baratron | Dec. 18th, 2002

Dec. 18th, 2002

I am such a geek! Well, that'll make the news at ten, won't it? :) On irc just now, I got into a conversation about the differences between the layout of UK and US keyboards. And in trying to explain an object I wanted made for The Sims, I ended up starting the game so I could take screenshots to show the problem. Starting the game takes a good 6 or 7 minutes, then grabbing a screenshot, cropping it, resaving and posting... yeah, yeah, I know.

I started an LJ entry a few hours ago which said Having a very blah few hours. Not depressed in any serious way, just irritable and bored and unable to concentrate. It's probably PMS. Can't believe it could be PMS - again? so soon! - but Richard, who is the Great Oracle of my menstrual cycle, says it's about 3 weeks since my last joyous bleed, so that'd be right. Now I have to remember to take all my vitamin pills and petered out. I seem to be feeling less blah now, but a Note to Self to take extra vitamins would still be useful. I'm craving refined sugar and fat like no tomorrow, so that's a confirmation of PMS. Wa-hey, the joys of the mood rollercoaster, again! It's decidedly less bumpy if I take the vitamins, though, so now I just have to remember...

I need to go out in the morning and buy some more cough mixture. My life is so exciting!

Current Mood: blah

More geeking has been occuring. We were discussing <http://www.finchcms.edu/cms/biochem/walters/sweet/sucralose.html>sucralose, a new sugar substitute. In the process of finding out about it, I found more bloody awful psuedoscience.

"The manufacturer claims that the chlorine added to sucralose is similar to the chlorine atom in the salt (NaCl) molecule. That is not the case. Sucralose may be more like ingesting tiny amounts of chlorinated pesticides, but we will never know without long-term, independent human research."

Chlorine is chlorine is chlorine. Oh, it's certainly true that some chlorinated compounds are perfectly safe for humans (at least in small doses), whereas others are deadly poisons, but the same is true of oxygenated ones. I'm just thinking about yummy sulphuric acid, which consists only of hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen - three elements which are absolutely essential to us. And apart from the Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide page (which is a spoof), I don't see people trying to ban oxygen. Saying that there is a difference between chlorine in one molecule and chlorine in another is just ... wrong! It's almost as bad as the page I found which declared that there was "good" ozone and "bad" ozone. Ozone is ozone! Three little oxygen atoms holding hands!

Yes, please kill me now. I can't take the appalling lack of public awareness of science any longer.