Mayor Michael Bloomberg is proposing a ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks in the city’s restaurants, delis and movie theaters in the hopes of combating obesity — an expansion of his administration’s efforts to encourage healthy behavior by limiting residents’ choices.
The proposal — expected to be announced formally on Thursday in a City Hall briefing — would take 20-ounce soda bottles off the shelves of the city’s delis and eliminate super-sized sugary soft drinks from fast-food menus. It is the latest health effort by the administration to spark accusations that the city’s officials are overstepping into matters that should be left in the hands of individual consumers.
“There they go again,” said Stefan Friedman, spokesman for the New York City Beverage Association, who called the proposal “zealous” in a statement. “The New York City Health Department’s unhealthy obsession with attacking soft drinks is again pushing them over the top. The city is not going to address the obesity issue by attacking soda because soda is not driving the obesity rates.”
But City Hall officials, citing a 2006 study, argue that sugary drinks are the largest driver of rising calorie consumption and obesity. They note that sweet drinks are linked to long-term weight gain and increased rates of diabetes and heart disease.
The administration’s proposal would impose a 16-ounce limit on the size of sugary drinks sold at food service establishments, including restaurants, movie theaters, sports venues and street carts. It would apply to bottled drinks as well as fountain sodas.
The ban would apply only to drinks that contain more than 25 calories per 8 ounces. It would not apply to diet soda or any other calorie-free drink. Any drink that is at least half milk or milk substitute would be exempted.
The ban, which could take effect as soon as March, would not apply to drinks sold in grocery or convenience stores that don’t serve prepared food. Establishments that don’t downsize would face fines of $200 after a three-month grace period.

Via newsday.com.

Sugar is a mind altering drug. To give it up, it helped me to understand what is really going on with the cravings:

… a new study shows that sugar… shares an important addicting feature with substances like nicotine or heroin.

Many addictive substances initially make you feel good by releasing (or blocking reuptake of) substances in the brain that trigger pleasure, euphoria, focus, or energy. But your brain and body are not necessarily interested in sustaining your bliss. They are motivated to keep your systems steady and avoid extremes. Thanks to this drive for homeostasis, your brain and body learn to adapt to the effects of mood- and mind-altering substances.

For example, if a substance would normally trigger a flood of serotonin, your brain may adapt by reducing receptors for this neurotransmitter, or producing less serotonin. And when your brain expects that you are going to take the substance, it may swing in the opposite direction (reduced availability of serotonin) to counteract the expected effects of the drug. This anticipatory drop can create powerful cravings for the substance.

Through this process of adaptation, the addiction cycle is strengthened, and the addict needs the drug just to feel normal. Now it looks like the same process may be happening-at some level-with sugar.

Researchers at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Japan were curious how the brain and body might adapt to the expectation of eating something sweet (1). They found that when mice expect a sweet treat, their brains release a chemical called orexin. Orexin triggers the body’s muscles to take up whatever sugar is circulating in the bloodstream. In this way, the body is preparing for an expected increase in blood sugar levels. This is a great adaptation if you eat the food, helping to keep blood sugar levels steady.

But what if you decide you want to resist the temptation of the sweets? Then the drop of blood sugar comes with two very unwanted side effects: cravings to eat, and decreased energy to resist. The result? It’s much harder to say no, and you may even need to eat to feel normal. Much like the cigarette addict who needs to smoke, or the pain medication addict who needs to take a pill, just to feel normal.

Via psychologytoday.com

A New Jersey man allegedly cut out his entrails in front of police and then threw bits of his flesh and intestines at them.

The gruesome scene played out at a home in Hackensack, N.J., where 43-year-old Wayne Carter allegedly barricaded himself in on Sunday, NBC New York reported.

Officers got a call that morning when a witness said Carter was threatening to harm himself with a knife. Two cops responded, kicked in the door and found Carter in the corner, the station reported.

Carter allegedly ignored officers’ orders to put down the knife, and instead began stabbing himself in the abdomen, neck and legs.

An attempt to pepper spray the bleeding man had no effect, the Associated Press reported.

That’s when Carter — disemboweled but responsive — reportedly threw bits of his skin and intestines at the officers.

They decided to retreat and call in the Bergen County SWAT team, Hackensack police Lt. John Heinemann told reporters. The team was able to subdue Carter and get him to a hospital, where he remained in critical condition on Monday.

Heinemann said he believes that drugs or mental illness may have led to the horrific incident, but those details haven’t been confirmed.

No charges have yet been filed due to the unusual nature of the incident.

via Wayne Carter Threw Intestines At Officers After Stabbing Himself, Police Say.

Another case of “bath salts”?

This combo made with undated photos made available by the Miami-Dade Police Dept. shows Rudy Eugene, 31, left, who police shot and killed as he ate the face of Ronald Poppo, 65, right, during a horrific attack in the shadow of the Miami Herald’s headquarters on Saturday, May 26, 2012. Poppo was in critical condition Tuesday, with only his goatee intact on his face, the newspaper reported. – seattlePI

A man who was shot dead in Miami at the weekend after he was found biting the face off another naked man has been identified by police.

Rudy Eugene, 31, reportedly growled at a police officer after he was warned to back away.

A witness said the aggressor continued to eat the victim, before the officer opened fire several times, killing him.

The attack next to a busy road on Saturday afternoon has been linked to a potent drug known as “bath salts”.

About 75% of the victim’s face was reportedly missing.

Cyclist Larry Vega said there was “blood all over the place” when he came across the horrific scene by MacArthur Causeway.

“I told him get off,” Mr Vega told WSVN Fox 7. “The guy just kept eating the other guy away like ripping his skin.”

He said he alerted a police officer, who warned the attacker several times to back away from the victim.

“The guy just stood his head up like that with a piece of flesh in his mouth and growled,” Mr Vega said.

The victim, identified as a 65-year-old homeless man, Ronald Poppo, remained in a critical condition in hospital on Tuesday.

A Miami police spokesman said: “We are expecting a report from our detectives to give more details to the media. We are also looking for more witnesses to this crime.”

Ives Eugene, Eugene’s uncle, described his nephew as a “nice and hard-working” man who washed cars at a local dealership.

Miami police said they still do not know what prompted the bizarre and savage assault, which has been compared to a “zombie” attack.

Armando Aguilar, of Miami’s Fraternal Order of Police, told the Associated Press: “He had his face eaten down to his goatee. The forehead was just bone. No nose, no mouth.”

Mr Aguilar told a CNN affiliate he believed the suspect could have taken a type of drug known as “bath salts”, citing four past overdoses in the Miami area where people had also removed their clothes and gone berserk.

“It causes them to go completely insane and become very violent,” he said.

According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, users of the drug have reported experiencing agitation, paranoia, hallucinations and elevated body temperature.

via BBC News – Miami’s ‘growling cannibal’ named as Rudy Eugene, 31.

… Bath salts are highly addictive and apparently elicit intense cravings similar to methamphetamines. They act on the brain like other stimulants, and are sometimes referred to as a “cocaine substitutes.” Also known as “White Rush, Cloud Nine, Ivory Wave, Ocean Snow, Charge Plus, White Lightning, Scarface, Hurricane Charlie, Red Dove, White Dove, and Sextasy,” their most common side effects are agitation, fast heart rate, and hallucinations and delusions, seizures, high blood pressure, and paranoia, according to the CDC. Deaths have also been linked to the drug.

“These substances are among the worst poison centers have ever seen,” said director of the Louisiana Poison Center, Mark Ryan. “The psychosis seen in some users is truly remarkable, in a very scary way. People high on these drugs have done some bizarre things to themselves and hurt others around them. It’s important that parents and young people understand just how dangerous these synthetic drugs are.”

Last fall, the Drug Enforcement Administration banned bath salts and their active ingredients, mephedrone, methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV), and methylone. “This action demonstrates our commitment to keeping our streets safe from these and other new and emerging drugs that have decimated families, ruined lives, and caused havoc in communities across the country,” said Michele M. Leonhart, DEA Administrator. “These chemicals pose a direct and significant threat, regardless of how they are marketed, and we will aggressively pursue those who attempt their manufacture and sale.”

The drugs are generally snorted, taken by mouth, or injected. One recent CDC study found that the majority of 35 patients brought to the ER for overdose had injected the drug. The same report suggested that for the one person who died from it, that MDPV was the chemical most likely linked to the death. Many of patients also had other drugs, like cocaine, benzodiazepines, opiates, marijuana, or amphetamines, in their systems at the time.

Bath salts are sold at convenience stores, “head shops,” and gas stations, or may be purchased on the Internet. They are often mislabeled to avoid detection by officials, and their labels may read “Not Intended for Human Consumption,” according to the CDC.

The government has had a hard time keeping up with synthetic drugs, as has been seen with synthetic marijuana in recent years. Calls to poison control centers for synthetic drug-related emergencies have risen drastically over the last several years, according to the American Association for Poison Control Centers (AAPCC): In 2010, there were 3,200 calls to poison control, and this number rose to over 13,000 in 2011….

via Forbes

Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history.

Not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself.

Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that “even the skeptics can accept it.”

“If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it’s solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive,” Leakey says, “then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges.”

Leakey, a professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, recently spent several weeks in New York promoting the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. The institute, where Leakey spends most of his time, welcomes researchers and scientists from around the world dedicated to unearthing the origins of mankind in an area rich with fossils.

His friend, Paul Simon, performed at a May 2 fundraiser for the institute in Manhattan that collected more than $2 million. A National Geographic documentary on his work at Turkana aired this month on public television.

Now 67, Leakey is the son of the late Louis and Mary Leakey and conducts research with his wife, Meave, and daughter, Louise. The family claims to have unearthed “much of the existing fossil evidence for human evolution.”

On the eve of his return to Africa earlier this week, Leakey spoke to The Associated Press in New York City about the past and the future.

“If you look back, the thing that strikes you, if you’ve got any sensitivity, is that extinction is the most common phenomena,” Leakey says. “Extinction is always driven by environmental change. Environmental change is always driven by climate change. Man accelerated, if not created, planet change phenomena; I think we have to recognize that the future is by no means a very rosy one.”

Any hope for mankind’s future, he insists, rests on accepting existing scientific evidence of its past.

“If we’re spreading out across the world from centers like Europe and America that evolution is nonsense and science is nonsense, how do you combat new pathogens, how do you combat new strains of disease that are evolving in the environment?” he asked. …

via Scientist: Evolution debate will soon be history – Technology & science – Science – msnbc.com.

Interesting prediction.

By Tom Phillips – 19th July, 2010

A Bosnian man who claims he is being targeted by extraterrestrials after a series of meteorite strikes on his house has now been hit by a sixth space rock in the space of a few years.

Radivoje Lajic first came to international attention in 2008, shortly after the fifth meteorite had crashed into the roof of his house in the northern village of Gornji Lajici.

And now, within the past month, another rock has hit the roof of his house, in defiance of all the odds – making it six strikes since the plague of meteorites began in 2007.

Experts at Belgrade University have confirmed that all the falling rocks he has handed over were meteorites. They are now trying to work out what exactly it is about his house that particularly attracts them. The strikes always happen when it is raining heavily, he says, never when there are clear skies.

Lajic has his own explanation, of course. After the fifth rock struck his house, he said: ‘I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don’t know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense. The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit six times has to be deliberate.’

50-year-old Lajic has had a steel girder reinforced roof put on the house to protect it from the alien bombardment – which he funded by selling one of the meteorites to a university in the Netherlands.

‘I have no doubt I am being targeted by aliens,’ he adds. ‘They are playing games with me. I don’t know why they are doing this. When it rains I can’t sleep for worrying about another strike.’

via Man hit by six meteorites is being ‘targeted by aliens’ | Metro.co.uk.

This is one of the strangest stories.  Eric ( July 27, 2010 ) has a great humorous response:

Clearly Mr. Lajic knows more than he is letting on. He’s probably hiding something that the aliens want. One might ask, why would the aliens shoot meteorites at Mr. Lajic when they could simply slip into the Bosnian skies and suck Mr. Lajic from his dwelling in the dark of night? Well the answer to that question is more evidence that Mr. Lajic knows more than he is letting on. It’s likely that Radivoje Lajic has access to defenses of his own, possibly with the help of some sort of secret government agency or even a rival alien force as protection which keeps the alien overloads at bay and leaves them shooting meteorites at Mr. Lajic from thousands of miles away. Whatever the reason, the answer is clear… Radivoje Lajic must go.

I ask you Radivoje Lajic… don’t you want to do the right thing? Don’t you want to save earth and all it’s inhabitants? Turn yourself over and you will go down in history as the man who saved earth from obliteration.

As far as I can tell, Mr. Lajic’s house has not been hit for years, but after six hits with smaller samples, they may now be steering a big one at him and that takes time.

Two small asteroids buzzed by Earth, zooming well within the moon’s orbit, over the last 48 hours. Neither posed any danger, but the events were eagerly captured by amateur astronomers, and the second encounter was a record-setter.

The first asteroid, designated 2012 KP24, was first detected last week and passed within 32,000 miles of Earth on May 28. It is less than 70 feet across, approximately the size of a blue whale.

The second asteroid, named 2012 KT42, zipped by at midnight PDT on May 29, coming within 8,950 miles of Earth. That’s closer than the orbit of geosynchronous satellites, making the KT42 encounter one of the top 20 closest approaches ever recorded. The asteroid was discovered only a day before its flyby, but is a puny 15 feet across, not much bigger than a minivan.

To get a sense of how close each asteroid came, the moon orbits at a distance of 240,000 miles from Earth. Most near-Earth objects pass much farther away than lunar orbit.

Both NASA and amateur astronomers scan the skies for potentially dangerous asteroids. These two were detected so late because their small size made them hard to see. Officials with the Asteroid Watch program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted the passage of each rock, noting that each was at an intimate but safe distance.

Even if one had hit Earth, the damage would be modest. In the case of KT42, the rock “would likely disintegrate almost entirely in the atmosphere, peppering the ground below with relatively small meteorites,” wrote astronomer Tony Philips on Spaceweather.com. …

via Earth Experiences Back-to-Back Asteroid Close Encounters | Wired Science | Wired.com.

“When you walk through the area, you see this giant, imposing radar tower that still stands,” said Christopher Garetano, executive producer, writer and director of “Montauk Chronicles.” “Above ground, there are also huge doors, or bunkers, cemented and sealed into the sides of several hills in the forest area.”

Throughout the wooded park area are what appear to be manhole covers — capping passages that lead where?

“These obviously go down into something,” said Garetano, pictured left at Camp Hero. “Some people claim that these are entrances to underground tunnel systems that ran beneath the military base that would supposedly bring you to the actual entrance of the facility.”

Camp Hero’s roots are traceable to the Revolutionary War, when it was a facility to test military cannons. During World War II, the base was an important coastal defense against potential Nazi intrusions.

“Montauk Chronicles” tells the story of three men, Alfred Bielek, Stewart Swerdlow and Preston Nichols, who claim they were involved when Camp Hero reportedly became an underground site for scientific experiments and atrocities.

“At first I didn’t believe their stories,” Garetano told The Huffington Post. “These men have not benefited financially — they didn’t gain anything from this, and they’ve endured ridicule as they maintained their story.”

Bielek, a retired electrical engineer who recently died, told of being part of the legendary Philadelphia Experiment in 1943, in which the U.S. Navy is said to have tried to make a destroyer undetectable to radar.

The way Bielek’s story unfolded, the Navy test ended in disaster, causing the ship to supposedly travel through time. He maintained that he was recruited in 1970 to work on mind control and time travel projects at the Montauk secret facility.

“Alfred claimed he was a programmer who designed sequences where kidnapped boys were experimented on to become psychic spies and he said he was part of these psychic manipulations,” said Garetano.

Nichols, like Bielek, was an electrical engineer. He says he worked with Bielek at the Camp Hero location and that he also saw extraterrestrials there.

“We had the little grays and larger grays as well as a variety of reptilian beings,” said Nichols. “The large grays didn’t want anything to do with me. … When I entered a room, they would leave.”

via ‘Montauk Chronicles’ Claims Time Travel, Mind Control, Aliens At Camp Hero.

The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as ‘attack’, ‘Al Qaeda’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘dirty bomb’ alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like ‘pork’, ‘cloud’, ‘team’ and ‘Mexico’.

Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.

The words are included in the department’s 2011 ‘Analyst’s Desktop Binder’ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.

Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that ‘reflect adversely’ on the government.

However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.

As well as terrorism, analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.

The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center – a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents.

In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as ‘broad, vague and ambiguous’.

They point out that it includes ‘vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.’

A senior Homeland Security official told the Huffington Post that the manual ‘is a starting point, not the endgame’ in maintaining situational awareness of natural and man-made threats and denied that the government was monitoring signs of dissent.

via REVEALED: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don’t want the government spying on you | Mail Online.

I’d never heard of the DNDO.

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) is a jointly staffed agency within the Department of Homeland Security.  DNDO is the primary entity in the U.S. government for implementing domestic nuclear detection efforts for a managed and coordinated response to radiological and nuclear threats, as well as integration of federal nuclear forensics programs.  Additionally, DNDO is charged with coordinating the development of the global nuclear detection and reporting architecture, with partners from federal, state, local, and international governments and the private sector. ….

Strategic Objectives

• Develop the global nuclear detection and reporting architecture
• Develop, acquire, and support the domestic nuclear detection and reporting system
• Characterize detector system performance before deployment
• Facilitate situational awareness through information sharing and analysis
• Establish operational protocols to ensure detection leads to effective response
• Conduct a transformational research and development program
• Provide centralized planning, integration, and advancement of U.S. government nuclear forensics programs

 

You know that bit in “The Avengers” where Tony Stark spreads his fingers apart in mid-air and the stuff on the screen in front of him instantly appears on displays throughout the room?

A company called Leap Motion wants to make that kind of gesture control a reality, and it hopes to take the first step with a new type of motion controller.

The Leap is a simple motion controller that you can plug into any USB port on your computer. Once it’s plugged in and you’ve installed the Leap software, it turns the 8-cubic feet of air in front of it into “3D interaction space” — basically, it’ll track any and all motion within that space, letting you use your hands to do whatever you could do with a mouse.

How is that different from Microsoft Kinect? Precision — the company claims the Leap is 200 times more sensitive than current gesture-based tech, able to track movements down to a hundredth of a millimeter. Users will be able to fine-tune the sensitivity, Leap says.

The camera, which is about the size of a business-card holder, can discern all 10 of your fingers individually, and even tell your thumbs apart. Such detailed scanning lets you perform actions like pinch-to-zoom, or zero in on fine details in a drawing app (check out the video below for more applications).

It all sounds a little too good to be true — especially for a device that costs a mere $69.99. The company even acknowledges how far-fetched it sounds on its web page. Leap’s goals are anything but humble: The device is all about “changing the world” by making interaction with computers more natural and intuitive.

Can’t wait to try it out? You’re going to have to wait — the controller doesn’t go on sale until the winter, but you can pre-order one now. The company is also accepting requests for developer kits, which should be available in the next few months. …

via A ‘Leap’ forward in gesture-control interfaces? – CNN.com.

This is not a touch screen. You just move your fingers in the air. I wrote about this years ago and predicted that gesturing at lights and appliances, as well as computers, will be the way we operate them in the future. Getting closer!

Leap represents an entirely new way to interact with your computers. It’s more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen. For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements.

Available “this winter” for “$70″. Say goodbye to your mouse.

Taiwan-based computer chip manufacturer VIA Technologies Inc. has unveiled an inexpensive and compact computer, hoping to help drive innovation in the compact computing market.

The PC, called the APC 8750, measures just 17cm x 8.5cm (almost half the size of Apple’s Mac mini). It is designed with the main focus of getting people connected to the internet and offers an alternative to (more expensive) Windows PCs.

The APC runs a customized version of Google’s Android operating system that is optimized for keyboard and mouse input.

…

APC was not built like an ordinary PC. For openers, we started with an awareness that the purpose of a computer is to connect to the Internet. It is the Internet that now defines computing. When you begin here, magic happens.

Expensive, overpowered CPUs and bloated software are no longer relevant. With this awareness, we were able to drop power consumption to the point of making an energy-saving light-bulb jealous.via LinkNotes.