Suit to Ban Oreos in Calif. Crumbles

(AP) - California children can rejoice. They won't have to smuggle Oreo cookies into the state after all.

San Francisco attorney Stephen Joseph said his move to outlaw the tasty cookies has crumbled. He is withdrawing his lawsuit against Kraft Foods. Joseph said he only wanted to get the word out about the dangers of unlabeled trans fats in the chocolate-cookies-with-white-stuff-in-the-middle. (So he admits it was a frivolous lawsuit. Thanks for wasting everybody's time and money. Take out a damned ad in the paper next time.)

Kraft spokesman Michael Mudd says the courts aren't the place to make nutrition policy. He says Kraft Foods continues to research ways to get trans fat out of Oreos while preserving the flavor. (Not really their job. Anyway, are people buying their fat-free oreos in the green packaging as much as they buy the regular kind? I think not)

The big difference between this suit and others that have targeted tobacco and McDonald's fast food is that consumers know that tobacco is bad for their health and that McDonald's food contains a lot of fat, Joseph said.(I am offended by that! They are cookies! Tell me you think I don't know cookies are bad for me!! People may be stupid, but they are not that stupid. Grrrr.....)

"Trans fat is not the same thing at all. Very few people know about it," he said, explaining that his suit focuses on the fact that trans fats are hidden dangers being marketed to children.

The National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine which advises the government on health policy, said last summer that this kind of fat should not be consumed at all. It is directly associated with heart disease and with LDL cholesterol, the 'bad' kind that accumulates in arteries.(Again. Did anyone ever assume that Oreo Cookies were good for their heart?!?)

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture said partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which contain trans fats, are present in about 40 per cent of the food on grocery store shelves. Cookies, crackers, and microwave popcorn are the biggest carriers of trans fats, which are created when hydrogen is bubbled through oil to produce a margarine that doesn't melt at room temperature and increases the product's shelf life. (Making Oreo's OH so delicious.)

The Food and Drug Administration has tried to force food companies to list trans fat content with other nutritional information on food packages, but manufacturers have challenged the rule. Even food labeled "low in cholesterol" or "low in saturated fats" may have high percentages of trans fats.

Informing customers about trans fats on food labels could prevent 7,600 to 17,100 cases of coronary heart disease and 2,500 to 5,600 deaths per year, the FDA has estimated.(Actually, what will happen, is a brief, anti-trans-fat fad will start, just like the Oat Bran thing in the eighties. No Trans Fats will be emblazoned on labels and marketed with every breakfast food imaginable...for about a year.)

Joseph said he has targeted Nabisco because, while other major snack food makers have reduced the amount of trans fats in their products, Nabisco has not.

Hungry? Try a "Fat in Chocolate"

KIEV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian candy company has begun marketing what may be the stickiest, richest and most fattening treat on the market: pure pork fat covered in chocolate. Cracking open a finger-sized stick of ''Fat in Chocolate'' reveals exactly that: a vein of white fat. The dark chocolate product pokes fun at the traditional Ukrainian snack of salo, or salted pork fat, usually consumed with vodka and pickles.

How do you like your apples?
WENATCHEE, Wash. — City business leaders and police want to keep this year's Apple Blossom Festival under wraps. They're asking stores not to sell beaded necklaces during the festival, to avoid a repeat of last year when young men offered beaded necklaces to young women, hoping to entice them to bare their breasts, Mardi Gras-style. "I don't think women exposing themselves is part of family fun," said Craig Larsen, a Chamber of Commerce executive. Uh, Mr. Larsen, who says that's not fun again? Who's not having fun? In its newsletter this month, the chamber and police urged businesses not to sell necklaces during the event, which attracts about 100,000 visitors each year. Last year, 21 people were cited for lewd conduct and three for indecent exposure, police said.

2003-05-16-8:09 a.m.
Friday, May 17
Still Here
Still Awaiting Doomsday



In the News
Japanese cult postpones end of world until Thursday

GODAISHI, Japan--Members of a Japanese cult were busy draping trees and buildings in white sheets Thursday, apparently unconcerned as their deadline for the end of the world came and went. Dozens of police and scores of reporters kept watch Thursday at the inaccessible mountain village of Godaishi, in central Japan, where about 60 cultists are camping in their vans. The convoy arrived in Godaishi after being chased across Japan by hostile local authorities. The cult disturbed the country with its claims that the approach of a 10th planet would trigger the destruction of Earth on May 15. A spokesman now says the apocalypse has been postponed until next Thursday.

End of the world? Cult gets date wrong

TOKYO - If you are reading this story, then clearly the world did not end as predicted by a bizarre Japanese cult which claimed that the Earth was to have been devastated by a major catastrophe yesterday. The pale and disheveled 69-year-old female leader of the cult, Ms Yuko Chino, told a television interviewer recently: 'There will be an earthquake of magnitude 15. That's why I want to die.' A former Pana Wave member told the weekly that Ms Chino is plagued by hallucinations, given to hysterics and loves green tea-flavoured pudding. The former member also disclosed that the cult's No. 2, a man who runs its publishing arm, is a science fiction fanatic who is obsessed with tales about Earth's annihilation.

Thursday's DVD The Vertical Ray of the Sun, (2001) by Tran Ahn Hung, was a true challenge to watch. That's not a bad thing. I guess you have to be either ready for it or willing to watch it a couple of times to decipher who was sleeping with who and why she reacted to the cheating in this way or that. I was busy deciding whether the rooms were decorated in "shabby chic" or if they were "supposed" to be that way, and marveling at the size of the tropical flowers. I really liked the Lou Reed music. I kept on comparing Lien to Amelie, only Lien was so sheltered she barely knew how babies were made. That's probably very important in a movie where her two older sisters are always talking about-and having-sex.

Site of the Day
Etiquette Hell is a veritable treasure trove of faux pas, mostly wedding-related. There are enough pages here to keep one busy for two weeks. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated since February. I keep checking. Perhaps one day...

I knew my husbands family was very different from mine, but what I did not know was that his mother lived in 'another world'. We were both moving out of our parents houses to get married and we had only taken possession of our new apartment 2 weeks before the wedding. We had not done much, just set up the kitchen and bathroom and bedroom and taken delivery of a big TV/china cabinet unit for the living room. After our wedding we made it back to our new apartment at 2 in the morning, piled all the unopened gifts onto the living room floor, and got about 3 hours sleep before we left for our honeymoon at 6am the next day. His parents asked for a key to our new place to pick up the mail. As we had only had the place 2 weeks the only mail we were getting was from the previous tenants so I suspected that when we returned from our honeymoon there would be some sort of surprise waiting for us. Maybe a welcome home sign or confetti. Was there ever a surprise. While we were gone my mother-in-law took it upon herself to set-up my apartment. This included rearranging all the kitchen cupboards, getting into everything in the bathroom (including taking 6 months of birth control pills out of their individual boxes in the bag under the sink and putting them in the medicine cabinet)and OPENING UP ALL MY WEDDING GIFTS! In addition she threw away all the boxes the gifts came in so when I had one item that was defective I had to go through a big hassle to get the store to exchange it. When I got upset she was hurt because I should be thanking her for going to all this trouble for me. And my husband sided with her. Can you say fantasy world. I knew I had to get the upper hand in this situation or it would be repeated throughout my marriage. I started with my husband. He worked in an office with a lot of female clerical help. I told him to ask every girl in his office if I was right to be upset and if even one took his mothers side then I would be gracious and say no more. Needless to say he was forced by popular opinion to admit I was right. As for his mother, I never mentioned it again but I was such a cast-iron bitch for about six months that she never messed with me again.

2003-05-15-9:07 a.m.
Thursday, May 15
Doomsday

In the News
The End is Nigh

The end is apparently nigh. A Japanese doomsday cult says the world will end today. For weeks, the country has been transfixed as the cult has driven around central Japan, covering people, cars and trees with white cloth: protection, the group says, from electromagnetic rays. The group believes that the world will end today, when a mystery planet approaches the Earth and causes massive earthquakes and floods. "The main similarity between Aum and Pana Wave is absolute obedience to their guru," says Taro Takimoto, an adviser to cult victims. "The biggest worry is that the group will commit mass suicide today or sometime in the next week. Also, I am concerned about the risk of them torturing their own members. It's unclear if they are serious about committing murders outside the group." As doomsday has approached, the police have been getting increasingly nervous, and yesterday raided several buildings owned by the cult. They say they were checking whether Pana Wave had falsely registered some of its cars, but officials made it clear the action was part of a wider investigation into the group's activities.

More on Panawave Laboratory

They say they will make all mankind die out if their guru dies," he said. "They also don't mind violating laws. A destructive cult is defined as a group in which believers obey their guru so absolutely they don't care about breaking the law. It is obvious that believers obey the guru absolutely." The Weekly Bunshun magazine reported in its May 5 issue that the guru first came to notice in the late 1970s when she quit her office job and founded a private cram school. She tried to recruit the high schools girls who came to her for English lessons, asking them to pray instead of pay. Soon, the number of believers had grown to 1000. The magazine said the group came under police investigation after a steel tower intended for a high-voltage electricity line was destroyed, but no charges were laid. Mr Takimoto said that the main sources of income for the cult included a publishing company and the marketing of health supplements and water purifiers. He added that Pana Wave had lost members in the past five or six years. The group was showing "terminal symptoms" and had been reduced to just several hundred followers. Next Thursday - doomsday - will obviously provide some more definite answers for Pana Wave. The cult believes that destruction will come when the Earth's axis tilts with the approach of a 10th unknown planet, causing a massive earthquake. Back near Tokyo, Tama-chan has re-emerged - although distressingly, with a fish hook lodged in its eye. Regardless of what does or does not happen on Thursday, it's clear Pana Wave was at least right that Japan's city rivers are no place for an Arctic seal.

Poor Tama-Chan!

On Tama-Chan

Tama-chan resurfaces minus fishing hook in its eye Monday, May 12, 2003 at 07:00 JST SAITAMA — Tama-chan, the popular stray bearded seal, appeared again Sunday in a Saitama Prefecture river but this time without the fishing hook that had been embedded by its right eye. The seal had been suffering from having the fishing hook stuck in its face for about a week. When the celebrity seal climbed on its favorite boat slightly before 10 a.m. in the Ara River in Asaka, a prefectural official said the hook was probably removed after hitting some kind of obstacle in the river. (Kyodo News)

from the web comments of the story:

Praise be Simon (May 12 2003 - 10:04) Now I can sleep at night - apart from the earthquakes. Tama-chan resurfaces minus fishing hook in its eye TheManiac (May 12 2003 - 15:10) I dont know whats worse, these stupid press reports, or me for reading them.

More News...

New Communist Superman Series Coming Out

Toward a red planet This Superman is leading the Soviet Union to Cold War victory Jeet Heer National Post Monday, May 12, 2003 Joseph Stalin and Superman would seem to have little in common except their shared nickname, "the Man of Steel." Stalin was a brutal dictator who murdered millions, while Superman is the mythical embodiment of truth, justice and the American way. Yet in Superman: Red Son, a new three-part comic book series, the first of which has just been released by DC Comics, writer Mark Millar posits an alternative universe where Superman grew up on a collective farm in the Ukraine in the 1930s rather than in the idyllic Midwest town of Smallville, U.S.A. Indoctrinated with communist ideology from birth, this new version of Superman grows up to be a "champion of the common worker" who "fights a never-ending battle for Stalin, socialism and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact." In the first chapter of the series, which is selling briskly at comic book stores, the Stalinist Superman is well on his way to leading the Soviet Union of the 1950s to victory in the Cold War, using his superpowers to make his native land the world's only superpower.

You Wanna Know What I Think?
This thing with states forcing employers to "let" their employees display American flags:

It's flippin' illegal.

First of all, private property. Hello?
Next, the government has chosen an ideology that is acceptable to it-hence, a favored speech. The government now must either allow employees to display anti-American symbols, or they must stop forcing people to display flags on their businesses if some lunkhead that fries their patties wants to.
Now to fix this forcing public school teachers to display and teach patriotism thing. Yes, they have to sign a form before working, promising they will think the way the state requires them to think. Which is unconstitutional. I guess teachers are just going to have to show their patriotism by teaching the bill of rights-and maybe explaining to the kids why that's wrong.
QED

Site of the Day

I, Raskovalova Raisa Nikolaevna - secretary-referent of Sat Guru Avatar Majtreya, will conduct "Starry-Galactic Technologies" section of the informative shock-site of world's sensations "EARTH - THE PLANET OF BIOROBOTS".

2003-05-12-9:16 a.m.
Monday, May 12

In the News
More about Pana Wave

The dozen-or-so vehicles left, then stopped for the night along a rural highway 12 miles away. It was unclear where they were headed. The caravan, believed to carry the group's ailing guru, has moved around western Japan since 1994. Before arriving here, about 160 miles west of Tokyo, it spent almost eight months on a desolate stretch of road in a neighboring state. The cult says it seeks refuge from deadly electromagnetic waves generated by power lines and controlled by "left-wing elements." It believes white fabric helps neutralize the waves. "It's impossible to get away from the effects of these weapons completely," spokesman Mitsumoto Kikuchi told dozens of reporters who converged on the caravan this week. "What we're doing is looking for the safest possible environment, one far away from power lines." According to cult watchers and media reports quoting police sources, Pana Wave was founded under a different name around 1977 by Yuko Chino, a self-proclaimed prophet who preaches a blend of Christianity, Buddhism and New Age doctrines. The group reportedly owns property in several rural areas and once claimed several thousand members. Estimates of its membership range from several hundred to 1,200.

Cultists enter statement about Tama-Chan

The statement, filled with strange jargon, said the "approach of the Nibiru star will be delayed nearly a week from Monday and those who do not listen to this message will face death." Chino also said in a memo, reportedly written by a member of the group, that Panawave was "driven to carry out" the feeding of Tama-chan, a popular seal that has been spotted in rivers around Tokyo since last year. Panawave appears to be linked to a group that attempted to capture Tama-chan in March in Yokohama, but failed.

This Here Seal is Tama-Chan

The cult believes most of humankind will be destroyed on May 15 (that's Thursday), when an undiscovered 10th planet approaches Earth, reversing the magnetic pole and causing floods and tidal waves. To prepare for the final day, a group of about 40 believers have formed a convoy of a dozen white vans that travel Japan's mountain roads in search of an area free from electromagnetic waves. It says communists are using such waves to try to kill their ailing guru, Yuko Chino, a 69-year-old self-proclaimed prophet who is said to be suffering from cancer. In what it claims is a form of defence, followers dress from head to toe in white, drive white vans and cover the trees and roads around their camp in white sheets. So far, however, the closest the cult has come to criminal activity is a couple of parking violations - for obstructing the view of its drivers by filling their vans' windscreens with white stickers. The Japanese media said the cult released a pamphlet last year urging members to "exterminate all humankind" if their leader died.

I am in the last stages of cancer and seriously ill ... I will die in four to five days," the woman told the Fuji television network from a white-shrouded van while refusing to show her face. The voice of a middle-aged woman broadcast by the private channel did not sound seriously ill. The woman claims to be Yuko Chino, 69, who set up the doomsday sect Chino Shoho (True Law of Chino) in the 1970s. The woman told Fuji: "I cannot live in one place because of extremists." Tomoya Morishita, the Fuji reporter who obtained the exclusive interview with her, told other journalists later that the woman, who unlike her disciples, was dressed in a light-blue sweater and navy blue trousers, was "just like an ordinary granny." "She did not look like someone seriously ill," the reporter said. She was quoted as saying, "I will be fine as long as I get energy from the heavens." The reporter said the inside of the van was covered with white paper and mysterious whirlpool patterns. Morishita had to agree to wear a white robe, remove his trouser belt and other metal objects, and wrap a microphone and camera with white cloth, Jiji Press news agency said. He added the woman spent 90 percent of the 25-minute interview talking about Japan's celebrated stray wild seal, nicknamed "Tama-chan," which she said was unable to find enough food. The wild seal sparked a media frenzy after straying into a river along Tokyo's industrial belt last year. A group linked to the cult failed in its attempt to catch and transport the animal to a makeshift pool at a dome-like building owned by Pana Wave in the village of Oizumi, about 150 kilometres west of Tokyo.

2003-05-11-5:45 p.m.
Sunday, May 11

Saturday's DVD
Gladiator (2000)
There's this warrior guy? And he's fighting, and there's these big tigers? And there's this big Amazon woman, and she's on this chariot? And he takes this big sword and cuts her right in half! It's awesome.

I'm being facetious, can you tell? I'll have to give this movie a five out of ten. It left me wishing we'd rented Spartacus. At least then I would've seen why impressionists portray Kirk Douglas the way they do.

I don't understand this honor of the warrior business, and it is not because I'm just a girl. It has more to do with my atheism and philosophies of rational egoism and objectivism. As it is so forcefully plunged through our hearts in this movie, the greatest honor is to die like a warrior, where our glorious afterlives are secured (and the crowd loves you for it). It's a bit confusing though-I don't think the romans believed in an afterworld that was particularly pleasant. The Christians that passively let themselves be eaten by lions had a better reason to let themselves die. A viking would desire a warrior's death for they would be able to enter a pleasurable world in Valhalla. Was the dismal Greek underworld abandoned in ancient Rome?

It's better to live for ourselves, our loved ones and ideals than to die for temporary glory-and a few faded advertisements on the walls of ruins proclaiming: There was this guy, and he was a great fighter? And then there were these tigers? And this big Amazon woman comes at him and...