Improve Conditions

which will soon take in a position-by-position White Sox preview (the Mets really did beat it out of me last year), but you'll want to read this, especially if you have little Calvins running around, even if this isn't an actual scientific study and if the amounts of mercury involved are well, well below the level you need to actually worry about:

Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.

We're not much prone to moral panic around my house and have always sneered at the kind of parents who are convinced that a drop of Coca-Cola touching the tongue of their delicate little Turgenev-in-training is going to spoil their brain chemistry, but I'm feeling a little better about all that time we spend baking with maple syrup and honey and doing other embarrassing hippie-type stuff right now. Bonus points to the Corn Refiners Association for this wonderful bit of pushback:

"Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two re-agents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years."