Work’s been exceptionally busy. I guess when the weather gets cold, the Internet gets extra-appealing. Between my daughter crawling as fast as a spider, trying to keep the house clean, and being totally exhausted from my two jobs, who has time to write?
I’ll keep on trying anyway. Look for more posts later today!
THOMAS TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Police say a Michigan man has been arrested after “receiving sexual favors from a vacuum” at a car wash.
The Saginaw News reports the 29-year-old Swan Creek Township man was arrested Thursday in Saginaw County’s Thomas Township, about 90 miles northwest of Detroit.
Police Sgt. Gary Breidinger says a resident called to report suspicious activity at the car wash about 6:45 a.m. An officer approached on foot and caught the man in the act.
The suspect, whose name wasn’t immediately released, is being held in the Saginaw County Jail.
Well, it is safer and less expensive that soliciting a prostitute, but I’d be terrified to apply something with that much suction to my genitals.
On the plus side, though, it would give me a cheap hysterectomy and possibly a role in a Chuck Palahniuk story.
Chicago’s Cook County Sheriff won’t evict in foreclosures
By DON BABWIN
Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO (AP) — The sheriff here said Wednesday that he’s ordering his deputies to stop evicting people from foreclosed properties because many people his office has helped throw out on the street are renters who did nothing wrong.
“We will no longer be a party to something that’s so unjust,” a visibly angry Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said at a news conference.
“We have to be sure that when we are doing this – and we are destroying some people’s lives – we better be darned sure we’re talking about the right people,” Dart said.
Dart said he believes he’s the first sheriff in a major metropolitan area to stop participating in foreclosure evictions, and the publisher of a national foreclosure database said he’s probably right.
“I haven’t heard of any other sheriff unilaterally deciding to stop foreclosures,” said Rick Sharga, senior vice president of the Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac, Inc. He said the sheriff in Philadelphia helped push a moratorium on foreclosure sales, but that involved owner-occupied homes and not renters.
Dart said that from now on, banks will have to present his office with a court affidavit that proves the home’s occupant is either the owner or has been properly notified of the foreclosure proceedings.
Illinois law requires that renters be notified that their residence is in foreclosure and they will be evicted in 120 days, but Dart indicated that the law has been routinely ignored.
He talked about tenants who dutifully pay their rent, then leave one morning for work only to have authorities evict them and put their belongings on the curb while they are gone.
By the time they get home, “The meager possessions they have are gone,” he said. “This is happening too often.”
In many cases, he said, tenants aren’t even aware that their homes have fallen into foreclosure.
This week, an attorney asked that Dart be held in contempt when his deputies did not evict tenants after determining they were not the owners and did not know about their landlord’s financial problems.
A judge denied the attorney’s request, Dart’s office said, and Dart said that after talking to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, he is confident he is on solid legal ground.
“My job as sheriff is to follow court orders, absolutely,” he said. “But I’m also in charge of making sure justice is being done here and it is clear that justice is not being done here.”
The state’s attorney’s office said it would not comment on conversations with Dart because his office is a client.
Foreclosures have skyrocketed around the country in recent months and Dart said the number of foreclosure evictions in Cook County could more than double from the 2006 tally of 1,771. This year the county is on pace to see 4,500 such evictions, he said.
Dart warned that because the eviction process on foreclosures can take more than a year, the number is sure to climb even higher.
“From all the numbers we have seen, we know (they) are going to be exploding,” he said.
Sharga said there are more than 1 million U.S. homes in foreclosure – with about a third of that number occupied by someone other than the owner.
“That number will continue to get bigger,” he said.
Dart said he believes banks are not doing basic research to determine that the people being evicted are, in fact, the homeowners.
He said that in a third of the 400 to 500 foreclosure evictions his deputies had been carrying out every month, the residents are not those whose names are on the eviction papers.
Nor, he said, are banks notifying tenants that the homes they’re renting are in foreclosure. He added that when banks do learn the correct names of those living on foreclosed-upon property, their names often are simply added to eviction papers.
“They just go out and get an order the next day and throw these people’s names on there,” Dart said. “Whether they (tenants) have been notified, God only knows.”
Evictions for nonpayment of rent will continue, Dart said, explaining that those cases already have gone to court, his office is confident the people being evicted are who the landlord says they are, and there is no question the tenants are aware of what is going on.
Dart said it’s only fair for banks to give occupants of a foreclosed property adequate notice before forcing them out.
“You are talking about a lot of people in rental situations living paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “To think they are sitting on a pool of money for an up-front deposit, security deposit, is foolishness.”
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
A public official? And he’s doing something that could jeopardize his job, career, family, and life to help innocent tenants rather than gouging them for all he can get? I think I may die of shock.
Even before I was a mom, SIDS research was very important to me. Below is an article about the use of a fan in the baby’s bedroom to help prevent SIDS. More research is needed to prove that it makes a difference 100% of the time, but it’s still a good start.
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20081006/MED.Preventing.SIDS/
Using a fan to circulate air seemed to lower the risk of sudden infant death syndrome in a study of nearly 500 babies, researchers reported Monday. Placing babies on their backs to sleep is the best advice for preventing SIDS, a still mysterious cause of death.
Experts also recommend a firm mattress, removing toys and pillows from cribs, and keeping infants from getting too warm.
Such practices helped slash U.S. SIDS deaths by more than half over a decade to about 2,100 in 2003. But SIDS remains the leading cause of death in infants ages 1 month to 1 year.
“The baby’s sleeping environment really matters,” said study senior author Dr. De-Kun Li of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, Calif. “This seems to suggest that by improving room ventilation we can further reduce risk.”
SIDS is the sudden death of an otherwise healthy infant that can’t be attributed to any other cause. These babies may have brain abnormalities that prevent them from gasping and waking when they don’t get enough oxygen.
The new study, published in October’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, offers another way to make sure babies get enough air.
More research is needed, said Dr. Fern Hauck of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, but she said that because fan use is in line with theories, it may be worth considering.
“This is the first study that we know of that has looked at this issue,” said Hauck, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics SIDS task force.
Researchers interviewed mothers of 185 infants who died from SIDS and mothers of 312 infants of similar race and age. Moms answered dozens of questions about their baby’s sleeping environment.
Researchers took into account other risk factors and found that fan use was associated with a 72 percent lower risk of SIDS. Only 3 percent of the babies who died had a fan on in the room during their last sleep, the mothers reported. That compared to 12 percent of the babies who lived.
Using a fan reduced risk most for babies in poor sleeping environments.
The study involved infants in 11 California counties. It was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health.
___
On the Net:
Archives: http://www.archpediatrics.com
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
God willing, one day we’ll know what causes SIDS, and then we’ll be more capable of preventing it. Until then, anything that is proven to reduce the risk of SIDS is helpful.
I love Scrubbing Bubbles. I use it to clean everything from my bathroom to my kitchen floor. It even does a dandy job on my stovetop and counters! Naturally, when BzzAgent offered me the opportunity to try out a new product by Scrubbing Bubbles and share my opinions on it, I (quite literally!) jumped at the chance.
The new product is Scrubbing Bubbles Action Scrubber. The set I received to test consisted of the foam base, four pads presaturated and dehydrated with the scrubbing bubbles solution, and a clear plastic box to house the pads and give the scrubber base a place to rest. The concept behind this new product is that by using the system, those of us (un)fortunate enough to get stuck with bathroom cleaning duties will have fewer steps to a cleaner bathroom.
Unfortunately, it’s not quite that easy. First, one must make sure that the surface is already moistened, which is easy to do in the shower area, but not so easy around the toilet, unless one has a leaky toilet or condensation issues. (With my trusty can of scrubbing bubbles, I’ve never had to pre-moisten a surface to get it clean). Second, one must adhere the pad to the base, then moisten the handy scrubbing bubbles pretreated pad…but not too much! Third, one must start scrubbing away, which is arguably the most fun part of the entire process, as the pad glides swiftly over the surfaces, pounding through dirt, soap scum, and other yuckies like a Vin Diesel antihero. Fourth, one must rinse off the surfaces, or the cleaner will cause them to become obnoxiously sticky. Finally, one has the option of wiping the surfaces dry or letting them air dry.
Does it save steps? Maybe it does for some other bathroom trench wenches, but it doesn’t for me. All I’ve ever really had to do to get my bathroom clean is spray my trusty scrubbing bubbles, let them sit for a bit, then wipe them off with a wet towel, then let things air-dry. Again, though, I was impressed with the way the scrubber slid through grime, which could save one the time and trouble associate with actually scrubbing the surface with something other than the Action Scrubber.
In addition, the fine folks at Scrubbing Bubbles recommend that one use gloves when using this product, and with good reason–the stuff on the pad dried out my skin pretty quickly; it was like I stuck my hands in a bucket of alum (the same stuff used in styptic pencils, pickling, and random recipes). Since I’m allergic to latex and non-latex gloves cost money I don’t have, gloving up is a no-go for me. As it was, I had to lotion my hands repeatedly just to get to the normal level of dry my skin currently enjoys.
Overall, though, this is a good product for anyone who wants an easy way to scrub off bathroom crud. I don’t feel as though it saves me any steps, though, and I hate how it makes my hands feel, so I’ll most likely stick with my trusty can of scrubbing bubbles and designated scrubbing towels.
The Action Scrubber is good idea, but it’s not for everyone. Since I love Scubbing Bubbles pretty much unconditionally, I give it a 4/5. Not bad, but there’s room for improvement, and it’s definitely worth a test drive.
http://cbs2chicago.com/local/chicago.number.one.2.819963.html
CHICAGO (CBS) ? Chicago is the most stressful city in the United States, according to Forbes. CBS 2’s Jim Williams reports that the city of big shoulders – is the city of big stress.
Forbes says Chicago is more stressful than Detroit, Los Angeles – even New York.
“How can that be? I don’t know where they get these things. It’s laughable,” Mayor Daley said.
Forbes says it took into account Chicago’s rising unemployment rate, expensive gas, high population density and air pollution.
Chicagoans cited other factors.
“The weather doesn’t help too much in the winter time when it’s dreary out and everybody feels like they need to be at work instead of on the beach, hanging out,” said Lauren Wilcox, Chicagoan.
“Part of the stress comes from our poor transit system,” said Heather Sowl, Chicagoan. “Everybody is crammed on the CTA.”
But others strongly disagreed with the list – and wondered how Chicago could place ahead of New York City on the stress meter.
“It’s a lot more crowded, it’s a lot busier. Parking is a disaster. I don’t think Chicago is that bad,” said Emily Chadwick, Chicagoan.
And Chicago is not at the center of a financial industry meltdown right now.
“You don’t think New York is stressed today?” Mayor Daley asked.
UIC Urban Planning Professor Charles Hoch urges us to just take a deep breath – and not stress out over any stress test.
“We can’t really summarize the complexity of three million people’s experiences in four or five indicators, so I think it really is a mistaken application,” Prof. Hoch said.
So here are the top five most stressful cities, according to the Forbes – Chicago is number one followed by New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Keep in mind, magazines and books are always putting out lists – fattest cities, best all-time heavyweight champions, most over-rated actors. It’s a sales tool – to get us to pay attention to those magazines and books.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Of course King Daley doesn’t think there’s anything wrong…although maybe it’s Cook County as a whole that is more stressful than Chicago itself. He doesn’t have to face the same struggles that we peasants of southern Cook County have to face each day.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Sep/20080908News012.asp
KC police shoot man with sword
KANSAS CITY (AP) – Kansas City police officers fatally shot a man they said swung a sword at them.
A police spokesman said two officers responded to a call early yesterday about a person yelling in the street. When they arrived, they said, the man was standing in the street holding an object later determined to be a sword. The officers chased the man on foot. When they tried to arrest him, they said, the suspect tried to hit them with the sword.
Officers shot the suspect, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
…aw
And here I was hoping that police had some sort of nifty weapon that could shoot swords. Instead, we have police shooting another random sword-wielder. !Que lastima!
http://omg.yahoo.com/blogs/goddess/matilda-ledgers-guardian-angels/85?nc
Matilda Ledger’s Guardian Angels
by Brenda
The late Heath Ledger‘s daughter Matilda was spotted skipping along the streets of NYC yesterday with her mom Michelle Williams in the cutest pink sundress. Every time I see a photo of the 2-year-old I can’t believe how much she looks like her dad. He definitely lives on through her.
As most of you probably know, Heath was filming Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” at the time of his death. Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell stepped in to complete Heath’s role, playing different versions of his character “Tim.”
When the three actors learned that Ledger’s will had not been updated to include his daughter, the generous trio decided to donate all the money they earned from the film to little Matilda!
It’s good to know that there are a few nice guys in Hollywood.
Very classy, fellas, very classy. I’ve got to have a lot of respect for stars who are willing to give up their fat paychecks to make sure that a poor, fatherless child is provided for for the rest of her life. Sure, Michelle Williams is talented, but she really does have her hands full, and I’m sure it’s going to take her a long time to deal with Heath Ledger dying…and to deal with her daughter asking the inevitable questions about her father…and wondering why Daddy is never coming back. I hope that those three, who are all fathers themselves, will take time out to visit with Matilda as well…especially Johnny Depp, as I’ve heard that he’s a good father to his kids.
As some of you know, I am now a BzzAgent. Working with Bzz allows me to try new products for free or at discounted rates. All that they ask is that I use the products, review them honestly, and then share those views with friends, family, and the general public. With that in mind, I’m also going to use this space to share my adventures with the various products I am asked to try. If you’d like to be a BzzAgent as well, drop me a line here, and I’ll see about getting you hooked up with Bzz.
In addition, I will be updating this more often (famous last words, I know) with more about my homelife, my housework, my career ambitions…and those news stories that get under my skin.
And so, onward!
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-health/20080708/MED.Autism.Research/
Wed Jul 9, 7:46 AM EDT
Pressured by desperate parents, government researchers are pushing to test an unproven treatment on autistic children, a move some scientists see as an unethical experiment in voodoo medicine.
The treatment removes heavy metals from the body and is based on the fringe theory that mercury in vaccines triggers autism — a theory never proved and rejected by mainstream science. Mercury hasn’t been in childhood vaccines since 2001, except for certain flu shots.
But many parents of autistic children are believers, and the head of the National Institute of Mental Health supports testing it on children provided the tests are safe.
“So many moms have said, `It’s saved my kids,'” institute director Dr. Thomas Insel said.
For now, the proposed study, not widely known outside the community of autism research and advocacy groups, has been put on hold because of safety concerns, Insel told The Associated Press.
The process, called chelation, is used to treat lead poisoning. Studies of adults have shown it to be ineffective unless there are high levels of metals in the blood. Any study in children would have to exclude those with high levels of lead or mercury, which would require treatment and preclude using a placebo.
One of the drugs used for chelation, DMSA, can cause side effects including rashes and low white blood cell count. And there is evidence chelation may redistribute metals in the body, perhaps even into the central nervous system.
“I don’t really know why we have to do this in helpless children,” said Ellen Silbergeld of Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was invited to comment on the study to a review board of the national institute.
Despite lawsuits and at least one child’s death, several thousand autistic children are already believed to be using chelation (pronounced kee-LAY’-shun), their parents not content to wait for a study.
Among those parents is Christina Blakey of suburban Chicago, who uses chelation and a variety of other alternative therapies, including sessions in a hyperbaric chamber, on her 8-year-old son, Charlie.
Before he started chelation at age 5, Charlie suffered tantrums. When she took him to school, she had to peel him off her body and walk away. But three weeks after he began chelation, his behavior changed, she said.
“He lined up with his friends at school. He looked at me and waved and gave me a thumbs-up sign and walked into school,” Blakey said. “All the moms who had been watching burst into tears. All of us did.”
There is no way to prove whether chelation made a difference or whether Charlie simply adjusted to the school routine.
Autism is a spectrum of disorders that hamper a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others. Most doctors believe there is no cure.
Conventional treatments are limited to behavioral therapy and a few medications, such as the schizophrenia drug Risperdal, approved to treat irritability.
Frustrated parents use more than 300 alternative treatments, most with little or no scientific evidence backing them up, according to the Interactive Autism Network at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Md.
“With a lot of mothers, if they hear about a treatment, they feel like they need to try it,” said project director Dr. Paul Law. “Anything that has a chance of benefiting their child, they’re willing to give it a shot.”
More than 2 percent of the children tracked by the project use chelation. If that figure holds for the general population, it would mean more than 3,000 autistic children are on the treatment at any time in the United States.
Chelation drugs can be taken in pill form, by rectal suppository and intravenously.
Dr. Susan Swedo, who heads the federal institute’s in-house autism research and wants to study chelation, gained notoriety by theorizing that strep throat had caused some cases of obsessive compulsive disorder. The theory was never proved.
She proposed recruiting 120 autistic children ages 4 to 10 and giving half DMSA and the other half a dummy pill. The 12-week test would measure before-and-after blood mercury levels and autism symptoms.
The study outline says that failing to find a difference between the two groups would counteract “anecdotal reports and widespread belief” that chelation works.
But the study was put on hold for safety concerns after an animal study, published last year, linked DMSA to lasting brain problems in rats. It remains under review, Insel told the AP.
Insel said he has come to believe after listening to parents that traditional scientific research, building incrementally on animal studies and published papers, wasn’t answering questions fast enough.
“This is an urgent set of questions,” Insel said. “Let’s make innovation the centerpiece of this effort as we study autism, its causes and treatments, and think of what we may be missing.”
Last year, the National Institutes of Health spent less than 5 percent of its $127 million autism research budget on alternative therapies, Insel said. He said he is hopeful the chelation study will be approved.
Others say it would be unethical, even if it proves chelation doesn’t work.
Federal research agencies must “bring reason to science” without “catering to a public misperception,” said Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of an upcoming book on autism research. “Science has been trumped by politics in some ways.”
Offit is concerned vaccination rates may fall to dangerous levels because some parents believe they cause autism.
Dr. Martin Myers, former director of the federal National Vaccine Program Office, said he believes giving chelation to autistic children is unethical — but says the government can justify the study because so many parents are using chelation without scientific evidence.
“It’s incumbent on the scientific community to evaluate it,” he said.
Actress Jenny McCarthy, whose bestseller “Louder Than Words” details her search for treatments for her autistic son, Evan, told thousands of parents at a recent autism conference outside Chicago that she plans to try chelation on him this summer.
“A lot of people are scared to chelate … but it has triggered many recoveries,” she said.
But those claims are only anecdotal, and there are serious risks.
Of the several drugs used in chelation, the only one recommended for intravenous use in children is edetate calcium disodium. Mixups with another drug with a similar name, edetate disodium, have led to three deaths, including one autistic child.
A 5-year-old autistic boy went into cardiac arrest and died after he was given IV chelation therapy in 2005. A Pennsylvania doctor is being sued by the boy’s parents for allegedly giving the wrong drug and using a risky technique.
No deaths have been associated with DMSA, which can cause rashes, low white blood cell count and vomiting. It is also sold as a dietary supplement, which is how some parents of autistic children get it.
A Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman said the agency is “is looking into how these products are marketed.”
___
On the Net:
National Institute of Mental Health: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
If it works and it doesn’t harm the majority of children, I think it should be given as an option to treat autism. Outside of that, I used to care for a boy with pretty bad autism. It wasn’t bad to the point where he was unable to control his bowels, but it was pretty bad. After I left that job, his parents got him enrolled in a really good daycare, and his autism decreased in its severity.
Chelation has been used to treat heavy metal poisoning in adults for years…it makes me nervous to use it in kids, but if it works and causes very little damage, then…