‘Your children are too fat. Either they lose weight or we’ll take them away’

A COUPLE have been told their children must lose weight – or they could be taken into care. Social workers warned the parents they have only three months to help three of their six children shed the pounds.

They want to see an improvement by June in the 12-year-old boy, who weighs 16 stone, and two of his sisters, aged 11 and three, who weigh 12st and 4st respectively.

The family, from Dundee, have been ordered to send their children to dance and football lessons to help them lose weight.

Another couple from the city are facing the same fate over concerns their only child is obese.

The development highlights Scotland’s childhood obesity crisis, which has already forced some as young as 13 to seek NHS weight-loss surgery. Only the United States has more overweight children, underlining fears that our current generation of youngsters may not outlive their parents.

Source

According to the Center for Disease Control, a quarter of teenage girls — more than 3 million — have a sexually transmitted disease. There doesn’t appear to be any corresponding research for teenage boys.

The numbers likely seem overwhelming

CHICAGO (AP) — At least one in four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, or more than 3 million teens, according to the first study of its kind in this age group.

A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls ages 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls — nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20% among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

About half of the girls acknowledged ever having sex; among them, the rate was 40%. While some teens define sex as only intercourse, other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some infections.

For many, the numbers likely seem “overwhelming because you’re talking about nearly half of the sexually experienced teens at any one time having evidence of an STD,” said Dr. Margaret Blythe, an adolescent medicine specialist at Indiana University School of Medicine and head of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on adolescence.

I hate to come off like a prude or seem naive, but I find the fact that 3 million teenage girls have or have had a sexually transmitted disease a bit disturbing.

… so much for the dream of bucolic farm life. The air there will kill you faster than the smog here, according to Discovery News. (Be sure to click and look at their little “worst offenders” slideshow):

Feb. 29, 2008 — Like flatulence that never dissipates, gaseous ammonia and other odorous gases resulting from animal manure can attach to dust particles, leaving behind matter that is both unpleasant and unhealthy for humans, according to new research that evaluated the levels of dust stink.

The study, which will be published in next month’s Biosystems Engineering journal, is among the first to quantify dust gas emissions. Dust from structures housing cattle, laying hens and pigs was studied, with the dust particles produced mainly from feed, manure, bedding, soil and the animals’ dry skin.

Co-author Jongmin Lee explained that an attraction-producing force, known in physics as the Van der Waals force, causes gas molecules to bond with those of the dust. The resulting bond is weaker than most chemical bonds, but it’s enough keep the gas stuck to the dust.

“The reverse of adsorption, desorption, is the transfer of gas from dust particles to the surrounding air, and the principles are the same as for adsorption,” Lee, a researcher in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, explained to Discovery News.

He added that heat can permit the gases to volatize and separate from the dust.

Lee and colleague Yuanhui Zhang therefore created a closed cylinder device that both introduced heat and then allowed for the measurement of the released gas from dust that was scraped off of barns, pipelines and exhaust fans from animal structures located in Illinois. They focused on ammonia, one of the smelliest gases produced by animals.

Based on their findings, laying hens and pigs produced far more ammonia dust than cattle did. The researchers attribute this to the way in which the animals were housed.

Someone must have really hated Mr. Van der Waals to name that “force” after him.

This proposal from Kos ought to get Bill O’Reilly in yet another spittle-fueled rage about “radical left-wing hate sites”:

With a history of meddling in our primaries, why don’t we try and return the favor. Next Tuesday, January 15th, Michigan will hold its primary. Michigan Democrats should vote for Mitt Romney, because if Mitt wins, Democrats win. How so?

For Michigan Democrats, the Democratic primary is meaningless since the DNC stripped the state of all its delegates (at least temporarily) for violating party rules. Hillary Clinton is alone on the ballot.

But on the GOP side, this primary will be fiercely contested. John McCain is currently enjoying the afterglow of media love since his New Hamsphire victory, while Iowa winner Mike Huckabee is poised to do well in South Carolina.

Meanwhile, poor Mitt Romney, who’s suffered back-to-back losses in the last week, desperately needs to win Michigan in order to keep his campaign afloat. Bottom line, if Romney loses Michigan, he’s out. If he wins, he stays in.

And we want Romney in, because the more Republican candidates we have fighting it out, trashing each other with negative ads and spending tons of money, the better it is for us. We want Mitt to stay in the race, and to do that, we need him to win in Michigan.

I like it. Meddling in the other party’s primary is sort of dirty pool, but in this instance it’s more like hoisting the bastards on their own petard. It would be a different story without the past history.

Not that primary meddling has been a purely GOP dirty trick. In California, Gray Davis did something similar in his last gubernatorial campaign. California doesn’t allow His coffers filled with money from the various special interests he pimped for and absent any serious Democratic challenge, during the primary season he ran ads attacking moderate Republican and former Los Angeles Mayor Mike Riordan and effectively tipped the scales in favor of Riordan’s batshit crazy right wing opponent, assuring a cakewalk in the general.

That kind of pissed me off, because Davis was an awful governor and Riordan was actually a viable alternative (especially when juxtaposed against the Governator, who eventually reaped the benefit from Davis’s underhandedness), but in the case of the GOP, and Romney/McCain, what’s the difference anyway?

They’re all for the war, all for keeping the corporate feed trough, distancing themselves from Bush while promising to continue his fucked up policies and pursue the same agenda.

I’m a big fan of Hungrygirl. Being one myself, I like their daily emails with food info, esp because they include lots of junk food. That’s where I get those “today is national carbonated beverages with caffeine day!” things (that actually is today, no joke.) So when I read this about Quizno’s, I almost choked:

In a surprising turn of events, Quiznos, one of the fast food sandwich chains known for keeping their nutrition information hush-hush, has FINALLY gone public with their nutritional stats. The good news is, now you can check out their site and decide which items work for you and which ones you should avoid. Just click on a food category under “MENU”, scroll to the bottom of the page, and hit “Show Nutrition Information”. The bad news is, we found some shockingly horrifying stats there… be prepared to cry real tears, people:

Honey Mustard Dressing - OMG! Each serving of this stuff ALONE has 500 calories and 50g fat!!!! AHHHHHH! We’re too freaked out to say anything else about it.

Tuna Melt Sub - A large one has 2,090 calories & 175g fat!!!! ! Ummmm… that is the most frightening tuna stat EVER.

Flatbread - If you order one of their Flatbread Chopped Salads, know that the bread alone adds 330 calories and 12g fat to your meal, so don’t eat all FOUR pieces (yikes!).

It appears USC and UCLA meet in places other than the football field. Such was the case Tuesday in Santa Ana when U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney, above, put the hammer down on Barry Landreth, who was sentenced to six years in federal prison for running a real estate investment scam.

Landreth is a former adjunct professor of real estate and finance at USC. Carney? He’s a former All-American receiver at UCLA.

Prosecutors had recommended a four-year sentence for Landreth, but Carney would have none of that, saying Landreth abused his position as an instructor in real estate finance to lure investors and then used the money to buy luxury items, including a Cadillac Escalade and several show horses.

… A person claiming to be one of the victims wrote in the reader’s comments section of the Orange County Register(’s web site) that “I’m glad he’s going to pound-me-in-the-butt prison for a long time.”

Please see The Wizard of Odds for more and a photo

Sherborn teen charged in attack on sheep

Natick -

A Sherborn teen was charged this afternoon with allegedly having sex with sheep at a farm near his home, a pattern police suggest may have gone on for nearly a year.

Roger Henderson II, 18, was charged today in Natick District Court with bestiality, cruelty to animals and breaking and entering in connection with an incident police say took place on June 27.

Following his arraignment, he was released to his parents on the condition that he stay at least 30 yards away from Boggastow Farm, where the alleged bestiality took place, and animals in general. Henderson was also ordered to continue mental health treatments at Leonard Morse hospital in Natick.

According to police reports, the incident at the farm last month was just the latest in at least a dozen break-ins. Prompted by the earlier incidents, the owner of the farm installed surveillance cameras, including one near the sheep pen.

Between 3 and 4 a.m. on June 27, the police report says, the camera captured and filmed a person identified as Roger Henderson II.

“Henderson is observed in sheep pen grabbing a sheep by its hind legs and dragging it to the corner of the stall. Henderson removes his clothes and appears to have sexual relations with the sheep. Upon finishing, Henderson puts his pants back on and leaves the barn area with his shirt in his hand.”

Though Henderson was in police custody this afternoon, his appearance was waived in court, as prosecutors and his defense attorney quickly agreed to terms of his release. He left the court house about 30 minutes later, covering his face with a black T shirt, and wearing dark jeans, and was immediately whisked away in a Jeep Cherokee.

Henderson is due back in court Sept. 4 for a pre-trial conference.

Props to the MetroWest News for breaking this story.