(PHOTO: LINNELL ESLER)
I always felt that the microwave popcorn butter flavor was noxious, and now I know why. It’s because it’s chock full of diacetyl, a perfectly normal byproduct of fermentation that lends a buttery or butterscotchy taste to food in large doses but also has an evil side. It causes debilitating lung damage in artificial butter factory workers amongst other pockets of the flavor industry.

The disease, called "popcorn worker’s lung" is actually bronchiolitis obliterans, a debilitating form of lung damage which normally strikes those exposed to toxic gas or as a manifestation of transplant rejection (ironically lung transplants are the only known treatment of popcorn lung). Suffice to say it’s nasty and people are lobbying hard to protect flavor industry workers against the effects of inhaling that seemingly wholesome fake flavor in large doses.

In the past five years, the flavor industry has dished out over $100 million to popcorn workers lung victims in lawsuits. California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber has introduced a bill to ban diacetyl in the workplace by 2010.

The next logical question is, what does this mean for the unwitting public? Judging by how the smell of fake butter permeates the air after nuking microwave popcorn, one imagines consumer exposure to be worthy of investigation. Back in 2003, the EPA commissioned a study to look at the effects of microwave popcorn in the home. It was slated to be finished by the end of that year but got stalled when the principal investigator was transferred to tend "homeland security duties." The EPA anticipates publication of the study in an academic journal by the middle of 2007. To which I reply, "pop goes the weasel."

About a year and a half into Inky Circus’s existence we’ve gone and moved. That’s right, your favorite science show has switched circuits to Inkling magazine. But other than the change in url, things are business as usual. It might be a little rocky while we sort out the new formats, so stay with us.

We’ll be just as candid. Just as silly. Just as bitchy. And just as nerdy. We’ll continue to do our best to keep you distracted from your day job.

As for logistics. Our archives will forevermore be available at www.inkycircus.com. And our new RSS feed can be got right here on our left hand column.

So there was this story in the New York Times a couple weeks ago about how combining high intensity and gentle cardio is the best way to shape up your bod, heart and insulin resistance. It was the most read story for days. This made me laugh. A lot.

You see about four years, I used to go to the gym almost every day with my friend Yun. It just happened that the Athletic Center was right beside the Zoology Department and well, it just became this habit. Anyways. So one morning around 7:30am I find myself standing in the weight room like normal, doing some bicep curls or something, looking in the mirror at myself and all the other sweaty goons pumping iron around me.

And it struck me. I yelled over to Yun: “Does it not weird you out that we live such sedentary lives that we come into a windowless, airless room to LIFT THINGS OVER AND OVER AGAIN just to maintain some semblance of muscle tone?”

Sort of like how pairing vigorous, sweaty, heart-pumping exercise with milder, gentler, chat-while-you-walk kind of movement is LIKE REAL LIFE ACTIVITY. Hills have ups and down. Sometimes you need to get places fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes you are carrying things and sometimes not. So yeah. I guess it’s all just a sign of the times. But really, the gym is not the outdoors. Go get some ecotherapy for your body.