The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 10

ImAmto I A9 The weigh i v. Death comes in threes Before the world was turned upside down Thursday by the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, Johnny Carson sidekick Ed McMahon left the earthly plane Tuesday. Citroen, airborne Evgeny Novikov of Russia and co-driver Dale Moscatt of Australia go airborne in their Citroen C4WRC during the second stage of the 66th Rally of Poland Friday. AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES JUST TRY TO GET LOST the right chemistry SMARTIES PURGED: DO YOU STILL EAT THE RED ONES LAST? BIG BROTHER IS ALWAYS WATCHING, MAKING IT DIFFICULT TO LEAVE THE GRID NOWADAYS ofthewor Nyarokni Kokwl, whose leg was broken in tribal clashes in Sudan, mourns the death of her son from a stomach ailment Monday at a clinic run by Medecins Sans Frontieres. JOE SCHWARCZ "Kids loved the blue because it coloured their tongue a monstrous hue.

produced from algae of the genus Spirulina looked pretty anemic. And blue was elusive. The synthetic dye known as Brilliant Blue 1 in the U.S.) just could not be replaced. So Britain had to do without blue Smarties. As one might expect, this caused not a small degree of consternation.

Kids loved the blue because it coloured their tongue a monstrous hue. Even psychol-ogists lamented the disappearance of the blue, claiming the colour had a calming effect. So a frantic search for a natural replacement began. And finally, in 2009, one was found. In an unlikely place: Bacteria.

Specifically cyanobacteria, also known as "blue-green algae." The same algae that we worry about as a pollutant in our lakes is a source of phyco-cyanin, a blue pigment being used to colour Smarties in Europe. So there, to the relief of many, the blue is back. But not here. Phycocyanin is not an approved colour in Canada. But fret not! We are still blessed with blue Mars, the makers of so far have not jumped on the "all natural" bandwagon, and colour their blue candies with a mixture of Brilliant Blue and indigo.

Yes, the same indigo used to dye jeans. This colourant is derived from a plant, and is allowed in Canada. So why doesn't Nestle just use this to produce blue Smarties? First the solubility properties of indigo are not ideal for candy production, and it really needs to be mixed with Brilliant Blue to provide the desired colour. And there is another issue. Indigo colour isn't really natural.

The plant contains no blue compounds. Only upon fermentation of the leaves, traditionally in a vat of diluted urine, is the blue compound indigotin produced. But thanks to Adolf Baeyer's development of a synthetic process for indigotin in the latter part of the 19th century almost all the indigotin produced today is synthetic. It is chemically identical to the "natural" variety (although its "naturalness," as mentioned, is debatable) but it does not conform to a label description of "no artificial colours." So for now, in Canada, we are stuck with no blue or green Smarties, unless you can get your hands on some that were produced before March. I have two boxes.

Unopened. And no, you can't have any. Collector's items, you understand. Joe Schwarcz is director of McCill University's Office for Science and Society (www.OSS.McCill.ca). He can be heard every Sunday from 3-4 p.m.

on CJAD. joe.schwarczmcgill.ca VL.H LUKE MkGREGOR REUTERS The eyes have it: A man is watched by a camera on a London street in 2009. South Carolina Governor Mark San-ford and divorced mother Susan Jordan are rare cases in that they disappeared completely, if only for a short time. The three keys to a successful disappearance They're gone. Poof! Vanished! Sad, but true.

Check it out. You can open box upon box of Smarties and you won't find any blues or greens. They've been purged. Why? Because last March, Nestle Canada decided that synthetic dyes were out, and natural ones were in. Since there was no adequate natural replacement for blue, and consequently for green, which is made by combining blue and yellow, the blue and green Smarties had to go.

Now we have to be satisfied with a palette of red, yellow, purple, brown, orange and yup, pink. And to think that people are worried about chemicals leaching from plastics, mercury in fish or global warming when we have a Smarties crisis! So what provoked this calamity? Opinion polls. They show that people are increasingly wary of synthetic chemicals and prefer "natural" ingredients, especially in their food. Of course natural does not equate to safe any more than synthetic equates to risky. Strychnine is quite natural, but we wouldn't want to eat it.

We reserve it for sentencing rats to death. Aspirin is a synthetic compound (not found in the bark of the willow tree as a common myth suggests) and many people find it to be quite a useful substance. The truth of the matter is that the only way to determine the safety of a substance is to test it. Whether it was made by nature in a plant, or by a chemist in a lab, is not relevant. In recent years, however, at least in the public mind, synthetic chemicals have become a scapegoat for many of life's ills.

They have been blamed for causing cancer, triggering obesity, disrupting our hormonal makeup, and in the case of food dyes, causing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. While research has shown that there may be substance to some of these worries, well-meaning activists often misinterpret the science and exaggerate the risks. In the case of food dyes, concerns were raised as early as the 1970s, when pediatric allergist Benjamin Feingold linked hyperactivity in children to certain food dyes and preservatives. Most regulatory agencies maintain that these allegations are not supported by proper studies, while many parents claim that their children's behaviour improves significantly when they follow a "Feingold diet" In marketing, the customers are right, even if they may be wrong. If surveys and focus groups show that sales would increase if "no artificial colours used" is slapped on a label, then the industry moves in that direction.

So it was that in 2006 Nestle in Britain decided to eliminate synthetic dyes from Smarties. The decision appeared to be a good one when a year later researchers at Southampton University carried out a well-designed controlled trial in children and found a slight increase in behavioural problems when the kids were challenged with fruit juice spiked with synthetic dyes. But Nestle had a problem. Natural colorants extracted from hibiscus fruit, red cabbage, safflower, black carrots, radishes and lemon did the job reasonably for most colours, although the green 4 A i ii mar MISINFORMATION The art of taking every piece of data that exist about you, deviating it and destroying it beyond recognition, be it a credit report, an old address, bank records, etc. Here are a few records that can be searched: I Home phone I Cellphone I Frequent flyer numbers I Car rentals I Video rentals I Internet provider where he was.

Then his office said he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Where was Jordan? Where was Sanford? Our trails are tracked, because of where we get online, because of ATMs, because of credit cards, because of tolls, because we shop on Amazon and because we carry cellphones wherever we go. We feel watched, tethered to some a 3 v. MICHAEL KRUSE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES You can still get lost.

The stories of Susan Jordan and Mark Sanford seem strangely linked. They couldn't be more different, one a woman from north of Tampa, the other the governor of South Carolina, but in this Big Brother-y age of surveillance cameras, GPS and Google Earth, the two have this much in common: They disappeared. Jordan, a 57-year-old divorced mother, was gone for six weeks before calling family Sanford, a 49-year-old politician, was gone for six days before getting off a plane in Atlanta. But the point is this: Both of them, at least for a while, got lost, and stayed lost, because they wanted it that way That's getting harder and harder to do these days. "This is a profound question about our identity and our place in society," Peter Eckersley said Wednesday from San Francisco.

He's a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who studies privacy issues brought on by rapidly advancing technologies. "Do we," he asked, "have the right to say: 'Hey I want to escape the life I was living? I want to be a new person In a new place'?" Jordan was reported missing on May 8. Deputies learned that she had bought a bus ticket under the name Debbie Kelly Surveillance tapes showed her on May 7 in the Greyhound station in downtown Tampa, later that night in Orlando and then the following morn-ing in Tallahassee. After that, nothing. Gone.

Sanford, the Palmetto State's chief executive since 2002, left the governor's mansion June 18. A cell tower near the Atlanta airport picked up a signal from his phone. Then it was turned off. State law enforcement officials called his phone and sent him text messages June 19. No response.

The governor's office issued a statement June 20 that people shouldn't be concerned. People were concerned. The governor's office said he was "taking some time away" to "recharge" Then his wife said she didn't know DISINFORMATION Hook: Lead an investigator into an area you chose. Line: Allow them to discover information you've planted. Sinker: Have the investigator believe they're on the right trail.

Disinformation makes your file thick and leads to mass confusion. REFORMATION The act of moving, getting out of Dodge. Will you repatriate? If so, how will you access your money? SOURCE: DISAPPEAR. INFO Ahearn, 46, works out of California, and can be found online at disappear, info. About 95 per cent of the people who find him, he said, come by searching these three words: How to disappear.

Jordan last week, authorities said, when she called her family to say she was in Savannah. Case closed. A woman from the suburbs who disappears for a while is under no obliga- tion to explain. A governor? Totally different Sanford landed in Atlanta on Wednesday morning. A reporter from the State newspaper in South Carolina was waiting for him.

No, Sanford said, he had not been on the Appalachian Trail. Instead: Argentina! "I wanted to do something exotic," he explained. He said he had needed a break and did some driving along the coast Lovely Come afternoon, though, back in Columbia, he said he had gone to Argentina to meet with a woman with whom he has been having an affair. Later in the day, Sanford's wife skid she kicked him out two weeks ago. That's wronged-wife-speak for -wait for it -Get lost "You can go-off the grid, but only you're really savvy or really lucky.

Privacy expert Peter Eckersley kind of network, because we kind of are, but we play along. We get on Face-book, and log in our status. Here I am. "As electronic devices become more equipped," Hillsborough sheriff's spokesman J.D. Calloway said Wednesday, "that definitely helps us find people, whether they are a fugitive or someone who has disappeared." "Fifty years ago, it would've been easy to get lost," Eckersley said.

"Now you can do this, you can go off the grid, but only if you're really savvy or really lucky" You need money, according to "skip tracer" Frank Ahearn, and you need a plan. One slip and you're not lost for long. It's hard..