gay-friendly ice cream

Huh. I've just found out that First Foods' Supreme Lite low-fat vegan ice cream is made with sucralose. I previously would not have touched said ice cream with a bargepole, because I'm very anti artificial sweeteners, but if it's sucralose, that's different.

I generally avoid artificial sweeteners because they scare me. While I have a lot of friends with lots of allergies to naturally-occurring foodstuffs, the people I know who are sensitive to aspartame are generally healthy and have no other allergies. That worries me. I know the case against aspartame is based on smoke and mirrors, and hysteria, but I prefer not to ingest it. Especially as it doesn't even taste good.

Sucralose is different. It's made from sucrose, with a few -OH groups swapped out for -Cl groups. Woo. A completely mundane nucleophilic substitution reaction. How terrifying. Well, it is to those who don't understand chemistry. Apparently, "sucralose is actually a chemical substance". No shit. Those essentials of life DNA and water are not chemicals, you understand. And sucralose absorbed by the body "has been found to concentrate in the liver, kidney, and gastrointestinal tract" - how unlike the places where sugar is stored? But the real evidence for sucralose's evil is this: "Some chlorinated molecules serve as the basis for pesticides such as D.D.T., and accumulate in body fat. You would just as soon have a pesticide in your food as sucralose because sucralose (Splenda) is a chlorocarbon." Oh noes! Let's ban fungi, eucalyptus trees, seaweed and coral, because they pollute our world with toxic organochlorines.

We must be aware that "Any animal that eats chlorine (especially on a regular basis) is at risk of cancer. The Merck Manual and OSHA 40 SARA 120 Hazardous Waste Handbook states that chlorine is a carcinogen and emergency procedures should be taken when exposed via swallowing, inhaling, or through the skin." Yes, if I was eating, drinking or breathing elemental chlorine, I would be concerned. But chlorine atoms as part of a bigger molecule? Please.

I admit I'm a snob about avoiding aspartame because it's "artificial", and that makes me no better than the various people who won't eat anything with "chemicals" in, but at least I don't make up science to suit me. Unlike these people: ( Choice 'Aspartame is evil!!' quotes from Google )

In other news, I am profoundly cuted by this site: Mood-brighteners and antidepressant structures and delicious Opioids. Yay, molecules! Although it transpires that mirtazapine has a too many hexagon error (c) barakta.

I seem to have said this quite a lot recently.

Dear gall bladder,
You suck.
no love, h-l.

Yesterday I found out the name for a trait I have, which is breaking off in the middle of sentences for no apparent reason. Apparently it is aposiopesis. You learn something every day. I'm not sure for certain that it's the perfect word, because I trail off because I get distracted rather than because I'm overcome with emotion, but it'll do for now :)

lj indexing

Does anyone use Google to index their journal? I've been searching for several old posts today, and found Google universally useless. Like, for example, I'm sure I once made a post entitled "100 random things/facts about me", but can I find it? I guess it must've been friends-only, although I can't think why.

Amusingly, searching for keyword "random" on site:baratron.livejournal.com returns 5 pages of links. Keyword "me" returns a mere 8 pages of links - obviously, I am less narcissistic than I thought ;) Here is an old journal entry that made me laugh uproariously.

Anyway, yes, so: if you index your journal, how do you do it? Have you downloaded the whole thing to your computer & then search/grep it locally? Or using some other method?