Entry tags:

animals, cute overload, jokes that don't go over well, unfunny write-up, wank overload

baby animal abusers: second verse, same as the first
Ah, infant formula wank. No, not the infant formula scandal. I mean the equation for surefire wank on Cute Overload:
human child in picture = OMG NOT CUTE EVIL STUPID BAYBEE
It's a pretty simple formula, but the results here are deliciously tainted with melamine.

It's another Asian infant chomping on a puppy. Racewank is happily avoided for the most part, though, so you can relax.

I can't go through all 256 comments right now, but here's a few skimmed off the top:

This one is probably a joke: Who will end up with the personality complex? The baby who didn't know any better and must eat puppy faces or the puppy who will forever need to be inside someone's mouth!

Well, thanks for justifying this with your ovaries: While I am female, I do NOT think babies are cute - unless they have fur and tails. The furless ones just grow up to hate you anyway.

According to my breastfeeding friends, it's a lot more than that: Babies sorta suck sometimes.

This is your chance for internet glory: Last I looked, CuteButNotBabiesOverload.com did not exist.

It's our responsibility as intarweb police!: Enough with the pudding comments. When the picture is obviously this disturbing, people have a right and a duty to comment on just how awful it is.

And here's the thread on the LJ feed. First comment is "in before wank". But we do have this lovely poem:
it is not cute
and it is not ok
the puppy is probably hurting
picture the cutest monkey holding your baby by the head
and then someone even bigger thaking a picture of it
the monkey doesn't know the baby is hurting
but it doesn't make it ok

And, for the sake of sanity:
But, for the hell of all you people who think that baby is messed up in the head, lets beat the hell out of the baby for doing what she knows to do, which is...

Item
Item=Mouth

Edit: CO now has more than one poster and the poster of the above was actually "Not That Mike the Other Mike." Not to be outdone, Meg has upped the stakes by posting an image of adult human women. And filed them under "primates." Ahahahahahahaha. I <3 you Meg. (Wank, natch.)

More taxonomy wank, plz. Thanks to exit_chrysalis for linking us. (There's also people talking about BSG, Torchwood and Firefly in the comments; the wank streams have crossed!)

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Melamine tl;dr

issendai
2008-09-25 04:39 pm UTC (link)

Kosagi is probably right. Adulterating food with melamine or cyanuric acid to raise the nitrogen levels (and improve its performance on tests of protein levels, which test for nitrogen, not protein--don't ask me why) is common in China.

Why did I mention cyanuric acid? Because melamine is harmless on its own. So is cyanuric acid. but when you combine the two--say, by mixing an ingredient adulterated with melamine with an ingredient adulterated with cyanuric acid--you get kidney stones and ensuing renal failure. There's some discussion about whether food has been adulterated with these chemicals for a long time, and only recently have manufacturers started bringing them into contact with each other.

tl;dr DON'T EAT FOOD FROM CHINA, THE FOOD INDUSTRY IS CROOKED.

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Re: Melamine tl;dr

moonjaguar
2008-09-25 05:36 pm UTC (link)

Ow, my brain. So it's about like farmers using anhydrous ammonia (even though commercial fertilizer and cow manure has plenty of ammonia on its own) to pump up already nitrogen-rich soil? Which not only ends up depleting the soil but making the air and the water reek like Bo-Peep for miles around, there's the whole fun of dealing with leaks. Yanno, death, evacuating feed-mill towns, 911 circuits going crash due to multiple respiratory distress calls, etc. I never thought living in the country could be so polluted.

*stares at protein drink mix* Er... bad enough the whey protein makes it smell like baby formula, am I gonna roach my kidneys drinking it? It says made in USA but I haven't believed that label since import parts were snuck into the cars American automakers begged consumers to buy.

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Re: Melamine tl;dr

issendai
2008-09-25 05:55 pm UTC (link)

A friend from rural Maine tells me that moving back to small-farm farming is not the holy grail of clean and sustainable agriculture than many people think it is, because small farmers don't always clean up chemical spills or manage their chemicals safely. Agriculture is as nastily industrial as factories in many ways.

My highly uneducated guess is that the whey protein in your drink didn't come from China. China's dairy products seem to go mainly to Chinese and Southeast Asian industries, and there hasn't been any mention of American product recalls because of the use of Chinese milk. Plus the US has plenty of milk of its own, which probably makes it cost-ineffective to import dairy products from China.

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	Re: Melamine tl;dr bienegold 2008-09-25 09:10 pm UTC (link)
	I did read something about Chinese milk products in Europe, though...the UK, I think? Just fyi. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Melamine tl;dr issendai 2008-09-26 02:21 am UTC (link)
	DO NOT WANT TO HEAR. Shit. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Melamine tl;dr bienegold 2008-09-26 02:28 am UTC (link)
	>_> Sorry! If it helps, I think what I saw they (at least) temporarily banned the products. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: Melamine tl;dr

lirazel
2008-09-29 02:47 pm UTC (link)

Don't know if you've done any research into glutamate (the harmful part of monosodium glutamate) but the processing done to extract whey protein frees up a lot of the natural glutamate, which can lead to it have excitotoxic properties. Of course, different folks have different sensitivity levels, but if you're prone to migraines I'd suggest avoiding it on principle. Or feel free to ignore me.

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moar Melamine tl;dr + extra science

keleri
2008-09-26 12:31 am UTC (link)

The main way to test for protein in the food industry is to use the Kjeldahl method, which uses acid to decompose the protein into carbon dioxide and ammonium salts. Proteins are made of amino acids which contain nitrogen, and measuring the amount of ammonium will give you an idea of how much nitrogen and thus protein is in the food. The other test, the Dumas test, also measures nitrogen in the same way.

Melamine has 6 extra nitrogen atoms in it, so adding a little will boost the nitrogen level of the food and fudge the test.

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	Re: moar Melamine tl;dr + extra science issendai 2008-09-26 02:22 am UTC (link)
	Woo! I am enlightened. Your giant brains are sexy. Is there a way to test for protein that doesn't lend itself to dumping industrial chemicals into the food? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: moar Melamine tl;dr + extra science

keleri
2008-09-26 03:46 am UTC (link)

Yesssss my science degree gains me recognition and prestige! /sedate dance

There's a bunch of tests we can do in the lab to measure protein but they're similarly indirect; I don't think there's a [cheap] way to measure absolute protein concentration at all. [opaque technical references] If they did UV spectroscopy, melamine would probably still work because it has lots of double bonds and I would guess absorbs UV light. If they did Bradford or Lowry assay, they'd probably add another chemical that complexes copper ions. [/opaque technical references] And those other methods are not as cheap as the Kjeldahl/Dumas methods and harder to do on an industrial scale. >____

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