IT SEEMS strange to note that the blockbuster movie Avatar, which won two Golden Globe awards last Sunday night and is still on an unabated box-office record run, should be making some enthusiasts depressed and giving others headaches.

Apparently, to America’s legions of feisty conservatives, its tale of money-grabbing Americans who exploit native people – albeit on another planet – is another example of leftwing Hollywood elitism.

Yet, some progressives blast the movie as racist. It also riles the anti-smoking lobby, and if that wasn’t enough, some critics charge that the story was stolen from Russian sci-fi novels.

Despite – or perhaps because of – that heap of controversy, Avatar is within striking distance of becoming the highest-grossing film of all time.

As it continues to reign supreme above the worldwide box office, it is the first movie ever to have a realistic chance of beating the US$1.8 billion (RM6 billion) earned by Titanic, director James Cameron’s previous film in 1997.

Like Avatar, Titanic was also blasted for its bloated budget, wooden dialogue and predictable plot. But it never amassed the broad range of ideological critics that have attacked Cameron’s latest sci-fi blockbuster.

The most recent broadside launched at Avatar came from America’s powerful anti-smoking lobby. Their ire was directed at the character played by Sigourney Weaver, who in the film is still puffing away on her cigarettes some 150 years in the future.

The group, called Smoke Free Movies, took out full page ads in trade papers Variety and The Hollywood Reporter to protest the on-screen smoking.

It argued that for every US$100 million (RM334.3 million) the movie earns at the box office, it will “deliver an estimated 40 million tobacco impressions to theatre audiences”. The organisation estimated that this represented some US$50 million (RM167.1 million) worth of free advertising for the tobacco industry.

Avatar director Cameron said he agreed that role models for young people should not smoke in films, but that “movies should reflect reality”.

But there was no easy answer to complaints from some viewers that the new 3-D viewing system gave them splitting headaches.

According to Dr Michael Rosenberg, an ophthalmology professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, the innovative system exacerbates minor eye problems.

“That translates into greater mental effort, making it easier to get a headache,” he said in an online post.

But dull pain in the brain is not the only health risk being posed by the hit movie.

Diehard fans, now widely known as Avatards, are filling online forums with their complaints about how the film is making them depressed as they realise their own lives can never hope to match the primitive beauty found on the Pandoran planet.

One popular forum about how to deal with the post-Avatar blues has already registered more than 1,000 threads.

Other people are leaving the movie feeling angry. Hollywood has long been regarded as a fifth column by US conservatives, but the tale of US Marines out to ruthlessly exploit the noble savages of Pandora has raised a new level of ire.

“This is the only time I ever sat in a theatre where people were cheering the forest and the blue people, attacking ex-Marines,” said conservative activist Tom Roeser. “That’s the Hollywood view of us. We are the exploiters. We are pre-emptive attackers.”

Meanwhile, some on the left wing are incensed at the movie, charging that its storyline of a white ex-Marine riding to the rescue of a primitive people is inherently racist.

New York Times columnist David Brooks, called it a “racial fantasy par excellence”, arguing that the movie “rests on the assumption that non-whites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades”.

“It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism,” he said. “Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.”

New research showing that thrill-seeking teenagers are especially susceptible to fruit-flavored cigarettes is in line with the recent ban on the sale of flavored cigarettes by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September 2009. According to the FDA, the ban, authorized by the new Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, is part of a national effort by the FDA to reduce smoking, which is the leading preventable cause of death in America.

“We found that those teens who gravitate toward novel experiences were especially drawn to cigarettes described as having an appealing, sweet flavor, such as cherry,” says lead author Kenneth Manning with Colorado State University.

The study, published in the December issue of the journal Tobacco Control, was funded by the Substance Abuse Policy Research Program (SAPRP) of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Past research has found that high-sensation-seeking youth are more likely to smoke cigarettes than their low-sensation-seeking peers, Manning notes. But until now, no studies have looked at how novel, sweet-tasting cigarettes might impact this group of thrill seekers. The authors proposed that the influence of cigarette flavor descriptors lies in their ability to alter the “arousal potential” of a cigarette brand’s marketing communications (such as its packaging). Arousal potential refers to the degree to which a stimulus (like the description of a cigarette’s flavor) is capable of gaining attention and exciting the nervous system.

To test this theory, the researchers divided 253 high school students into two groups to evaluate three pictures of cigarette packages: Camel, American Spirit, and a fictitious brand, “Onyx.” The first group viewed packages that included traditional cigarette descriptions such as “domestic blend,” and the second group of teens viewed packages with the cigarettes described as “cherry.” Following exposure to each package, the study participants responded to several questions regarding the appeal of the brand (i.e., beliefs about how enjoyable it would be, overall evaluation, and trial intention).

To determine their sensation-seeking tendencies, the students responded to measures such as “I would like to explore strange places” and “I like friends who are exciting and unpredictable.”

Sensation-seeking varies over a continuum, explains Manning. “In our study, we essentially divided half of the students into the high group and the other half into the low group based on their overall sensation-seeking scores.”

Results indicated that the appeal of the brands across the belief, attitude, and trial intention measures depended on both the sensation-seeking tendency of the student and whether the student had viewed the brand packages with the traditional or sweet flavor descriptions. In particular, among students who were classified as high-sensation seekers, the cigarette brands were significantly more appealing to those exposed to the packages that included the sweet flavor descriptors than to those who had viewed the packages with the traditional descriptions.

This underscores a key point of the FDA ban — that flavors make cigarettes and other tobacco products more appealing to youth, and are created to attract and allure kids into lifelong addiction. “By enhancing the arousal potential associated with tobacco brands, sweet flavor descriptors boost the appeal of these products among high-sensation seekers,” the authors conclude.

The FDA encourages consumers to report continuing sales of flavored cigarettes through a special tobacco hotline (1-877-CTP-1373) and web site (www.fda.gov/flavoredtobacco).

Parents and consumers can learn more about the risks of flavored tobacco products at http://www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/FlavoredTobacco/ucm183196.htm.

The Substance Abuse Policy Research Program (www.saprp.org) of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funds research into policies related to alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs.

Given the current H1N1 flu pandemic, State Health Commissioner Judy Monroe, M.D. says there’s never been a better time to quit smoking.

“Smoking damages your lung tissue, making you more susceptible to lung infections like bronchitis and pneumonia, which may complicate an influenza infection,” said Dr. Monroe. “Damaged lung tissue does not heal as efficiently after an infection as healthy lung tissue. Smoking also suppresses your immune system, making a smoker more susceptible to getting the flu in the first place.”

“When we look at the hospitalizations and deaths from the 2009 H1N1 flu, we can clearly see the negative impact chronic diseases, including tobacco-related illnesses, have on a person’s risk to develop serious illness or to die from the flu,” said Dr. Monroe.

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has targeted individuals aged 25-64 with underlying medical conditions, like asthma or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), to be among the first to get the 2009 H1N1 flu vaccine as they are at higher risk for influenza-related complications.

Pregnant women are also targeted to be among the first to receive the H1N1 flu vaccine. According to the CDC, pregnant women are at a higher risk to get the flu and to have severe complications, including preterm labor, severe pneumonia, fetal distress, and even maternal death. Smoking during pregnancy can increase these risks, according to Dr. Monroe.

“Unfortunately, there are counties in our state with significantly higher than average rates of women who are pregnant and smoke,” said Dr. Monroe. “We know pregnant women are at higher risk of complications from the flu, and smoking can only compound the threat.”

“Our goal is to help Hoosiers live longer, healthier lives,” said Karla Sneegas, executive director, Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation agency. “We know current economic issues in the nation are likely causing extra stress for individuals, which can make it even more difficult to quit. However, we want Hoosiers to know, if you are ready to quit smoking, we are here to help.

“The first step in quitting can be as simple as picking up the phone,” said Sneegas. “The free Indiana Tobacco Quitline – 1-800-QUIT-NOW – is available from 7 a.m. – 3 a.m. seven days a week with highly trained quit coaches ready to help with advice and tips designed to help callers quit for life.”

“Our goal is not only to help people quit using tobacco, but to assist their family and friends as well. A strong support network is critical to success in quitting,” added Sneegas.

For more information regarding information on how to quit using tobacco, call the free Indiana Tobacco Quitline at 1-800-QUIT-NOW or visit www.in.gov/itpc.

ROCKVILLE, Md. — When “Bopper” Deyton was a student at the University of Kansas in the 1970s, he grew a ponytail.

His mother hated it.

“I’d do anything if you will cut your hair,” Deyton recalls her saying. His response: “Quit smoking.”

He cut off his ponytail, mailed it home, and his mother jettisoned the cigarettes.

“I think it was the best haircut I ever got,” he said last week at his office in suburban Maryland. “She lived about 40 years longer after that.”

Today Dr. Lawrence Deyton, who at 57 still goes by his childhood nickname of “Bopper,” is the nation’s first anti-smoking czar. He directs a new agency in the federal Food and Drug Administration — the Center for Tobacco Products — that is writing rules to govern the previously unregulated tobacco industry.

Deyton twice stressed that he is not an anti-tobacco zealot.

“I am not an expert in tobacco,” he said. “But I am an expert in public health, and I am an expert in government health programs.”

And what Deyton promises is “methodical, science-based tobacco regulation.”

But he already has been greeted with worry from growers in tobacco-producing states such as Kentucky, and three lawsuits from the industry challenging the agency’s authority to restrict advertising and marketing.

The center was created under a sweeping anti-smoking law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama on June 22.

Its three key goals are to reduce youth smoking rates, which in recent years have leveled off at about 20 percent; to reduce the overall toll of tobacco-related disease, which annually kills more than 400,000 Americans; and to provide the public with information about the ingredients of tobacco products and their health effects.

The law specifically bars the FDA from regulating tobacco farmers or their tobacco, but growers worry nonetheless that they will be hurt by tobacco regulation, directly or indirectly.

“You can’t avoid it,” said Roger Quarles, president of the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association, based in Lexington, Ky.

“We’re just hoping that there will be some sort of proven scientific process behind any mandated changes, so that we’re not making emotional decisions.”

‘The law is the law’

Deyton, a physician with long experience in research as well as in public health policy, said he understands the growers’ concerns.

“I care about those people,” he said.” I don’t want to sound like I’m a cold bureaucrat. … But … I want that person and his or her family to also trust that the FDA is putting out good, science-based, trustworthy information.”

Growers will have one nonvoting seat on the 12-member Scientific Advisory Board on Tobacco Products, which will advise his agency. Other members of the board will come from public health, medicine or science and from the tobacco manufacturers.

Deyton said that the industry suits are having no impact on his agency’s plans.

“I mean, a lawsuit’s a lawsuit,” he said. “It’s happening, but the law is the law. I’m implementing the law.”

That includes a ban on candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes and, by year’s end, requiring that tobacco companies register with the FDA and disclose the ingredients in their products.

Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said that for someone like Deyton, who wants to make a difference in public health, the new position “is the ultimate challenge.”

“If you succeed, you can save more lives than any government official. The potential is enormous,” Myers said.

He called Deyton, picked by FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, “a superb choice.”

“He’s smart, experienced, savvy, and understands the issues,” Myers said. “He understands Washington a lot.”

Deyton, for his part, says that to be at the forefront of tobacco regulation makes him feel like he has “died and gone to heaven.”

Born in Oklahoma and raised in Missouri, Deyton’s University of Kansas studies focused on urban health.

His father, also a smoker for many years, was a doctor and one of the first specialists in the rehabilitation of polio victims. It got the younger Deyton interested in public health policy.

Deyton said he never took up the smoking habit, but he dabbled as a kid.

“I saw the Pall Malls in the console of my mom’s Cutlass, you know, and I’d drive to the store to run an errand, and, yeah, I’d sneak one of those,” he said.

After college, Deyton came to Washington as a staffer for then-Rep. James Symington, D-Mo.

Later, when Joseph Califano became what was then the secretary of health, education and welfare under President Jimmy Carter, the new administration established the Office of Smoking and Health. And Deyton was among those asked to help set up the new office.

With a master’s degree from Harvard University’s School of Public Health, Deyton left government to get his medical degree at George Washington University’s School of Medicine.

After a residency in internal medicine at the University of Southern California, he studied infectious disease and AIDS at the National Institute of Health, where he stayed for a dozen years.
‘He is passionate’

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, oversaw Deyton’s work as a researcher and in setting up government-sponsored research programs on HIV and AIDS.

“Bopper has got a lot of phenomenal qualities,” Fauci said. “He’s a very smart guy, a very hard worker. He’s got phenomenal common sense, he is passionate about causes that he feels are important and he wants to put energy into.”

Deyton spent another dozen years at the Veterans Administration, where he was a chief consultant on public health programs covering HIV, hepatitis C and other infectious diseases. In January 2006, he became the VA’s chief public health and environmental hazards officer.

Rick Weidman, executive director for policy and public affairs at Vietnam Veterans for America, said his organization has been one of the VA’s biggest critics over the years and is not easily impressed.

But Deyton, he said, is “an extraordinary leader — a visionary leader.”

Deyton said smokers should know that his agency is not going “to damn them for their use of the product.”

“I have a very deep and abiding respect for the men and women who use tobacco products,” he said. “People struggle. … We want to get them good information.”

By James R. Carroll, November 9, 2009

The sales, which were supposed to start at 7.30am at the country’s three auction floors, were only conducted at the Tobacco Sales Floor (TSF) from 3pm after government officials had convinced growers to sell while they looked into the emotive issue of the exchange rate.

Among the officials that addressed the growers, some of whom had become restive due to the delayed start, were Agriculture Minister Rugare Gumbo, Acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono.

Chinamasa told the growers that the government was close to concluding the pricing mechanism of this year’s crop, and pleaded with the farmers to be patient with them.

“We want you to give us time to work on the pricing mechanism while you continue to sell your crop,” Chinamasa told the growers, who were camped at the TSF auction floors.

“Don’t worry about how much gets into your account. Just worry about the US dollar price. Try to negotiate with the buyers to get a good bargain of the US dollar price.”

He promised to get back to growers with an answer in a few days’ time, saying the government was committed to the viability of the tobacco sector.

He said from the discussions they had had so far, indications were that the government would yet again award farmers viable and competitive prices that would ensure continued growth of the cash crop.

Gono told the farmers never to doubt the government’s commitment to the growth of the tobacco industry.

“We are almost there,” he said about the negotiations they were having. “The reason why we have not reached an agreement is that we want the truth on many things, including correct calculations on the inputs costs incurred by growers.”

Gono said the government would once again reward growers handsomely to encourage them to go back to the farms and increase next year’s production.

The government offered viable prices to growers last year, resulting in them increasing production from 54 million kg to an expected 80 million kg this year, he said.

He said the government would announce its position in about seven days.

Meanwhile, the RBZ governor announced that the 15 percent foreign currency retention scheme for tobacco growers had not been scrapped as earlier reported.

He blamed the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board for misleading the central bank into believing that growers preferred being paid all their money in local currency.

“It’s a lie. We didn’t withdraw the facility. In fact, I am inclined to increase it from 15 percent to 20 percent.”

He said the central bank would continue to support tobacco growers, including providing them concessionary funds to boost production.

The government, Gono said, would also pay farmers their outstanding bonuses for the crop they sold last year.

“What you must do now is to fight tobacco smuggling. We hear that tobacco is going to Malawi and others are involved in side-marketing. I want to warn those smuggling tobacco outside the country that their days are numbered,” he said.

Some of the crop that was sold on Tuesday fetched as much as US$2, 95 per kg with some growers already expressing happiness with the price.

“The prices are reasonably fair,” said Tobacco Growers’ Trust chairman Wilfanos Mashingaidze.

TIMB acting chief executive Andrew Matibiri said he was happy that the floors had opened.

“I am looking forward to the rest of the selling season and I would like to encourage growers to bring more of their crop to the auction floors,” he said.

Earlier, tobacco growers interviewed said they wanted a viable exchange rate or parallel market rates because they acquired most of their inputs based at black market rates. The exchange rate is currently pegged at $250 to the US$.

Tobacco is one of Zimbabwe’s top foreign currency earners. ‘ New Ziana.

Southerntimesafrica

Claims by the House of Representatives that the deletion of a section that identifies tobacco as an addictive substance in the newly endorsed health bill was a “technical error” have been blasted as “unlikely.”

“With the large number of staff they have in the House, a technical error is unlikely to occur. It’s only normal that everybody is questioning whether it happened by accident or by design,” Ade Irawan, a researcher at Indonesia Corruption Watch, told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday.

Former lawmaker Hakim Sarimuda Pohan — who was a member of House Commission IX for health — on Wednesday said that bribes were common during the legislative process, where interested parties would lobby legislators to create laws that favored them.

He said tobacco companies were particularly active in lobbying legislators debating the previous Health Law in 1992.

“There was widespread opposition to the stipulation that tobacco was an addictive substance,” Hakim said. “And during the assembly meeting last month the effort to scrap the stipulation re-emerged.

“I just didn’t think any legislators would stoop so low as to scrap a section that had been passed in an assembly meeting. That’s like a betrayal of the Constitution,” Hakim, an anti-tobacco activist, told a media workshop on Wednesday.

Ribka Tjiptaning, former chairwoman of the special committee tasked with drafting the health bill in the House, brushed off the matter as a technical error, saying the House had delivered an older draft of the bill to the State Secretariat.

She did concede, however, that a number of legislators, including herself, were against the inclusion of the section because banning tobacco products would hurt farmers.

She denied suggestions the section had been deliberately deleted and said the bill, which has been heavily criticized as transferring responsibility for health from the government to the public, was a positive step forward toward improving health services for patients.

“So it is better to stop the debate about the missing section,” she said.

Tulus Abadi, chairman of the Indonesian Consumer Foundation, urged the House of Representatives’ Honorary Council, as well as the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), to investigate the matter.

“This issue has tarnished, damaged and betrayed the democratic legislative process,” Tulus said.

“We also urge President Yudhoyono not to sign the law unless the draft is the one that was endorsed during the assembly meeting, with the section intact,” he said.

October 15, 2009 Thejakartaglobe

NEW YORK, – The following is a statement by Betsy McCaughey:
The October 1, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine includes the outrageous and fictional accusation that I worked for a tobacco company in writing my critique of the dangers of the Clinton Plan. I did not. I was a scholar at the Manhattan Institute, and did no fundraising or conferring with corporations. Absolutely none. My article was based on text of the Health Security Act, period. Because of the accuracy and insights in the article, it was awarded a National Magazine Award for the best article in the nation on public policy and the H.L. Mencken Award.

It is shocking that fifteen years later, Rolling Stone still accepts tobacco advertising. See page 93 of the current issue. Shame on hypocritical Rolling Stone Magazine.

All the other baseless accusations made by Rolling Stone Magazine regarding my patient advocacy are old hat. I have rebutted them many times. The article is a tired rerun.

What readers should know is that Rolling Stone would rather try to discredit me (however lamely) rather than address the real issues. One is that Obamacare will mean cruel cuts in healthcare for seniors.

SOURCE Betsy McCaughey

Smokers are twice as likely as nonsmokers to develop active tuberculosis (TB), a new study shows.
Researchers analyzed data from nearly 17,000 people who took part in Taiwan’s 2001 National Health Interview Survey. They found that current smokers had a 2.73 times higher risk of active TB than nonsmokers, while the risk for people who had smoked at some point in their lives was 2.69 times greater.

After adjusting for other potential factors, the researchers determined that current smokers were two times more likely to develop active TB than nonsmokers. They also found that younger smokers were more likely than smokers older than 65 to develop active TB, compared to nonsmokers.

The study appears in the Sept. 1 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

“The small number of TB cases in this study prevented us from examining the age-gradient of smoking-TB association at a finer age scale, and more studies are needed to confirm the findings,” lead author Hsien-Ho Lin, a postdoctoral research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said in a journal news release.

“Because the baseline risk for active TB is higher in the elderly in many countries, a smaller but still elevated relative risk in this population may yet translate to a greater number of cases of active TB, and our findings should not be interpreted to mean that smoking poses a lower risk in the older population,” Lin said.

Lin and colleagues said smoking’s effects on different biological functions may increase the risk of active TB.

“To our knowledge, this is the first cohort study from a general population that provides evidence on the positive association between tobacco smoking and active TB,” Lin said. “Based on results from ours and other studies, policy makers and public health personnel should consider addressing tobacco cessation as part of tuberculosis control. From the perspective of prevention, the target of smoking cessation should aim beyond TB patients to reach high-risk populations who are most likely to benefit from cessation.”

The Department of Health and the Center for Tobacco Control Research has found that both, cigarettes and shisha, harmful.
If the findings of the new research are anything to go by, smoking shisha produced carbon monoxide levels at least four to five times higher than what a cigarette produces.

It is an established fact that elevated levels of carbon monoxide can result in brain damage and unconsciousness.

Since shisha entails using a pipe which could be shared at times with other users, the risk of passing infections gets heightened. Likewise, the risk of getting TB and herpes also increase.

Eye opener
The findings should make those people who regard shisha “as not even smoking” sit back and think twice before going in for the next puff.

The misconception is so deep rooted that many people find it perfectly acceptable to visit “shisha evenings” as they consider it a safer substitute to smoking cigarettes.

“If my mum sees me smoking shisha, she isn’t going to take it as seriously as if I was smoking cigarettes,” said a British Pakistani man.

The alarming findings
Dr. Hilary Wareing, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research, was shocked at the findings of the study and said, “Our mouths opened at the level of harm – none of the tests we did showed anything other than shisha is hazardous to health.”

Wareing said of the findings, “We found one session of smoking shisha – that’s 10 milligrams for 30 minutes – gave carbon monoxide levels that were at the lowest four and five times as high as having a cigarette. But at the worst, shisha was 400 to 450 times more dangerous than having a cigarette.”

Shisha or Hookah
Shisha, also known as Hookah, is a single or multi-stemmed, invariably glass-based water pipe for smoking. The shisha uses fruit-scented tobacco burnt with the help of coal, passed through an ornate water vessel and inhaled through a hose. Users often use the shisha to inhale herbal fruits and tobacco.

Having its origin in India, the hookah is becoming very popular in the Middle East, USA, UK and Canada. As on date, Egypt, Iran and Turkey are leading the way when it comes to the best quality and most extravagant hookah pipes.


© Themedguru

Wife and I don’t speak with one another much anymore so I don’t know where she actually went. But I did take a peep at her Greyhound ticket before she left, and thus I know what day she’ll return so she can’t come busting in on me like she did last time.

While she’s gone I’m keeping a little diary, and in slightly edited format it goes like this:

DAY ONE: Decided to keep the toilet seat up for the duration, which makes me wonder if those Guinness Book people keep records on stuff like this. I’m also curious to find out how far back I can stand and still mostly hit the bowl.

DAY TWO: Trying to plan ahead so I went to the Supercuts by Raley’s and got me the works: cut, tint, styling, shave, some Old Spice. Chances are pretty fair something will go wrong in the next few weeks and I want to look my best for the Sheriff’s booking photo mug shot website.

DAY FOUR: Finally think I might have the time to get that old embarrassing tattoo removed, which has kept the wife from ever seeing me naked with the lights on.

DAY SIX: I quit feeding the cat and already saved enough to buy a bonus six-pack! Plus I can make a pretty good lunch with all those unopened cans of cat food.

Fresh from TWK’s Kitchen:

One stalk celery, chopped

1Ž2 small onion, minced

One can Friskies Mackerel Cat Food

3/4 cup mayonnaise

Mix ingredients in medium-size bowl. Spread on sliced rye bread. Drink minimum five strong beers before consuming.

SEVEN: Haven’t flushed downstairs toilet since 15th of last month. Wonder if the City Council will give me some kind of plaque for water conservation efforts.

DAY 12: Wife e-mailed, said she met some guy from Chippendale’s, which is a high-end furniture making outfit. Hope he gives her something special to bring home!

DAY 14: Tore up all the orchids and lilies and heritage roses around the place and put in some revenue-enhancing plants, if you know what I mean. Not pot too obvious. I planted several hundred Afghan poppies. Tom Allman and Bob Nishiyama could stroll the yard all day and never suspect a thing.

DAY 15: Friday was Sushi Night, so this morning I cleaned out the fish tank and filled it with a nice young Gallo Chianti. Got some buddies coming over Ginger Baker, Lynette Fromme, maybe Abner Haynes and I’m thinking of taking apart the vacuum cleaner and making a beer bong out of it. Not like I was running the old Electrolux over the rugs much anyway.

DAY 19: If you had a sneaky wife who didn’t trust you where do you think she’d go hiding her checkbook? Well, mine tucked hers way down into the laundry basket and it took me this long to find it. But perseverance pays off (or in my case it pays off my tab at the Water Trough).

DAY 22: Cat died today, or maybe last week. Gotta make it look like a suicide.

DAY 24: Some nosy guy from the County came snooping around saying the neighbors are complaining about a “sick, horrid smell” coming from the house, which I’m thinking is the unflushed toilet I got going downstairs. It is mighty ripe, but did I go calling government busybodies when I smelled pot growing in their yard last summer? No, I did not. I simply went over the fence and helped myself to a small portion of their crop, and they are certainly welcome to do the same.

DAY 27: She thinks I just drink and lay around when she’s gone, but I’ve already made a rubber band ball, wrote a poem, and put all my warrants in chronological order

DAY 30: E-mail from the wife today says she’s in touch with some lawyer over whatever’s going on with the Chippendale guy, which just shows how dumb she can be. I mean, shipping furniture might require a moving company but it’s way overboard to think you’re going to need a lawyer. I told you she wasn’t the brightest. I’ll have a talk with her when she gets home.

There’s Tommy Wayne, standing in the kitchen in his tattered bathrobe, leaning on the sink and eating out of a can, while Tom Hine is out in the garage sitting in his ‘74 Plymouth with the engine running.

© Ukiah Daily Journal Staff

In today’s society, being grossly overweight to obese and living an unhealthy lifestyle has become status quo, especially Americans. And the battle to improve Americans’ health is zeroing.
Barry Popkin, director of the University of North Carolina’s Interdisciplinary Obesity Center, explained: “I believe soda is the next tobacco”.

Soda drinkers haven’t reached outcast status like smokers before them, but were proposed that sugar taxes and social pressure to be healthy can put a damper on doing the Soda drinks.
Statistics show that Americans are consuming up to 300 more calories per day now than they were 25 to 30 years ago, and two-thirds of that increase is from caloric beverages like soft drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, fruit juice and even milk.
However it is known that milk has important vitamins and minerals, but the sweet beverages have no health benefits. And not only one study showed that people who drink caloric beverages don’t compensate by cutting out other food, that’s why the calories add up.
In the past, two states, Maine and New York, tried to ban soda drinks but unfortunately have not succeeded. Last year the suggestion in New York to impose a 1-cent-per-ounce tax on sugared beverages could have reduced their use by 13 percent, or about two portions per person per week, according to a recent article.
Spokesmen for the American Beverage Association said that proposed taxes on sugary beverages are “a pure money grab” and unfairly discriminate against one product. She batted away soda’s comparison to tobacco, “a known carcinogen.” And they also added that these two products, cigarettes and soft drinks, have nothing in common.
Health-conscious consumers are, however, increasingly turning away from regular soft drinks in favor of diet alternatives.
Scientists found that the regular soft drink market lost 15.6 million adult drinkers from 2003 to 2008, while the diet soda market gained 7.8 million drinkers.
Mr. Popkin concluded that sugary drinks are the known criminal, leading to weight gain and increasing the risk for diabetes. To that end, he sees the beverage tax as a major way to help fund reform and improve health and quality of life.

Smokers in Turkey tempted to flout an imminent ban in cafes, restaurants and bars will be spared execution as allegedly meted out in 17th-Century Istanbul — but their Prime Minister has likened cigarettes to terrorism.
A woman smokes in a bar as she drinks the Turkish traditional beverage Raki in Ankara in this February 12, 2008 file photo.

That’s a measure of how strongly Tayyip Erdogan feels about tobacco. Sultan Murad IV is said to have roamed the streets ordering the execution of those who defied a smoking ban aimed at curbing coffee house sedition.

One of the world’s oldest prohibitions of smoking, Murad’s failed and as tobacco’s popularity grew in Turkey, the saying “smoke like a Turk” took root in languages across Europe.

In modern times, Erdogan is the driving force behind the next phase of a widely popular ban taking effect on July 19, which aims to curb the habit in a country where 22 million people, including around half the adult male population, smoke.

But at a time of economic crisis, the prohibition — adding restaurants, cafes and bars to the places where smoking is not allowed — is viewed by a minority as a potential assault on their culture.

Erdogan, who long since banned smoking in cabinet meetings, also faces opposition from owners of thousands of establishments across the Muslim, European Union-candidate country, who see the ban as a threat to their business.

Some in the bar industry point out the smoking ban coincides with the introduction of restrictions on alcohol advertising this month, but experts reject suggestions it is a stalking-horse for tighter controls on the sale of alcohol.

“Let’s keep alcohol and cigarettes separate. They are different things,” said Law Professor Hayrettin Okcesiz of Akdeniz University. “If there is a ban on alcohol everyone should have the right to protest, but we shouldn’t see this is as step towards an alcohol ban.”

Among opponents are those who work in nargile, or water-pipe cafes, an ancient tradition which has enjoyed a revival in the last decade among locals and tourists.

“This is the Ottoman culture which comes from our ancestors,” said cafe owner Ali Yogurtcu, 54. “We will protest if they try to ban this, but I don’t think they will try to destroy it.”

SMALL FINE

A meagre fine under Turkey’s ban — 69 lira ($45) against a ceiling of 500 euros ($700) in neighbouring Greece — masks fierce determination on the part of Erdogan.

His personal dislike of the habit may give the ban the momentum it needs to succeed in the world’s seventh biggest cigarette market.

When the anti-smoking campaign was first launched in 2007 he famously declared the struggle against cigarette usage to be “as important as the struggle against terrorism”, words which resonate strongly in a country which has witnessed a bloody 25-year-old Kurdish guerrilla insurgency.

In Turkey, 100,000 people are estimated by the Health Ministry to die annually from smoking-related illnesses — about 0.45 percent of smokers. Globally, some 5.4 million die annually out of about 1.3 billion, which at 0.41 percent makes Turks fractionally more vulnerable.

Surveys indicate around 90 percent popular support for the smoking ban, which started last year in workplaces and shopping centres. The authorities say that has already lowered cigarette consumption slightly.

Support has been helped by a growing interest in healthy lifestyles as people enjoy greater prosperity and expect better standards of living. But there have been problems.

A group of convicts rioted at a prison in the southeastern province of Siirt, climbing onto the roof, lighting fires and throwing stones to protest at the ban on smoking at the jail.

Smoking has also continued in some cafes in shopping centres, where retailers have complained about its impact on trade as the economy slumped nearly 14 percent in the first quarter of the year.

These fuel doubts about whether the ban will be implemented in the thousands of smoky, male-dominated tea-houses in towns and villages across Turkey where many men spend much of their free time, gossiping or playing backgammon.

Tea-house owners say more than 80 percent of their patrons smoke.

ALCOHOL ON THE AGENDA?

Others say Erdogan’s anti-smoking fervour reflects efforts to change society in a country where his Islamist-rooted AK Party is accused by secularists of promoting a more conservative vision since it came to power in 2002.

“I think we have been heading towards a camouflaged alcohol ban,” said Tahir Berrakkarasu, who heads the BEYDER association which represents cafes, bars and restaurants in Istanbul’s bustling Beyoglu district, the heart of the country’s nightlife.

“Why is this happening? It means that alcohol isn’t wanted in this country,” he said, referring to what he says is a six-year government campaign targeting bars with a stream of taxes and bureaucratic obstacles.

The advertising restrictions on alcohol that take effect this month ban linking alcohol to food and cultural values: drink producers say they will severely curb their marketing ability.

Semih Mavis, who heads the Turkish operations of Efes Beer Group, the country’s largest brewer, said the restrictions boost the likelihood Turkey will be perceived as a country of “prohibitive interventions” in people’s lifestyles and entertainment.

Waiter Mustafa Kivrikdal, 32, serving in a water-pipe cafe, was more outspoken: “I think there is a religious factor in this,” he said. “They are against alcohol and they are against smoking and they want to put an end to this.”

Nonetheless, there is little sign of conservativism taking hold around the bars of Beyoglu, which swells with hordes of drinkers at night. And even among those enjoying a smoke before the ban is imposed, there is support for the move.

“If there is a punishment people will obey this,” said aviation company employee Elif Arda, 23, smoking at a table outside Sahika bar. “I think people will get used to it with time and that will be a good thing, even if I still smoke.”

Even though the authorities say implementing the ban will be a challenge, they point out Turks are receptive to change, citing the success of a 13-year-old ban on smoking in buses and the country’s adoption of the Latin alphabet in place of Ottoman Turkish script in 1928.

“We can see that the people who live in this land can adapt very quickly to change,” said Ubeyd Korbey, who chairs an anti-smoking association and played a role in drafting the ban. “And we now have a very decisive prime minister.”

© Thestar