CAUTION: MSG isn't just in cheap chinese food places

I was watching some news program this week when an informational venue came on and the host described a substance that is in a lot of our food, I mean from Campbell's soup to Doritos brand chips. This product is a flavor enhancer with catostrophic consequences. Its MSG or Monosodium Glutamate. This flavor additive has been found to promote swelling in brain tissue and migraines to Autism. I found an informative website, MSGTRUTH, about this if our interested, but I encourage you to go your cabinet like I did and look at some of the soups and see if you read Monosodium Glutamate on the ingredients list. The product manufacturers don't even have to spell it out they can label it as "artificial flavors."

Four good rules of thumb are:

	The more salty a processed food is, the more likely it is to contain MSG or free glutamate.
	The more processed a food is, the more likely it is to contain MSG or free glutamate: powdered stuff that used to be food is likely to have added MSG because the original flavor has been degraded.
	The more ingredients in a packaged food, the more likely MSG is present. Read labels carefully if a food has more than five ingredients.
	Do not trust something simply because it is in a health food store and the label states it is natural or even organic. FYI: These are from the website above, you can click them to be forwarded to the page I found them.

BLOG AND GO TO JAIL!

This week on the BBC website I woke up before class and read an article that really stuck me and is extremely relevant to our class and this blog. The article was about a man in Egypt, the same age as me, 22, a student, who spoke out against his university on his blog and was imprisoned!!! I was really shaken up by this article and how similar it is to my experience, but he was sentenced to four years in jail and meanwhile over here in the U.S. I am able to write what I please on this blog without consequence. Unless I write crazy stuff about the government and then I might evoke some sort of F.B.I. surveillance, but thats our society. What mostly arises in me is a sense of gratefulness for the rights we have and also a disgust for the unfairness of this story and the state of (more the lack of) free speech in Egypt. If you want more background on how speech is censored in Egypt I found an article in the Middle East Times about free speech infringement and the different forces that are strangling it.

deliberation needs ears to listen, to contemplate, to change

In our Free Speech and Responsibility class we reviewed abolitionist’s speeches, including Fredrick Douglass’ Plea for Free Speech. Our class discussion brought up some interesting ideas for me. First off I think Douglass had advanced ideas for his time. I think he was one of the early feminist of his time within the limits of his generation. You may argue that he didn’t blatantly include women, but he made it clear that the freedom of expression is an intrinsic part of humanity as a whole.

“No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech.” This was an interesting quote from Douglass because he included himself in the group he says the fathers deemed worthy of this right. It is interesting because in reality the fathers of the government where thinking of themselves and their kind of wealthy business owning ‘white’ Europeans.

Lastly I think that the most important part of our class discussion and the idea of free speech is that deliberation needs ears to listen, to contemplate, to change. Free Speech includes the freedom to hear and to be heard because this is the basis for the freedom expression.

check these sites out!

This weekend at work I was browsing websites to find a graduate school when I found a website called The Center for Social Media that stems from the School of Communication at American University. This site caught my interest and I browsed it for a while and it led me to the Free Expression Policy Project.

There are some very interesting and extremely relevant articles on The Free Expression site in relation to my class about Free Speech and Responsibility. I read one article in particular called "Bong Hits 4 Jesus". This article is about a high school student and how his freedom of expression was violated. I recommend this article, but I really think everyone interested in current events related should Free Speech to check out The Free Expression Policy Project!

Enjoy!