why trouble themselves with any of the minor details?
(Tipped by Smoking Scot via email, incidentally)
The headline is ‘The evils of caffeine‘. Yes, really. The Righteous religion has declared it evil, along with anything else you might enjoy. Not just bad for you, unhealthy, or ‘ooo, no, you shouldn’t do that’. Actually evil.
Satan drinks a lot of caffeine. That’s how he gets so much evil done. Santa gets round the whole world in one night so he must have it as a horse-syringe injection on Christmas Eve. No wonder he has to catch up on sleep for a year.
I suppose that must be the logic, if there is any, behind all this. Good story ideas in there.
The trick they missed:
They also say that caffeine contains components such as Niacin, Magnesium and Potassium, which play a vital role for our health:
It contains niacin? Really? Oh coffeephobes, you missed a good one there. You could have linked it directly to smoking if you knew any actual science. The drones will fall for it – you can trust me on that one, I road tested niacin/vitamin B3 years ago. Probably cost the NHS some money treating vitamin deficiency but what the hell, I’ve paid in for years and haven’t used much. Might as well get my money’s worth.
Aaaand… if the reporter knew at least elementary school science, none of those words are capitalised. But hey, I’ve been doing some editing lately. I’m in picky mode.
Note also the mention that coffee contains magnesium, then the doublethink that says –
Muscle stiffness – caffeine increases the loss of calcium and magnesium, which has a negative impact on muscle tissues, impeding their relaxation mechanism.
Hm. Unless I have espresso or a can of chemical fizz (cheapo versions of Red Bull) I have milk in coffee. That gives me calcium. My habit of gnawing the bones of the dead helps with that too. Oh come on, sucking the marrow out is still the best part of a good chop.
A few paragraphs ago, we were told that coffee contains magnesium and that is one of its benefits. Now it causes magnesium depletion, and all within a few seconds of reading time. That’s faster than the Daily Mail! They would at least wait until the next day before claiming the opposite of what they claimed in the previous article.
Caffeine is an addictive drug, which alters our brain’s natural state and stimulates it in a manner similar to mechanisms employed by cocaine and heroin:
Does this sound at all familiar? Antismokers, in particular. Does the wording sound like something you’ve heard and repeated like an ADHD parrot for many years?
Antismokers who made Starbucks and Costa and every coffee shop smoke-free so you could have them to yourselves. Well folks, you’re banned too. Hear my sympathetic hysterical laugh.
Oh wait, I can’t pass up this one –
Heartburn – caffeine is alkaline, which spurs the stomach to react by dumping more hydrochloric acid as a neuralizer
I think a neuralizer is a Star Trek weapon, something like a tazer. They might have meant neutralizer (neutraliser in proper English) and it’s bollocks anyway. You can’t drink enough to promote that much acid and if you did, neutralising it will not cause heartburn. It will cause nothing. Heartburn is stomach acid leaking up into the oesophagus and that has more to do with a dodgy valve than what you put in there.
Their recommendations do not include putting whisky in your coffee so I will ignore them. They recommend drinking orange juice instead. Oh dear. The Sugar Righteous have banned that too.
Change your diet. Drink orange Juice, or eat fresh fruits in order to nourish your body with vitamin C.
Why does this exclude coffee? Or anything else? You can have more than one thing in your life. You are not a robot. Or… are you?
Coffee is a habit. Replace it with a small glass of fresh pressed orange juice. Have a grain or oats based breakfast (with a low glycemic index). It will keep your brain nourished all morning.
My brain works just fine. CStM has gone to bed and I am in post-dead-friend drinking mood. He is a massive loss to science, to our small group of independent rogue scientists and also a personal loss. If I last as long and get through half of what he got through I’ll call this game a win.
I have had several coffees and am making a big dent in a bottle of whisky. Do these Righteous seriously want my brain to work so much better? Oh that might not turn out as they expect.
But then, what do they expect? They say smoking is bad but then they ban vaping. I like vaping, it’s a great new thing but for me, it won’t stop me lighting up yet. Others have switched to it and some are now antismokers and if you’re reading, well, nobody likes a quitter. You are a failure. You couldn’t handle the real thing.
Vapers who recognise we’re on the same side, welcome. Join the resistance.
If you also like a coffee with your vape then don’t smirk at the smokers.
You’re in there with the antismokers and antivapers.
Now you have to give up coffee too.
Your life… is it worth living?
Now that Obama has gone can we have a red line that means something? Because they are picking us off, one pleasure at a time.
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We’ll have to learn to grow coffee soon.
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I was late for tobacco so I made sure that I was early for coffee.
Growing Coffee Beans at Home
“Growing coffee plants at home is a rewarding experience that will help you learn and appreciate the work involved in producing coffee. It is a very easy plant to take care of and is a great conversation piece, especially during flowering or cherry development”
https://web.archive.org/web/20130703185803/http://www.coffeeresearch.org/coffee/homegrowing.htm
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I like the idea of plants that feed on dried blood 😉
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This is actually a recycled evil. It maybe? didn’t make it to the UK, I’m not sure. I was living in the States in the mid-1980s, and newspapers wouldn’t shut up about the evils of coffee. Nor would my then-doctor.
Did they mention the acrylamide in coffee? I think that’s the new evil in it. Off to the side, I was delighted watching The Flash this week when they all started looking strangely at the hipster gal who never drinks coffee because of that. Unexpected but fun.
The lack of proofing, editing, and thinking seems par for the course for these sorts of studies. A recent one about the evils of third-hand smoke stated that when you expose mice to it, rats lose weight. The marvels of modern science….
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Oh there was a ‘thing’ about coffee some years ago. I ignored it. It was a stunt to promote decaff coffee, a thing as pointless as herbal cigarettes.
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Parkinson’s protection without caffeine or nicotine
“Decaf coffee and nicotine-free tobacco aren’t just for the health-conscious. Giving them to flies with a form of Parkinson’s disease has revealed that although coffee and cigarettes protect the brain, caffeine and nicotine aren’t responsible for the benefit.
If the compounds that put up this brain defence can be identified, they may offer a preventive Parkinson’s treatment where none currently exists, says Leo Pallanck, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, whose team led the new study.
“We think that there’s something else in coffee and tobacco that’s really important,” he says.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20100426183755/http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18814-parkinsons-protection-without-caffeine-or-nicotine.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
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Interesting. This means vapers don’t have the Parkinson’s protection that smokers have.
There was a report way back in the 1990s that showed smokers have a much reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. The report actually made it into New Scientist, back in the days before it became a propaganda rag for every trendy idea and drone control freak.
Now, of course, we are told that smoking causes Alzheimer’s. Evidence? Who needs it?
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No they don’t.
Parkinson’s Inhibitor Fingered in Tobacco
“They ground up tobacco leaves and tested representative samples in a test tube to see if they inhibited MAO. From the fraction containing the most potent MAO inhibitor, they isolated a chemical known as 2,3,6-trimethyl-1,4-naphthoquinone.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2000/04/parkinsons-inhibitor-fingered-tobacco
2,3,6-trimethyl-1,4-naphthoquinone – vitamin k – solanesol?
Nor the other protective effects.
Solanesol is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry as an intermediate for the synthesis of ubiquinone drugs, such as coenzyme Q10 and vitamin K2. Solanesol possesses antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and anti-ulcer activities, and solanesol derivatives also have anti-oxidant and antitumour activities, in addition to other bioactivities. ”
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11101-015-9393-5#/page-1
Or even the carbon monoxide that seems to protect us from Ulcerative Colitis.
Carbon Monoxide Soothes Inflammatory Bowel Disease
“Doctors have long known that smokers rarely suffer from a common form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) called ulcerative colitis, but they didn’t know why.
A new study in the December 19 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine might help explain this apparent resistance. Scott Plevy and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh now show that carbon monoxide (CO), a component of cigarette smoke, helps shut down the intestinal inflammation that causes ulcerative colitis.”
“The group traced the action of inhaled CO to a protein that is produced by immune cells called interleukin (IL)-12. IL-12 is normally produced during infection and helps activate the immune cells that fight off the invading pathogens.
But chronic production of IL-12 in the gut also drives the inflammation that causes ulcerative colitis.
Inhaled CO inhibited the production of IL-12, short-circuiting the disease-causing inflammation.”
https: //web.archive.org/web/20151214215427/http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060103084934.htm
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Alzheimer’s Disease
Vitamin B3 thwarts memory loss in Alzheimer’s mice: Researchers seek participants for human trial
2008
“An over-the-counter vitamin in high doses prevented memory loss in mice with Alzheimer’s disease, and University of California, Irvine scientists now are conducting a clinical trial to determine its effect in humans.
“Nicotinamide, a form of vitamin B3, lowered levels of a protein that leads to the development of tangles, one of two brain lesions associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The vitamin also strengthened scaffolding along which information travels in brain cells, helping to keep neurons alive and further preventing symptoms in mice genetically wired to develop Alzheimer’s.”
“Nicotinamide has a very robust effect on neurons,” said Kim Green, UCI scientist and lead author of the study. “Nicotinamide prevents loss of cognition in mice with Alzheimer’s disease, and the beauty of it is we already are moving forward with a clinical trial.”
http: //www.prohealth.com/library/showarticle.cfm?libid=14071
Alzheimer’s Symptoms, Lesions Reduced By Vitamin B3
“Nicotinamide, a form of vitamin B3, lowered levels of a protein called phosphorylated tau that leads to the development of tangles, one of two brain lesions associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The vitamin also strengthened scaffolding along which information travels in brain cells, helping to keep neurons alive and further preventing symptoms in mice genetically wired to develop Alzheimer’s”
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/128185.php
Nicotinamide Restores Cognition in Alzheimer’s Disease Transgenic Mice via a Mechanism Involving Sirtuin Inhibition and Selective Reduction of Thr231-Phosphotau
https://web.archive.org/web/20140530070901/http://www.jneurosci.org/content/28/45/11500.abstract
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Vitamin linked to Alzheimer’s protection
“Chicago – A vitamin found in fish, nuts, dairy products, tea and coffee may offer protection against the development of Alzheimer’s disease, research in America has revealed.
Scientists also found that niacin – or vitamin B3 – in the diet could help prevent a decline in mental agility.
The team, writing in the Journal of Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, said their findings could have important implications for prevention of the disease in the future.
The researchers, from the Rush Institute for Health Ageing in Chicago, questioned almost 4 000 people over the age of 65 who had no history of Alzheimer’s disease, which is characterised by severe dementia and confusion.”
“The participants were asked about their diet and checked for any signs of decreasing mental agility – cognitive decline – three and six years later. After three years, a sample of 815 people were checked for clinical changes and their dietary niacin intake was assessed.
Among this group, 131 were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
The researchers, led by Dr Martha Morris, adjusted the results for important risk factors for Alzheimer’s – age, gender, race, educational levels and a gene known as the ApoE.
They concluded that those with the lowest food intake of niacin – around 12.6mg a day – were 80 percent more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s than those with the highest intake – around 22.4mg a day.
The researchers also looked at the mental agility of the larger group after six years.
They found that cognitive decline was “significantly reduced” by 44 percent among those with the highest niacin intake compared with those with the lowest intake.
The researchers noted that niacin had been prescribed to older people in order to prevent confused states.”
http: //www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-310260/Vitamin-linked-Alzheimers-protection.html
Thank goodness the Daily Mail keeps an archive, this article is a word for word copy of the one I had.
Just for you
Pellagra and vampires?
“There are many who think that the development of beliefs in vampires was associated with pellagra. Just as folklore states that vampires must avoid sunlight to maintain their strength and avoid decay, sufferers from pellagra are hypersensitive to sunlight.
Clinical symptoms of pellagra include insomnia, aggression, anxiety, and subsequent dementia, all of which may have contributed to the vampire legends and European folklores of the 1700.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20120211044806/http://www.eufic.org/article/en/nutrition/understanding-food/artid/origins-maize-pellagra/
Pellagra and the origin of a myth: evidence from European literature and folklore.
1997
“Hampl and Hampl (1997) have suggested that a deficiency of niacin and tryptophan could produce symptoms compatible with being the basis for the vampire myth.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1296679/?page=1
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So, this is evidence that antismokers are actually undead? 😉
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Just heard today about the third death in the past year of a family member in the late 50s/ early 60s age range from a sudden heart attack, no previous history of heart problems. Every one a non smoker and slim. I want to go with a Black Russian and a glass of red wine, I have survived cancer and outlived them all. So much for the ‘experts’
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The funeral I attended was of a non-smoker, but a little overweight and fond of a beer or two. He made it well into his eighties and was killed by a stroke followed by a blood clot. Mercifully fairly quick and (I hope) painless.
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Yesterday’s daily scare story from Auntie was over the level of arsenic in rice. They then went on to explain that if you cooked it properly the problem went away; win-win!
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Yes, but their idea of cooking rice properly involved soaking it overnight. I don’t decide 24 hours in advance whether I want rice tomorrow. I’ll carry on with my usual method of cooking rice, on impulse. (And smoking. And drinking.)
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I was wondering how cooking could get rid of an element. Boiling it and throwing away the water should do the same thing then.
A few nights back I saw a documentary on the deadly things in every Victorian house. One was green dye that contained arsenic. I knew about the green paint but I didn’t know it was in fabric dyes and wallpaper and even clothing! Getting this colour was important because it didn’t fade and it showed you were well off.
Until you died. Lots of people did, and it took a long time to get the authorities to believe arsenic was dangerous. Too much money involved.
It turns out that the average Victorian well-off home contained about 2.5 kg of arsenic. There was a mine in England that produced enough arsenic in its lifetime to kill all life on the planet.
So worrying about a little bit in rice seems to be taking it too far the other way…
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… let’s look at an example, the story of “The Baby And The Deadly Arsenic Smoker.”
A standard cigarette produces about 30 nanograms of arsenic. A reasonably sized, standard living room might contain about 50 cubic meters of air that is changed about three times an hour, for a total of 150 cubic meters for the cigarette’s smoke to disperse through during the course of that hour. A child breathes somewhat faster than an adult, but his or her lungs are far smaller, so whereas an adult engaging in moderate activity might breathe a full cubic meter of air in an hour, a small child would likely breathe only about half that. Now let’s say that you’re the type of mom who would let her little girl play happily with some blocks on the rug as you enjoy a cigarette while watching a rerun of Oprah in the afternoon.
The 30 nanograms (i.e., 30,000 picograms) of arsenic from your ciga¬rette are going to disperse through those 150 cubic meters of air. Your poor little architect-in-training will inhale at least a half cubic meter of that air, potentially absorbing 1/300th of those 30 nanograms (i.e., a total of 100 picograms) while hefting her building blocks. An Antismoker might confront you with the following screamed accusation: “You are poisoning your child with RAT POISON! You’re forcing the poor little innocent to breathe 100 picograms of arsenic from your cigarette!”
Sounds bad, eh? Even though you kinda figger that picograms aren’t that big, still, your poor kid is going to gulp down a hundred of them, all filled with arsenic, which you know is poisonous and is indeed used as rat poison! And you are deliberately blowing them out into the room with your innocent little child who is only trying to gasp some air in order to stay alive! What the hell kind of parent are you anyway???
You’ve just been stratisticized. There are several ways to look at this that will make you less vulnerable next time.
First of all, a hundred nothings is still nothing. And a hundred times a hundred nothings is also still nothing. Now to be fair, a picogram is not exactly nothing. It’s a very real quantity and your smoky cigarette is indeed resulting in your child arguably ingesting a hundred picograms of indisputably real and deadly arsenic.
But how real is it? How real are those 100 picograms of arsenic in terms of anything that should have any meaningful impact upon your approach to life and your love for your child? Well, let’s say you decided to spend your entire life collecting arsenic, and you collected a picogram every single minute of every single day, both day and night, for a hundred years and piled it all up in the middle of New York’s Time Square.
What do you think it would look like? If you do the multiplications, you’ll get 60 minutes x 24 hours x 365 days x 100 years as being the total number of picograms collected in an enterprising lifetime: a grand total of about 50 million picograms! Would it be a big pile? A small pile? A truckload? Maybe just a teaspoon or two?
Nope. It would be a speck. A speck about half the size of a single grain of table salt (which weighs in at roughly 100 million picograms). And if you ate or inhaled all of it, would you die? Heh… nope again. You could happily eat a thousand times that amount, collected after a thousand lifetimes devoted to nothing but arsenic collection from smoke, and still go out for your morning jog and die by getting hit by a truck. Arsenic is actually an essential ingredient for healthy human metabolism. The average, healthy human body has about twenty milligrams of arsenic in it – about two hundred million times the amount you were supposedly “poisoning” Little Miss Architect with.
The overall point here is that these quantities and measurements are absurdly small. No ordinary people would (or should) ever have to think about such things as femtograms or picograms. They ordinarily have no meaning at all in normal human experience.
So let’s return to you watching Oprah every day of the week, rain or shine, and the warning that you are exposing your little block builder to 100 picograms of arsenic each time. You would have to sit there and smoke with your child for roughly 3,000 years before reaching that grain of salt level. But, if you were truly a psychopathic parent and actually did want to poison your little one, you’d have to reach a level of about ten milligrams. It would take roughly 300 billion years to accomplish your dastardly deed – about 30 times as long as the entire universe has existed. As for Oprah, if she lasted that long, just think of all the Botox involved!
Of course, a normal human child would usually excrete most of that arsenic along the way, (**) so a ground rule would have to be set: no changing of diapers allowed for those 300,000,000,000 years. Hopefully at the end of it all you’d be able to find an antismoking researcher to take over that rather unpleasant task.
* Another quick example: Would you give your child a nice little alcohol cocktail to get them going on a cold morning? No? Well, if you give them an eight-ounce glass of healthy, vitamin-filled orange juice, you’ll also be giving them roughly 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) picograms of pure, rotgut, white-lightning grain alcohol! It’s just a totally natural part of orange juice!
** Our bodies are actually pretty good at getting rid of all sorts of nasty stuff that they manufacture or that enters them through various routes in everyday life. We have defecation, urination, perspiration, and respiration – all throwing out life’s natural toxic waste products that would otherwise quickly kill us.
====
Citations:
Borgerding MF, Bodnar JA, Wingate DE. “The 1999 Massachusetts Benchmark Study: Final Report,” July 24, 2000. http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/documentStore/y/e/k/yek21c00/
Syek21c00.pdf
Parker T. “Arsenic – An Essential Nutrient For Growth,” http://articlesnatch.com/
Article/Arsenic–-An-Essential-Nutrient-For-Growth/1948700
http://algebra.com/algebra/homework/Exponents-negative-and-fractional/Exponents-negative-and-fractional.faq.question.419964.html
Monte WC. “Dr. Woodrow C. Monte’s Methanol Research – University Of Arizona – Part 10,” SweetPoison.com. http://www.sweetpoison.com/articles/dr-woodrow-monte10.html
“Arsenic Toxicity,” ManbirOnline.com. http://www.manbir-online.com/diseases/arsenic.htm
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Two things on arsenic: first a letter to the editor I wrote years ago, second, some analysis from TobakkoNacht’s “Slabs” section.
1) Dear Editor,
Your Oct. 23rd poll asked if Columbus, Ohio citizens felt their tap water was “safe to drink.”
We’ve all seen the antismoking ads on TV telling us that the arsenic from a friend’s cigarette is going to kill us. The government “safe” standard for arsenic in tap water is ten million picograms per quart. A nonsmoker in a decently ventilated smoking environment inhales about 30 picograms of arsenic per hour. You would have to sit next to that “dangerous” smoking friend for over 300,000 hours in order to get the same dose of arsenic as you would get from a “safe” quart of water.
Either the government is lying to us about the safety of our water or the Antismokers are lying to us about the dangers of secondhand smoke.
Take your pick.
2) OK… arsenic… this is a bit long, so I’m going to do it as a separate reply and hope it doesn’t melt Leggy’s heavy hat… It’s basically an unformatted excerpt from pages 88 through 90 of TobakkoNacht. Please forgive formatting-created typos and difficulties with footnotes/citations…
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‘No safe level of water’. I have to get out and meet some gullible drones again. I haven’t tormented any for ages.
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In one regard and one regard alone, I am fortunate that a large chunk of my genetic makeup is from Norfolk, indeed from the bit of Norfolk even Norfolkers consider backward. That bit in the top most right hand corner where entire villages, to this day, share a DNA sequence and , more often than not, an IQ. Our bloodlines distilled, concentrated…some would say even ‘purified’ through a thousand plus years of sibling couplings…with the occasional inter-special to keep things fresh.
Hence the men in my bloodline just die. No fuss, no bother. Sometime after the age of 50 we go up for a midday sleep and wake up dead. It’s traditional. Unfortunately the women of the family die screaming in lunatic asylums. Evil tongues would contend the two facts are related….and everything, trust me, in Norfolk is….related.
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We have a place like that in West Lancs. It’s called “Banks”. Until the 1870s when Martin Mere was drained, and the moss-peats slightly inland got pumping stations, it was more or less a tidal island populated by a fishing village. Often cut off from the mainland for days at a time. Called, er, “Banks”. Everyone in Banks, mostly even today, is everyone else’s first cousin or half-brother/sister/nephew/niece, and you know what that means.
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I’m a mongrel and proud of it 🙂
Bits from everywhere.
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You need to pace yourself. The hammer idea was sufficient to enliven my comedy nodes (thank you) on its own. The popcorn idea should have had it’s own post…it’s amazing. I’ll be smiling every time it comes to mind for days.
Shirley we’re reaching peak-bollocks in society now(?) there just isn’t anywhere to go with this with even a shred of credibility…Shirley. Even the normies are going to start taking the piss openly, rather than ignoring it where possible.
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I had hoped we would have found the absurdity horizon by now, but there’s no sign of it yet.
Don’t worry, I have loads more where that came from.
And don’t call me Shirley 😉
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hahahaha! And don’t call me “fuck nose”
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Best fancy dress ever – Just tape a plastic fork to your nose. When people ask what you’re supposed to be, just reply ‘Fork nose’.
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“I can’t decide whether to be stuffed with popcorn and tobacco and cremated (the popcorn is for the sound effects, and to make sure I get a bigger urn than Cyril Smith) or to be buried with a recording, speaker and proximity sensor that says ‘Fuck off!’ every time someone tries to dance on my grave. Decisions, decisions…”
They’re not mutually exclusive!
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I once decided on cremation. The ashes would be divided up and thrown ion the faces of people on a list.
So I can get right up their noses, one last time 🙂
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You weren’t thinking Debs Arnott’s nose by any chance?
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She’s on the list, yes 😉
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Oh, good grief! They’ve clearly realised that the ‘Your fancy coffee contains TOO MUCH SUGAR!!!’ campaign isn’t making head way and switched to this instead…
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Coming at it from a new and more ridiculous angle.
One day, even the public will say ‘Hang on a minute…’
But it is not this day.
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I look on these things as cyclic. James 1st of England hated Tobacco. Knox hated the ‘monstrous regiment of women’. As for coffee, well coffee shops were dens of commerce and iniquity, not places for ‘Mums’ to gossip and block the aisles with massive two abreast pushchairs.
I can’t see the anti-coffee movement making much headway this side of the pond because they’re where half the business in any Canadian town is conducted. Shut down Tim Hortons? There would be riots and public lynchings.
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True, the London Stock Market birthed in one called ‘Jonathan’s Coffee House’:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stock_Exchange#Coffee_House
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Coffee shops here are now the abode of old ladies. They wander the streets, zombie-like, chanting ‘Cooffffeee Shoooop’ until they find one.
Except the smoking old ladies. They still have intelligence.
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Must be something to do with the cold suppressing the zombie virus in their nervous systems, as old ladies who smoke aren’t allowed in coffee shops.
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There is one with seats outside. It doesn’t get much smoker business at this time of year.
Local Pub (the only one within 40 minutes walk from here) has a heated and covered smoking area at the back.
It also has a coal fire inside. Strangely, nobody objects to that.
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I started work at a new place this week that is staffed with an overabundance of fruit tea drinkers. There was no coffee and no sugar!
So the next day I brought in a stash of both…
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Soooooo….all fruit tea and no coffee + sugar makes Roob…erm…pulsate massive amounts of strawberry syrup from the oddest of places.
Noted.
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Oh no, Cade… that’s the fruity tea thoroughly cleansing the ‘healthy’ of my secondhand sugary coffee with cow juice contamination…
*Full fat milk! Yes! I’ll take some in next week… that’ll really freak ’em out… /wink…*
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Turn up with a pint mug of Costa or Starbucks caramel latte… but wait until the probationary period is over 😉
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Oh my….. LOL!
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Sugar can help make you a sweeter person, researchers claim
“The report said: The findings suggest a link between glucose levels and the expression of prejudice and the use of stereotypes ”
“They believe that sweet drinks give people a sugar rush that helps supply the brain with the fuel needed to suppress outspoken opinions”
“Those who had drunk the sugary drink used far fewer stereotypes in their essays than those who had the artificial sweetener, leading to a theory that people can use restraint to keep objectionable thoughts to themselves when they have higher amounts of glucose in their body.”
“Because self-control depends on processes that consume glucose as an energy source, people who have lower levels of blood glucose may be more likely to express prejudice”
https://web.archive.org/web/20120419010259/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3176128/Sugar-makes-you-sweeter.html
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I always thought most of the crazy people in the world suffered from bacon deprivation. The effect is much too marked to be ignored.
So sugar deprivation can do it too…
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Time to stockpile sugar as well as salt?
http://www.foodnavigator.com/Market-Trends/European-soda-makers-vow-to-reduce-added-sugar-by-further-10
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I was wondering about bee keeping.
Dartmouth-Led Study: ‘Medicine Cabinet’ Reduces Bee Disease
2015
“The researchers found that chemicals in floral nectar—including the alkaloids anabasine and nicotine, the iridoid glycoside catalpol, and the terpenoid thymol—significantly reduce parasite infection in bees. The results suggest that growing plants high in these compounds around farm fields could create a natural “medicine cabinet” that improves survival rates of diseased bees and pollination of crops.”
https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2015/02/dartmouth-led-study-medicine-cabinet-reduces-bee-disease
Use of tobacco smoke against parasitic mite syndrome
“CONCLUSION
Whatever the disease, I believe that tobacco smoke had beneficial effect on the colonies. We know that nicotine in tobacco smoke has some anaesthetic effect on insects in general, and it might have some lethal effect on mites and therefore some beneficial effect against the condition.
We believe now that the immune system of the bees is in some way diminished. By using tobacco smoke we are either hitting the primary target, or we might be curing a secondary pathogen. In either case we are helping our bees to get better!”
http://web.archive.org/web/20100117015748/http://www.beesfordevelopment.org/info/info/disease/use-of-tobacco-smoke-agai.shtml
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I stopped smoking (but not drinking alcohol!) in 1963. Promised myself that if I wanted to start again when I was 70 I would, with Cigars, Gauloise, Capstan Full Strength or Sobranie Black- nothing wishy-washy. I passed that landmark last November, but decided to just stand down-wind of a smoker or two to get the smell. Re-set the date to 75 years old… Looking forwards and hoping the tobacco will still be available. Also been looking at your notes on growing your own leaf.
By the way – I drink a lot of strong filter coffee too, so I’m sure I get all the nutrients I need. Beer is only liquid bread, really…
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I was only 3 when you stopped smoking, and didn’t start drinking until I was 5 (low level unlocked drinks cabinet, bad idea with a child in the house) 😉
I’d suggest stocking up now. Four more years and a pack of cigarettes will mean getting a second mortgage.
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I notice that there was no mention of Trigonelline in that article.
Basic Chemical Reactions Occurring in the Roasting Process
“The best cup characteristic are produced when the ratio of the degradation of trigonelline to the derivation of Nicotinic Acid remains linear. The control model of this reaction ratio is a time/temperature/energy relationship. The environment temperature (ET) establishes the pyrolysis region for the desired chemical reactions while the energy value (BTU) and system transfer efficiency (STE) determines the rate of reaction propagation and linearity of Nicotinic Acid derivation to degradation of trigonelline”
https://web.archive.org/web/20130706113129/http://www.sweetmarias.com/roast.carlstaub.html
Coffee Protects Alcohol Drinkers From Liver Disease
“Drinking coffee protects alcohol drinkers from developing liver disease, says a new study carried out at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, California, USA. According to the researchers, one cup of coffee per day lowered the incidence of cirrhosis of the liver for alcohol drinkers by 22%.”
“Scientists are still unsure what it is in the coffee that provides the protection. It cannot be the caffeine because tea has caffeine but does not provide the same protection. Clinical trials are needed to further identify the relationship between coffee and how it lowers the incidence of liver disease”
https://web.archive.org/web/20130705095812/http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/45124.php
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My liking for espresso might have saved my liver over the years.
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Yes indeed. There is far more niacin in a cup of coffee than in a cigarette as you will know.
Medicine: Vitamins & the Three Ms
Monday, June 17, 1957
“Dr. Spies proved, too, that there was no essential difference between the North’s “alcoholic pellagra” and the South’s “endemic pellagra.” He did this first by feeding up Skid Row derelicts at the same time as he allowed them as much corn liquor as they could drink; their pellagra cleared, showing that it had been caused not by alcohol but by the absence of essential food factors”
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,867726-1,00.html
Now subscription but it wasn’t into 2008.
Coffee drinking, smoking common in AA members
2008
“NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People recovering from alcoholism seem to drink more coffee and have a higher rate of smoking than the average American, a new study shows.”
https://web.archive.org/save/_embed/http://www.reuters.com/article/us-aa-members-idUSCOL26635820080722?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews
Make of that what you will.
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Drinking Coffee Halves Cancer Risk
“The researchers found that those who drank one or more daily cups of coffee had a 50 percent reduced risk of these cancers compared with those who did not drink coffee. Furthermore, the reduction in risk applied to all participants, including those who were current drinkers and/or smokers at the start of the study and were therefore at higher risk for these cancers.
“We had not expected that we could observe such a substantial inverse association with coffee consumption and the risk of these cancers, and the inverse association in high-risk groups for these cancers as well,” Naganuma said in an interview with Reuters.
“Although cessation of alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking is currently the best known way to help reduce the risk of developing these cancers, coffee could be a preventive factor in both low-risk and high-risk populations,” the researchers wrote in a report about their study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, December 15, 2008″
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1618648/drinking_coffee_halves_cancer_risk/
Anti-Invasive Activity of Niacin and Trigonelline against Cancer Cells
“The effects of niacin, namely, nicotinic acid and nicotinamide, and trigonelline on the proliferation and invasion of cancer cells were studied using a rat ascites hepatoma cell line of AH109A in culture. Niacin and trigonelline inhibited the invasion of hepatoma cells at concentrations of 2.5–40 μM without affecting proliferation. Hepatoma cells previously cultured with a reactive oxygen species (ROS)-generating system showed increased invasive activity. Niacin and trigonelline suppressed this ROS-potentiated invasive capacity through simultaneous treatment of AH109A cells with the ROS-generating system. The present study indicates for the first time the anti-invasive activities of niacin and trigonelline against cancer cells”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15785001
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They want to stop us getting niacin from any source, and yet claim they want to cure cancer. They have also openly stated they want massive population reduction.
Trouble is, they’ll kill off all the compliant ones and be left with us. The ones who don’t listen.
As a world control movement, someone hasn’t thought ahead too well.
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I don’t think they are that clever, but the way they are going we will end up with a zombie apocalypse whether they intend it or not.
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Pharmacological bases of coffee nutrients for diabetes prevention
“With an increasing number of studies describing the negative correlation of coffee consumption and the risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus, we were compelled to elucidate the nutrients which bring pharmacological effects on risk reduction for diabetes.
In this review, the author’s interest is focused on chlorogenic and caffeic acids derived from lightly roasted coffee beans, as well as nicotinic acid, volatile Maillard reaction products (vMRPs), and another structurally unknown compound contained in heavily roasted beans.
Caffeine is a common compound in both lightly and heavily roasted beans and its anti-inflammatory effects on degenerative diseases such as diabetes mellitus has been reevaluated recently.
The prophylactic effects of coffee on diabetes involve pleiotropy of plural components in accordance to the degree of the roasting.
A new concept of nutritional blended coffee may be important to optimize the prophylactic effects of coffee on lowering the risk factors of diabetes and delaying the progress of diabetes complications as well.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17978558
Cups of coffee can ward off diabetes . . .
“DRINKING coffee can substantially reduce the risk of developing diabetes, scientists have discovered.
A major study involving more than 14,000 people in Finland, which has the highest rate of coffee consumption in the world, has revealed that those who drink most have the lowest incidence of adult-onset or type 2 diabetes.
When people drank three to four cups of coffee a day, their risk of developing diabetes fell by 29 per cent for women and 27 per cent for men.
“Coffeeholics” who drank very large amounts of coffee — ten or more cups a day — were even less likely to suffer from the disease: such high consumption reduced the risk by 79 per cent for women and 55 per cent for men.”
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/diet-fitness/article1756089.ece
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I got tested for diabetes about six years ago, along with all the other tests. Everything normal, and I was honest about my lifestyle.
The NHS won’t speak to me now.
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And another one for your armoury, unless you’ve seen it already, I only found it today.
Scientists hope to harvest ‘wonder drug’ from potatoes
2016
“Imagine a substance with the potential to fight cancer, Aids, osteoporosis and heart disease, as well as curing ulcers, healing wounds and killing drug-resistant bacteria. Scottish agricultural scientists are investigating the possibility of extracting the compound, called solanesol, from the leftover leaves of potato harvests, which are usually burnt off or dumped. The chemical is already a key component in the manufacture of coenzyme Q10, which is used in beauty products to combat the appearance of ageing. Now studies are under way to establish its full powers. Solanesol is found in plants from the family that includes tobacco, peppers, aubergines – and potatoes.”
“Depending on its purity, solanesol can command huge prices. Conservative estimates suggest it could be worth at least £156,000 per hectare.”
http://www.scotsman.com/business/companies/farming/scientists-hope-to-harvest-wonder-drug-from-potatoes-1-4246049
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“Scottish agricultural scientists are investigating the possibility of extracting the compound, called solanesol, from the leftover leaves of potato harvests, which are usually burnt off or dumped. ”
Burnt off? Hmmm… could smoking potato leaves protect you from lung cancer? LOL!
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Chewing baccy might be more effective than smoking it for solanesol absorption.
So the ban on Snus makes even less sense now than it did before.
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True. But it’s not really about health is it?
It was originally about religion and avoiding heathen practices.
Counterblaste
https://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/james/blaste/blaste.html
It’s all in there, from black lungs to junk science.
Ministry – International Journal For Pastors
1942
Nicotinic Acid vs. Nicotine
https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1942/01/nicotinic-acid-vs.-nicotine
Don’t forget that James 1st of England, 6th of Scotland was head of the Church of England, commisioned the King James Bible to please the Puritans and considered himself an expert in witchcraft.
“Daemonologie, In Forme of a Dialogue, Divided into three Books: By the High and Mighty Prince, James &c. — was written and published in 1597.”
https: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemonologie
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The snus people were a little late and still don’t seem to have realised what causes the effect.
Eating nicotine-containing produce like peppers, tomatoes may lower Parkinson’s risk
2013
“Previous studies have shown that smoking and other tobacco use may lower the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. While it was thought that nicotine may be providing that effect, researchers weren’t sure if different factors in the brain were causing the risk reductions.
While most people know that nicotine can be found in tobacco, low levels of the compound can be found in peppers, tomatoes and other members of the Solanaceae flowering plant family. Researchers wanted to determine if even small amounts of edible nicotine would be able to lower the risk.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/eating-nicotine-containing-produce-like-peppers-tomatoes-may-lower-parkinsons-risk/
Moist smokeless tobacco (Snus) use and risk of Parkinson’s disease.
2016
CONCLUSIONS:
“Non-smoking men who used snus had a substantially lower risk of Parkinson’s disease. Results also indicated an inverse dose-response relationship between snus use and Parkinson’s disease risk. Our findings suggest that nicotine or other components of tobacco leaves may influence the development of Parkinson’s disease.”
http://rodutobaccotruth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/confirmed-snus-use-protective-for.html
Can I have my honorary Phd now?
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While we are at it.
Environmental tobacco smoke.
Rodgman A.
1992
Abstract
“In 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a “draft” assessment of ETS and lung cancer in adults and respiratory disorders in children. Relying on weak and inconclusive epidemiological data, the supposed similarity between ETS and MS, the presence of “known or suspected carcinogens” in MS and by extrapolation in ETS, and the “biological plausibility” of an adverse relationship between ETS and health, the EPA recommended that ETS be classified as a “Group A (known human) carcinogen.” Fundamental physical and quantitative chemical differences among ETS, MS, and SS and human exposure to each smoke were disregarded: The three are not equivalent nor is ETS exposure a quantitative variant of cigarette smoking. A substantial difference in retention percentage overlays the huge dosimetric difference between exposures. As a result, the “dosage” of ETS retained is miniscule relative to MS. Also, conclusions reached by the EPA and the use of tenuous relationships as bases for Group A classification are unwarranted because of failure to consider the data upon which the “tumorigenicity” of the ETS components was based, questions on the presence and/or levels of these components in MS, and data indicating that a 25- to 30-fold decrease of a high-level dose of MS or MS condensate diminished the effects observed in bioassays from pronounced to zero, i.e., a threshold was demonstrated.
Finally, EPA overlooked the more than 100 tobacco smoke components known to inhibit the tumorigenic action of many of the listed “tumorigens.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1293640
2006
RODGMAN A.; PERFETTI T.A.
“Despite an 18-month study in the late 1950s, the search for a “supercarcinogen” in MSS and CSC to explain the observed biological effects was unsuccessful. In addition, the exceptional study on MSS PAHs by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) personnel in the 1970s indicated no “supercarcinogen” was present. Only recently has the concept of complex mixtures in relation to the understanding of the complexity of carcinogenesis taken hold. Perhaps the reason why MSS is less tumorigenic than expected in humans is because of the presence of other MSS components that inhibit or prevent tumorigenesis. For example, it is well known that MSS contains numerous anticarcinogens present in quantifies significantly greater than those of the PAHs of concern. When one reviews the history of these four PAHs in MSS or CSC it is clear that many unanswered questions remain.”
https://www.coresta.org/abstracts/composition-cigarette-smoke-chronology-studies-four-polycyclic-aromatic-hydrocarbons-2245
Background
The Chemical Components of Tobacco and Tobacco Smoke, Second Edition
“Authors Alan Rodgman and Thomas A. Perfetti were jointly awarded the 2010 CORESTA (Cooperative Centre for Scientific Research Relative to Tobacco) Prize for their extensive work on documenting the vast literature on the chemical composition of tobacco and tobacco smoke in their original edition.”
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I think, if they were to test any burning plant material, they’d find that a lot of the harmful claims would be the same.
Petroleum products, diesel, plastics – my bet is they’d be much worse.
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