Cell Phone or Drunk?
From AOL News:
Using Cell Phone While Driving Akin to Driving Drunk, Say Researchers
Posted Mar 7th 2008 11:24AM by Evan Shamoon
According to a new study, talking on your cell phone while driving could be as dangerous as being under the influence of alcohol. Carnegie-Mellon University researchers used brain imaging to show how mobile phone use alone reduces 37 percent of brain activity engaged in driving. The findings were published in the latest gotta-have-it issue of the journal ‘Brain Research,’ and also suggest that using a hands-free headset doesn’t make much of a difference.
Basically, the study found that drivers who spoke on their phones while driving tended to make many of the same driving mistakes as those who just got finished speaking to the bottle.
So to speak.
Comment: I always thought using a headset solved the problem – guess I was wrong. 😦 The Kuwait Ministry of Traffic is currently considering a law against using cell phones while driving in Kuwait. If enforced, it’s going to make a big difference in the lives of a lot of people in Kuwait. I wonder if it will mean fewer pedestrians killed?
Start With Breakfast, Stay Lean
Today in BBC Health News
Breakfast ‘keeps teenagers lean’
In a five year study of more than 2,000 youngsters, those who skipped breakfast were found to weigh about 5lbs (2.3kg) more than those who ate first thing.
This was despite the fact that the breakfast-eaters consumed more calories in the course of the day.
But the study in Pediatrics found they were likely to be much more active.
The University of Minnesota research adds weight to a growing body of evidence that those who eat breakfast – whether young or old – are leaner than those who do not.
“It may seem counter-intuitive,” said Mark Pereira, who led the research. “But while they ate more calories, they did more to burn those off, and that may be because those who ate breakfast did not feel so lethargic.
“While it’s best to go for a healthy option – a wholegrain cereal for instance – the evidence does seem to suggest that eating anything is better than eating nothing at all.”
Read the entire article HERE
(AdventureMan’s favorite breakfast: biscuits n’ gravy)
Just-Before-Sunrise 3 March 2008
Sunrise this morning was just another sunrise, no clouds, nothing to distinguish itself. But – just before sunrise – a whole other story:
It is 72°F / 22°C and very hazy, the kind of haze that also sends people to the hospital with aggravated asthma.
Dharfur: The Janjaweed are Back
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times:
SULEIA, Sudan — The janjaweed are back.
They came to this dusty town in the Darfur region of Sudan on horses and camels on market day. Almost everybody was in the bustling square. At the first clatter of automatic gunfire, everyone ran.
The militiamen laid waste to the town — burning huts, pillaging shops, carrying off any loot they could find and shooting anyone who stood in their way, residents said. Asha Abdullah Abakar, wizened and twice widowed, described how she hid in a hut, praying it would not be set on fire.
“I have never been so afraid,” she said.
The attacks by the janjaweed, the fearsome Arab militias that came three weeks ago, accompanied by government bombers and followed by the Sudanese Army, were a return to the tactics that terrorized Darfur in the early, bloodiest stages of the conflict.
Such brutal, three-pronged attacks of this scale — involving close coordination of air power, army troops and Arab militias in areas where rebel troops have been — have rarely been seen in the past few years, when the violence became more episodic and fractured. But they resemble the kinds of campaigns that first captured the world’s attention and prompted the Bush administration to call the violence in Darfur genocide.
Aid workers, diplomats and analysts say the return of such attacks is an ominous sign that the fighting in Darfur, which has grown more complex and confusing as it has stretched on for five years, is entering a new and deadly phase — one in which the government is planning a scorched-earth campaign against the rebel groups fighting here as efforts to find a negotiated peace founder.
The government has carried out a series of coordinated attacks in recent weeks, using air power, ground forces and, according to witnesses and peacekeepers stationed in the area, the janjaweed, as their allied militias are known here. The offensives are aimed at retaking ground gained by a rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, which has been gathering strength and has close ties to the government of neighboring Chad.
Government officials say that their strikes have been carefully devised to hit the rebels, not civilians, and that Arab militias were not involved. They said they had been motivated to evict the rebels in part because the rebels were hijacking aid vehicles and preventing peacekeepers from patrolling the area, events that some aid workers and peacekeepers confirmed.
Please read the rest of the article HERE.
My husband and I have long supported an organization called Medecins Sans Frontiers / Doctors Without Borders. Wherever there is human misery, these brave doctors go and serve those suffering, and their life-saving work is performed under the worst possible conditions. They don’t look at politics. They look at human suffering, and do their best to alleviate it, or to do what they can. These heroic doctors are serving in Dharfur – while they can. When Medicins Sans Frontiers have to pull out, you know that the situation is as bad as it can be.
The accept donations from anyone, anywhere. Be generous.
“Whirling Chaff”
From Psalm 83
Verse 13
O my God, make them like whirling dust,*
like chaff before the wind.
Reading the Lectionary readings for today I came across this verse in the very first reading. It brought a grin to my face.
Lent continues. The Lord sends me out in my car almost daily, in spite of my best laid plans. I struggle to keep my resolution not to call – not to even THINK – bad names at the fools on the road who cause disruption, chaos and pain. It helps to have a substitute in mind, so I have something I CAN say instead of just struggling NOT to say the words that immediately come to mind.
The above verse will do nicely – don’t you think?
Back to Work Sunrise
Last night, in the middle of the night, I thought I heard raindrops on the window. I was too drowsy to get up and look, but this morning I can see the pavement is damp and small almost-puddles, so I think we had a small shower, at least where I live.
The sky looks like it might turn blue, well above the horizon, but the horizon is thick and threatening – it almost reminds me of Fires of Kuwait, the award winning show at the Kuwait Science Center about the teams who put out the fires set by Saddam Hussein’s retreating forces as they tried to inflict one final devastation on the Kuwait economy. I can’t imagine what it must have been like here while the wells were being capped, and I wonder if anyone is keeping statistics on the history of health issues of those who were here during that terrible time.
It is 55°F / 13°C at 0700; Weather Underground: Kuwait shows no precipitation, so maybe I imagined it.
Dust Storm Sunset and Sunrise
This is what it looks like in a dust storm. Imagine fog, but fog that cakes on your face and makes it grainy, that gets in your eyes and up your nostrils. Dust that gets in your ears, dust you can taste. Your skin dries out like an alligator and there is a coating of slick grit on the road.
It’s a driving challenge. Visibility is low. But people are driving more slowly, at least along the roads I drive, so I am actually enjoying the experience. It’s kind of an adventure.
This is how it looked late yesterday afternoon:
And this is the Dust Storm Sunrise this morning:
Dubai Rape Case Update (Two)
In another tiny little article, but high up on page 3 of the Kuwait Times is:
UAE Court Upholds Verdict in Rape Case
Dubai: An appeals court in the United Arab Emirates yesterday upheld 15 year jail terms handed down against two Emiratis convicted of raping a French-Swiss teenager, and AFP journalist said. The judge in Dubai took just a few seconds to announce his ruling after proceedings opened. The defense wanted the sentences pronounced on December 12 to be quashed, and a lawyer for the two men told AFP after Sunday’s ruling that a further appeal would be lodged with the supreme court. Prosecutors had demanded the maximum punishment, which could have meant the death penalty. A third defendant is being tried in a juvenile court. One of the men who raped the European teenager was HIV-positive, but has since been found to be clear of the sexually transmittable disease. The boy’s mother, Veronique Robert, launched a media campaign to publicize the case and gather support for her demand that the UAE recognize homosexual rape in its legal system and set up institutions to treat AIDs sufferers. She protested against the original verdict, saying that “15 years is nothing for someone who knew he had AIDs.”
Comment: Did you read this sentence?:
One of the men who raped the European teenager was HIV-positive, but has since been found to be clear of the sexually transmittable disease.
Can you tell me who has been found to be clear of the disease? One of the men? The teenager?
Comment 2: Bravo, UAE judges!
Parking Hall of Shame
Just four spots away was a legitimate spot, but no! This guy has to leave his rear end half out into the driving lane so that he could be right by the door. I am guessing he only parked there because all the handicapped spots were already taken (by able bodied people.)
The other day I heard a woman say that it is OK to park in a handicapped spot if no one else has taken it because it means that no handicapped person needs it.
What ignorance!
What happens when someone with a leg injury comes looking for that spot? Someone with asthma? Someone old, with joint problems? People who park in a handicapped spot have NO HEART!
Diet Soda and Metabolic Syndrome
Bad news about a recent study on Diet Soda from The New York Times. You can read more up-to-date health news by clicking on the blue type.
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: February 5, 2008
Researchers have found a correlation between drinking diet soda and metabolic syndrome — the collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and blood glucose levels, and elevated blood pressure.
The scientists gathered dietary information on more than 9,500 men and women ages 45 to 64 and tracked their health for nine years.
Over all, a Western dietary pattern — high intakes of refined grains, fried foods and red meat — was associated with an 18 percent increased risk for metabolic syndrome, while a “prudent” diet dominated by fruits, vegetables, fish and poultry correlated with neither an increased nor a decreased risk.
But the one-third who ate the most fried food increased their risk by 25 percent compared with the one-third who ate the least, and surprisingly, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.
“This is interesting,” said Lyn M. Steffen, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota and a co-author of the paper, which was posted online in the journal Circulation on Jan. 22. “Why is it happening? Is it some kind of chemical in the diet soda, or something about the behavior of diet soda drinkers?”
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