I cannot comment about MSG in Chinese food but I can provide my own experience with MSG. As a kid in Bangalore I used to eat a lot of instant noodles that had MSG in the seasoning packets. One time I got a very bad case of food poisoning and ended up in the hospital for 5 days. At the time, the doctors said the food poisoning was due to MSG. The circumstances being what they were, I doubt the doctors were influenced by American systemic racism or racism exported from America. (They could well be just plain home-grown racist against the Chinese since Indians are generally not very friendly towards Chinese, but again, I didn't eat at a Chinese restaurant and the instant noodles were an Indian brand so...)
All in all, I am inclined to believe that MSG does actually have negative effects. However, I think one can build a tolerance to it, because I regularly eat it at restaurants and I haven't had any problems with it since that time as a kid.
There is a section in 'In the First Circle' by Solzhenitsyn where two prisoners argue about the etymology of 'fun' in Russian. I don't remember the quote off the top of my head right now, but one prisoner posed that'fun is derived from the word for "temporary lack of worry"'. Of course, the other prisoner disagreed with him so I don't know if that etymology is actually correct.
I agree with the sentiment of your comment but let's please keep the discussion civil here on HN and refrain from personal attacks like "you have a bright future as a republican spin doctor".
I think it's because you know where the car is going to do when you are in the driver's seat, so you can mentally brace yourself and adjust your internal balance systems accordingly. Whereas, as a passenger, you have to react to the car instead of controlling it and so your internal balance systems are always slightly behind the actual motion, causing motion sickness. This is probably extendable to planes, trains, and busses.
I saw the title to this post and immediately thought of these two things. I clicked on the comments, and you've already named them. What great writers!