Sure, Greek yogurt is pretty damn good, but lately it’s gained so much in popularity that manufacturers are putting it in all kinds of products that don’t actually benefit from the extra straining. If you put as much sugar in it as you typically find in the more mainstream brands, it doesn’t matter.
But at least those are still food.
I mean, come on. It’s soap. Even if you think it’s worth smearing yogurt all over your skin, your skin doesn’t care if it’s greek or not. :rollseyes:
A few years back, Mysterious Galaxy, a San Diego bookstore specializing in mystery and science fiction, opened a second location in Redondo Beach. They recently decided to close the newer location and focus on the San Diego store and community events (they’re heavily involved in the local book and comics convention circuits), and held a giant sale to clear out inventory.
I have to admit I’m not terribly surprised. As much as I loved the place, the store was never particularly busy when I dropped in. Although to be honest, we’re part of the problem, since we only managed to visit a few times a year. Neither of us has nearly as much time to read as we used to, and we’re splitting our book purchases between print and digital along somewhat arbitrary lines these days. (I did make a point of using their affiliate account at Kobo, though.)
We went to the sale over the weekend, and found it amusing that of all the Wheel of Time novels remaining on the shelf, the only ones left aside from the final installment were The Path of Daggers, Winter’s Heart, and Crossroads of Twilight — a trio of books widely known for killing fans’ interest in the series. (Crossroads, in particular, is referred to jokingly as “Characters Show Up.”) Fortunately it picked up again with New Spring, a flashback novel focusing on a character who had vanished halfway through the series, set years before the first book. The next book in the main series, Knife of Dreams, turned out to be really good, making me wonder if Robert Jordan’s side trip to the past had re-energized and re-inspired him. The fact that the story picked up again so strongly before his death — before he was even diagnosed, IIRC — gave me a lot more confidence in the concluding trilogy finished by Brandon Sanderson. If that next book had been like Crossroads, I probably would have dropped the series right there.
The first time we saw the mural of Johnny Cash on the outside wall of the Gasser Lounge, Katie and I agreed he looked like Lt. Braca from Farscape. We still can’t unsee it, even after the owners added the “Go Kings Go!” word balloon a year or two back.
It’s clear that many people online don’t understand the concept of dosage or concentration when it comes to substances of any sort (food, drugs, additives, environmental factors, chemicals*, radioactive isotopes): Something can be harmless or even beneficial in small amounts, but dangerous in large amounts.
Trivial examples:
Think of it like turning the steering wheel on your car (or the handlebars on your bike, if you prefer):
Also, most things will have multiple effects, some positive and some negative. (Consider aspirin: pain relief, fever reducer, blood thinner, but high doses can cause ulcers.) The balance of how strong each effect is will change with dosage, so you might have a strong positive and mild negative at one dosage, and a mild positive and strong negative effect at a higher one, and at an even higher dose even the positive effects would become negative as described above.
So the next time you see a warning about how hazardous something is in high concentrations…think about whether that has anything to do with the level at which people are actually exposed to it in the typical case.
*Remember: Everything is made of chemicals, including raw organically grown food.
The office building next door to work is being converted into a hotel, and the lawn has become a staging area for the renovation work. They’ve turned off the sprinklers, leaving the lawn around the building dried into very short straw and producing an interesting gradient in the transition from watered to unwatered.
I kind of hope they’ll put in something less water-intensive than a new lawn when they’re done, but I’m not counting on it.
