What Really Is In A McDonald’s Chicken McNugget?

These two paragraphs are taken directly from The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals:

“The ingredients listed in the flyer suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leeches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There’s some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola, or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market price and availability. Read more

Georgia governor skeptical about slavery apology

Georgia Governor Perdue Skeptical Over Effort to Apologize for Slavery

ATLANTA — Gov. Sonny Perdue said Monday he was skeptical about following Virginia’s lead in having his state apologize for its role in slavery.

“Repentance comes from the heart,” he said. “I’m not sure about public apologies … as far as the motivation for them.”

A bill acknowledging and apologizing for Georgia’s role in the slave trade was expected to be unveiled later Monday, supported by the Georgia arm of the NAACP. Read more

The biggest environmental problem: too many people

Juliette Jowit
The Observer

In the time it takes you to get to the end of this sentence, seven people have been added to the population of the world. At this rate, the United Nations estimates the number of people on the planet will nearly double by the middle of this century. Even with significant reductions in birth rates, the population is expected to increase from 6.7 billion now to 9.2 billion by 2050.

These figures are staggering. Yet there was hardly a mention of them in a major story last week: the announcement by Britain’s two main political parties of how they will tackle what is commonly agreed to be the biggest threat facing the planet, global warming and ensuing climate change. Read more

One Number That Will Ring All Your Phones

If you have only one telephone with one phone number, this column won’t be of any interest to you. Skip to another article, you eccentric you.
But first, count your blessings. Millions of people have more than one phone number these days — home, work, cellular, hotel room, vacation home, yacht — and with great complexity comes great hassle. You have to check multiple answering machines.
Read more

More men report sexual harassment in US workplace

A record number of men reported being sexually harassed in the workplace last year, according to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Newly released data from the EEOC showed that 15.4 percent of the 12,025 charges of sexual harassment in fiscal year 2006 were filed by men, as opposed to 11.6 percent a decade ago.

Although the data released does not indicate whether the harassers were male, typically that is the case, experts say.
Read more

20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Aliens

Where are they lurking, when will we find them, and will pictures of naked people impress them?
by Jason Stahl

1 Astronomers Margaret Turnbull and Jill Tarter of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., have compiled a list of 17,129 nearby stars most likely to have planets that could support complex life.

2 According to Turnbull, stars must be at least 3 billion years old (to allow life time to evolve), have low mass, and have high levels of iron; metals are needed to form rocky, Earthlike planets. Read more

Gen. Pace calls homosexuality immoral

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday he considers homosexuality to be immoral and the military should not condone it by allowing gay personnel to serve openly, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

“I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way,” Pace told the newspaper in a wide-ranging interview.
Read more

Oprah’s school ‘too strict’

Gavin Prins

Johannesburg – The rules at Oprah Winfrey’s ultra-posh school at Henley-on-Klip near Johannesburg are apparently so strict they make a reformatory look like a holiday resort.

That’s the word from upset parents, who say the school rules make it difficult for them to keep contact with their children.

They would have aired their concerns during a satellite link-up with the chat show queen a week ago, but that was cancelled at short notice by the school’s management body. Read more

Samuel L. Jackson: Education Is Key

When Samuel L. Jackson was growing up, people encouraged him to be a doctor, lawyer or a teacher. But it was acting, he said, that gave him the greatest satisfaction.

Jackson, who was in Shreveport filming a movie, encouraged young Head Start pupils Friday to apply themselves in school and “find that one particular thing that makes you smile when you do it, that impresses your friends when you do it.”

Most of the children were 4 or 5 years old, and some weren’t sure who he was. Read more

Suspected meteorite crashes through bedroom window

BLOOMINGTON, Illinois (AP) — When Dee Riddle heard the breaking glass, she thought her bathroom mirror must have shattered.

What she found was quite different: A grayish metallic object about the size of a deck of cards had crashed through a bedroom window and into a computer table.

Intrigued scientists from nearby Illinois State University said it was likely a meteorite. Read more

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