To Aspartame Advocates

When I'm thirsty I usually drink either sparkling water or lager. Those quench my thirst best. But I drink during the day quite enough, so my thirst is not always just a sign of dehydration. Normal water won't quench thirst that is not caused by dehydration. At least not for me. So I drink anything but plain water as that I need to drink so much I feel bloated - and I'm still a bit thirsty. Thus I drink mainly juices. I love this juice, Appelsientje Dubbel Drank - Mango & Guanabana. But it was out of stock in our supermarket.

I found another nice brand, Maaza. Mango, guava - red and yellow, tropical, what have you. I took mango, without thinking too much. Now, normally I read the ingredients of all products I buy. But those you already know, you don't need to. (And I hate the fact that I need to look at the ingredients because of all the weird stuff you add in our food.) Most of these juices are from 100% concentrate + water. So I picked up the mango drink, got home, poured a glass and took a sip.

Yuch! Aspartame!

Instinctively I took the carton and checked the ingredients, although I knew them already by now. Yes, aspartame. Why? The fruit itself tastes great. Why extra sweeteners that aren't even that sweet. Aspartame tastes gross at the back of your throat. I know there's controversial information about the health risk of aspartame. But they are for and against the possible risks. (Some crazier than other.) I'm not afraid of aspartame; my biggest problem with it is the taste. It just tastes disgusting. It is useless sweetener. The whole idea of light-drinks is crazy. A person who buys light-drinks shouldn't drink soda in the first place.

Stop hiding aspartame in our drinks. Sure, light drinks. That's why I don't even bother taking a light-drink can/carton/bottle in my hand - I know they contain aspartame. That's the only artificial sweetener you drink manufacturers know anyways. But if you put that in non-light drinks mark it clearly on the front and don't hide it next to normal juices. It's place is next to light-drinks. If you do juice out of concentrate and pulp, it already has sugar from the fruit. Why add more sweeteners? And why, oh why aspartame?

What surprises me is how "blind" people are for taste. Doesn't anyone else taste that weird bitter taste at the back of the throat after drinking anything with aspartame? I guess if you drink it every day, you won't notice the taste. I wonder how addictive it is? Come to think of it. All of my friends who drink light-sodas are light-soda freaks. They drink a can after a can of it. Hm... maybe it invokes some compulsive drinking?

Still I don't get adding extra sweeteners to perfectly good juice. Kinda same with tobacco. I have smoked rolling tobacco longer than those ready made cigarettes. The ready mades are dry and very rough on your throat. So I smoke rolling tobacco. When I found American Spirit (Santa Fe Tobacco Company) I fell in love with the taste. Then I learned it contains no additives. Is this what tobacco is supposed to taste like? And all this time I was smoking tobacco with additives without knowing the real thing tastes so much better. Smoking kills, yes, so why not go for the one that tastes best if you're not gonna stop? Why the additives in tobacco? And why American Spirit is the most expensive rolling tobacco in shop? Is it something like: "Pay us more, or else we'll put additives in your tobacco!" The additives must cost money, and putting the stuff on costs money. Howcome that tobacco is still cheaper? I feel like in a weird Batman movie. A crazy supervillain is pouring chemicals on all of Gotham City's tobacco, unless all the citizens are willing to pay extra!

I get the additives in a lot of products that you ship all around the world so they have to keep. Concervatives, yes, ok. But aspartame is not a concervative. It's useless. Makes everything taste bad. And tobacco doesn't really need concervatives either.

Just please stop adding aspartame to everything. Or at least label all products clearly that they are those ligh-products.

Strange dream

I saw the strangest dream last night.

You know those dreams where you run away from something, and you run and you run, but can't get away?

...This dream wasn't like that.

I was walking along in savanna(?) and minding my own business. All of a sudden I saw a cheetah running towards me and I knew it was gonna attack. I took a branch in my hand and waited that it was closer and it jumped. I kneeled down and hit it on the side, knocking the air out of it. I ran immediately to the cheetah before it can gather it's strength and air again, and strangled it. After strangling it I stood up and shouted to the dead animal: "Opposing thumbs, bitch!"

That was very weird.

But I seriously never ever thought I'd see a dream about strangling a cheetah. Nor that I would be even thinking about it. It's just not the first thing you think when you see such an animal...

I know cheetahs are more fragile felines than most other predator felines, so knocking the air out shouldn't be too hard, but a cheetah wouldn't attack man running full speed. There's just no need. It would more likely stalk on you and then it's too late. Those claws are probably not dull. Oh well, it was only a dream. Good thing too, I wouldn't like to kill an animal I'm not gonna eat anyways. But in this dream my survival depended upon it.

Shrinks, analyze this!

Company party

I knew then what text should go here:

A friend 'But those are "hi mom"-pictures.'
Sami :)

Touché.

In the last pic is me and my boss.

Samistan

As it is possible for someone to sell moon estate, I hereby claim a portion of Antarctica as my own land and name it "Samistan". You are all welcome there, no passport checks, easy to get in.

The portion is shown here:

So you can now call me Dude Sami I of Samistan, or His Dudeness, if you will.

Some facts: The Samistan is an area of Antarctica claimed by the ruler, Dude Sami the First.
It is defined by a sector originating at the South Pole, passing along longitudes 90° west to 150° west, and terminating at latitude 70° south at the South Pacific Ocean.

Tourist attractions:
Bentley Subglacial Trench. It is the lowest point in Antarctica, at 2540 metres below sea level.
The South Pole, at 2800 metres.

Capital: None.
Government: Federal unconstitutional totalitarian monarchy
King: Dude Sami the First
Independence: Self proclaimed independence on 4th of May, 2007. No countries have recognized this.
Currency: Seashells, shiny pebbles and painted rocks. 1 painted rock = 10 Seashells. 1 Seashell is 10 shiny pebbles.
Area: Around 1,200,000 km²
Population: 0
Time zone: UTC-9/DST-8
Language: Gibberish
Flag:
The flag represents freedom and peace, of which majestic justice lies beneath, divided by the joy and loyalty in universal love.

Tax-Office Laboratories

I saw this sign at The Netherlands' Tax-Office in Sloterdijk, Amsterdam. I think it was some sort of main office or something.

Where does a tax-office need laboratories for?

Better pay my taxes, they may have more ways to make people pay than previously believed. I wonder how is it when big tax-office officials have a meeting. I wonder if there's a professor called Klaus working in the laboratories trying to find interesting ways for collecting taxes and presents the new inventions in the board meeting.

"Yes, bring in the Doc. - Doc, what have you developed for us to make people pay their taxes?"
"Ach, mein herr. Wee have developed a small, easy to deploy, solution. We zimply inject the patient... uhm, ze tax-evator with a small dose of plague and wee tell ze schweinhu... ahm, ze tax-dodger to pay und wee give ze man ze antidote."

Or maybe it's kind of behaviour-based research? Doctors in white coats are testing with laboratory mice how much stress they can withstand. Make the mice run on a wheel and give them cheese as pay. But they show the cheese, and cut off a piece of it - for taxes. And they test how much they can take from it before the mouse snaps.

Then they go ahead with the human testing. They put people behind one way mirrors, each subject in their own room. The subjects think they are there to talk about their taxes. Some maybe thinking that they are testing a new tax-form or something. They test the subjects thurally.

"Nurse, bring this man the news that he's going to get a tax deduction. ... Good ... Good ... Now let's test what happens when we take the tax deduction away and double his taxes."

Then the white coated doctor takes his notepad and marks his findings on it.

Aphorism of the Day Pt.7

I was shopping last thursday with a firend of mine. She has occasiationally a bit "granny" -style when it comes to clothing. We went to this huge party on friday se we were looking for pantyhoses for her, and she was looking 30-Den pantyhoses. I then realized:

The Den value should not exeed your age!
(Unless you are a minor.)

Hyperdrive theory

New Scientist reports, that American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics has awarded the 2005 nuclear and future flight category prize for a paper about hyperspace travelling. Using quantum physics within the limits of the general theory of relativity. Interesting.

To Moon and back in few hours, to Mars in five days. I wonder if they have made any new discoveries about the subject.

Hawking testing weightlessness today

Stephen Hawking is today testing weightlessness with Boeing 747, as he's also going to space.

Earth II

Today I saw on the news they found a planet that resembles of Earth.

I thought they've only found gas planets until now, but I did a search and found plenty of articles before. Washington Post, New Scientist, Keck and BBC have reported of new planets too.

And if there's water on this new planet, there could be also life of some sort too or at the very least it could sustain life, if planted on there!

Yarr! Me new parrot!

This little fella was outside our apartment, yelling. We checked what is making that noise, and this creature decided to pay us a visit. It likes to sit on heads and shoulders.


It's not good weather for this kind of bird to be outside, but we have no place for this either. Nights are still too cold for a parrot. Although there's these green parrots that do live in Amsterdam. But this is not the same type. And I don't know how well it has been trained. My housemate is just going to closeby shop to leave a note that we found this parrot. Or should I say the parrot found us.

What do they eat anyways? We have no seed to give, so we gave some lentils, müsli and orange. I guess the parrot knows what it can eat and what not to eat.

I hope we find the owner quickly. I have no idea how to take care of birds.

And yeah, I checked: It's not coughing.

Sweaty relaxation

The following text is thoughts about biological studies of humans and not any male chauvinistic ranting or women liberation speech. So please don't try to find any male vs. female arguments, nor any hidden agenda from this text. It's only a play on thoughts. "What if" scenario, if you will. So if you are male chauvinist, feminist activist, a child or other person who cannot handle a talk about sex as means of reproduction, or cannot play with a thought of evolution, please stop reading here. Also, I do not have answers in this one, only more questions.

There was an article in Nature.com (requires registration) - Indystar mentions this too. They say the sweat from a male armpit actually relaxes women through the pheromones male secret. This puzzled me. I had believed, like this article in Berkley UC says, that hormones that cause something would have the opposite effect. In male sweat there's androstadienone, which causes arousal, rise of temperature, bloodpressure and heart rate in women. Ok, androstadienone is easy to understand in evolution's point of view. But why something that relaxes?

Scotsman and Live Science back this Berkley UC article, that ovulating women are looking for alpha males who have strong body odor. Makes sense, strong man, strong children. Strong man, protects. Man make fire. Urgh. But what has the smell got to do with it?

There's plenty of weird things in human reproduction. Women have concealed ovulation. Their fertile cycle is about all the time, minus the menstruation period. And both men and women enjoy sex just because of sex - even when there's no possibility to reproduce. As far as I understand evolution, the individual is not important, the survival of the species is. So why sex is fun? All of them either unique or very rare amongst animals. It is said only humans, dolphins and bonobo chimps enjoy sex just as sex.

I'm sure there's a reason for all of this. Firstly, when apes started to walk on two legs, the nose got higher from the ground. (The reasons for two-legged walking I can only speculate, but read Desmond Morris instead. He makes more sense than I do...) When the nose is higher from the ground, you won't be sniffing that many things, so we have either lost a lot of our sense of smelling, or we have lost the ability to interpretate the smells.

This may have caused the lengthening of woman's fertile period, as men cannot "smell" the ovulation like a lot of animals can. Thus making it more possible for reproduction. This may have also contributed to the fact we enjoy sex only because of sex, as men don't "smell the ovulation", cannot detect it, and women have longer fertile period - just to "force" humans to copulate more, thus increasing the possibility of fertilization. This doesn't still explain why women get more relaxed when sniffing man's armpit. It just raises more questions.

Was the fact that we stood up a reason our sense of smell withered? Was that partly the cause for women to have concealed ovulation since there was no need for it due to the impaired sense of smell? Did this cause us to try to reproduce more, e.g. women have longer fertile period and we enjoy sex, or was the long fertile period and enjoyment of sex the cause for concealed ovulation? Or are they related to each other in any way?

The relaxation through the sweat of a man is still puzzling. Could it be just simply to get a woman to relax before reproductive act? Or could it be that it based on hunter-gatherer times, when we had small tribes. When men went to hunt mammoths, there was only few men in the tribe. So other tribes could easily loot and pillage this tribe, or if a sabertooth tiger attacks the tribe, there's not enough men to defend. This causes the rise of the rest of the tribe's stress levels. So when a female goes to sleep when a man is hunting for a mammoth, she needs to keep one eye open in case of pillagers or sabertooth tigers. But when the men return, and the next night she's sleeping next to a man and smells the sweat, she knows she's more secure and sleeps better. Could this be it, or is this way too far fetched?

And if it is so, how much does the smells affect us? Giving a sniff of feline urine to a rodent makes the rodent to panic. Do we have such extreme effects from different smells? Have we only learned to fight against and/or to control the instincts/urges we have from smells or have we lost the ability to process the information efficiently? Are we still affected by the odors in our normal life, or is this "change by smell" only present in intime relationships where you are close enough to each other?

I have to take a shower now.

Developer of MS-Word is going to space

More and more people are going to space.

Now Charles Simonyi, one of the creators os MS-Word, is going there with the Russians.

Read more from BBC.

Another Space Agency

There is another company that will start commercial flights to space. Space Adventures provide up to 10 orbital days.

Depends how this goes and what they have to offer, I go to space with Virgin Galactic or Space Adventures.

Aphorism of the Day Pt.6

Manu: Good women are hard to find.
Sami: They must be good in 'Hide and Seek'.

Stephen Hawking sets a date

Stephen Hawking, who is testing the Zero-G before going to space, has set the date for the test on 16th of April. I hope it goes well.