Eideard

Who says teenagers don’t listen to their parents?

Public health researchers recently published an intriguing report about the indoor tanning habits of college students, based on a survey of more than 200 female students at East Tennessee State University…

The researchers, Mary Kate Baker, a doctoral student, along with Joel James Hillhouse and Xuefeng Liu, wanted to find out two basic pieces of information. First, how old were the students when they had started indoor tanning? And second, who did they go with on their first visit to a tanning parlor?

Often, it turns out, it was their mothers.

Indoor tanning, it seems, has become in many families a mother-daughter bonding ritual, like shopping or going to the hairdresser…

What was interesting is that for the girls who were introduced to tanning by their mothers, the habit really took hold. College students whose mothers introduced them to indoor tanning were almost five times as likely as the others to be heavy tanners once they were in college. The heavy tanners used indoor tanning at least twice a month or more.

The ones who went with their mothers first also started around age 14, on average, two years earlier than the others, who started around age 16.

Skin doctors are worried about the link between indoor tanning and skin cancer. The World Health Organization has labeled indoor tanning a Class 1 carcinogen, the same class as tobacco. And some research suggests that indoor tanning may even be addictive.

Alas, information – in this instance – doesn’t stand up well against a culture that presumes white people darkening their skin makes them more attractive.

Thinking about death can be frightening, no matter your age or medical condition. As we get older, the reality of our own mortality tends to come into clearer focus; this doesn’t make talking about death or life-sustaining treatments any less frightening though.

It was fear — stoked by certain politicians — that led to the inaccurate and misguided “death panel” rumors that surrounded health care reform proposals last year.

Beginning January 1, Medicare will reimburse physicians who advise patients, in voluntary discussions, about their preferences for end-of-life care treatment during their annual Medicare “wellness visit.” This is advance care planning, and it is a good thing for seniors, their families and health care professionals.

It’s not new. A law passed in 2008 allowed end-of-life planning to be part of a patient’s “welcome to Medicare” exam. Health care reform turned the welcome visit into an annual wellness visit. And now regulations clarify that these important discussions will be covered should the Medicare beneficiary wish to take advantage of this opportunity.

Advance care planning allows a person to make his or her wishes and care preferences known before being faced with a medical crisis. Advance care planning is simply smart life-planning.

RTFA. Many important details and suggestions about planning for the end of your future.

You can be smart. Or you can be stupid.

House built from erionite-rich tuff blocks – in Nevada

New data shows that people exposed to the mineral erionite found in the gravel of road materials in North Dakota may be at significantly increased risk of developing mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer most often associated with asbestos exposure…

Erionite is a mineral that occurs naturally and is often found in volcanic ash that has been altered by weathering and ground water. Erionite forms brittle, wool-like fibrous masses in the hollows of rock formations. Its color varies from white to clear, and it looks like transparent, glass-like fibers.

With similar properties to asbestos, erionite may pose health risks to those who breathe in the fibers. Erionite exposure has been associated with an unprecedented mesothelioma incidence in some Turkish villages in Cappadocia, and it has been widely believed that exposure to erionite was limited to that part of the world.

Erionite deposits are present in several parts of the U.S., including California, Oregon, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arizona and Nevada. In North Dakota in particular, researchers have found that more than 300 miles of roads were paved with erionite-contaminated gravel over the last 30 years.

In this study…international researchers from the U.S., Italy and Turkey sought to examine the potential health risks for those exposed to erionite by comparing air samples, microchemistry, tissue samples and other data from North Dakota with those found in affected parts of Turkey.

Cripes. What are the odds?

Given the quantities of tuff and volcanic ash in our neck of the prairie, I think I’ll ask the same questions of folks working in public health in New Mexico.

Arthur Sedille was up-front with police: He would often put a gun to his wife’s head during fantasy sex play at their Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, home.

But Sedille said he didn’t know the gun was loaded when he pressed it to his wife’s head and pulled the handgun’s slide back during sex on the night of December 21.

Now Sedille, 23, is facing the possibility of a murder charge in Canadian County, Oklahoma, in the death of his wife, 50-year-old Rebecca Sedille — who died when the handgun went off in their bedroom…

Investigators decided to arrest and jail Sedille on suspicion of first-degree murder out of an abundance of caution, said Oklahoma City police Master Sgt. Gary Knight. However, as of Tuesday afternoon, formal charges had not been filed in the investigation, which is ongoing, Knight said.

He declined to comment on investigators’ findings so far.

I have few hangups over sexual and sensual tweaks. However, I am scared blue over guns and nutballs who think they are toys.

John Doerr, venture capitalist, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

A red-hot trading market has developed in the shares of the world’s leading social networking companies: Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn. What is unusual is that none of the companies are listed on a public stock exchange. Each is privately held.

Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission wants to learn more about the business of these stock trades. The agency has sent information requests to several participants in the buying and selling of stock in these four companies, according to two people with direct knowledge of the inquiry who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it.

It is unclear exactly what has piqued the agency’s interest. An S.E.C. spokesman declined to comment on the matter. But the S.E.C.’s interest comes as a crop of new exchanges is popping up to facilitate these trades.

Over the last year, several private exchanges have matched up buyers and sellers of shares in these fast-growing companies. Though the volume remains thin, the number of transactions is increasing each month. At the same time, Wall Street brokerage firms have begun forming investment pools to buy these companies’ shares…

Who is selling these shares? Much of the supply comes from former employees at these companies and their early stage venture capital investors looking to exit their stakes.

The buyers in these so-called secondary trading markets are mostly wealthy speculators looking to snag a piece of the next Apple, Microsoft or Google before the rest of the investing public can…

As the volume has picked up, the worth of these nonpublic companies has ratcheted up as well. The combined value of the top 11 private venture-backed technology businesses has increased by 54 percent since June, according to a recent study by Nyppex, a brokerage firm that facilitates trading in private companies…

It is uncertain what exactly the S.E.C. is looking into, but several securities lawyers say it could relate to understanding the number of shareholders at these companies.

That would be relevant to regulators because Facebook and other start-ups have a reason to keep the number of shareholders to under 499. If they had 500 shareholders, S.E.C. rules would require them to disclose their financial results to the public…

Leave it to geeks to attract another new kind of sleaze. The only surprise – here at Lot 4 – is that the SEC is actually getting off their rusty dusty and doing some investigating. Not that it guarantees any response if they discovered illicit activities.

In 2005, staffers in Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office slit open mail to find red-tinged pennies and threatening notes in a scene fit for a new kind of movie genre, political horror.

“Not one red cent for war in Iraq,” an accompanying letter read.

FBI agents discovered that the red substance wasn’t blood but oil-based paint. Still, the sixth letter unnerved Pelosi’s staff.

The incident is one of at least 236 investigated by the FBI in the past decade and outlined in documents obtained by POLITICO under the Freedom of Information Act. An analysis of the cases reveals that serious death threats against lawmakers plummeted in the past 10 years, just as Congress’s overall public approval cratered.

But serious threats still occur, flaring up around heated political moments in the American conversation — from funding for the Iraq War, to the Elian Gonzales incident, to Napster, to immigration reform.

“It’s interesting that specific events and legislation can trigger death threats,” said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “The popular image is that these people are crazy, not that they have policy motivations behind their anger. It’s interesting to see that connection…”

Pelosi’s office wasn’t alone in receiving Iraq War-related threats. The war seemed to be the impetus for a slew of the serious threats in the past decade.

In 2002, former Rep. Hilda Solis was sent a bullet covered in red paint. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) received a letter with “Let this be a warning” written in Latin…

Death threats flared up around other heated moments, even those unrelated to life-and-death policies…

The debate over whether Cuban refugee Elián Gonzalez should stay in the United States prompted threats from an angry group that identified itself as “the American Majority.”

“I sure hope your [sic] sorry ass is in the street the day I run it over with my truck,” the group wrote in a mailed letter to the Washington office of Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.).

In 2007, an immigration reform critic took his heated thoughts far beyond the bounds of news website comment threads, sending a letter to Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both Republicans from South Carolina, threatening to drive to Washington “in a pickup truck loaded with dynamite” and blow up both senators if the immigration bill passed.

I’m not as surprised to see threats diminish in parallel to overall disapproval. Even nutball anarchists aren’t as likely to go off the deep end if there isn’t any alternative at all in Congress. What can you gain when the dweebs on both sides of the aisle have the courage and integrity of a hoe handle?

Anyone out there think the majority of their Congressional representatives aren’t beholden to one or another bloc of corporate lobbyists? Between the Chamber of Commerce/Oil Patch Boys, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical hustlers, there’s hardly anyone who isn’t owned. I’ll give you one or two principled individualists per state. Woo-hoo!

The canyon floor – former uranium mining area near my home

NATURITA, Colorado — The future of nuclear power in America is back on the table, with all its vast implications, as global warming revives the search for energy sources that produce less greenhouse gas.

But in this depressed corner of western Colorado — one of the first places in the world that uranium, nuclear energy’s primary fuel, was ever dug from the ground in industrial scale — the debate is both simpler and more complicated. A proposal for a new mill to process uranium ore, which would lead to the opening of long-shuttered mines in Colorado and Utah, has brought global and local concerns into collision — jobs, health, class-consciousness and historical memory among them — in ways that suggest, if the pattern here holds, a bitter national debate to come…

To residents here like Michelle Mathews, the fact that many opponents of the mill hail from Telluride is a crucial strike against their arguments.

“People from Telluride don’t have any business around here,” said Ms. Mathews, 31, who works as a school janitor and ardently supports the idea of bringing back uranium jobs. “Not everyone wants to drive to Telluride to clean hotel rooms…”

“They say it’s going to be different this time around,” said Craig Pirazzi, a carpenter who moved to the Naturita area from Telluride a few years ago and is now a member of the Paradox Valley Sustainability Association, which opposes the mill. “But our opposition to this proposal is based on the performance of historic uranium mining, because that’s all we have to go on — and that record is not good.”

Supporters, meanwhile, say that the opponents of Piñon Ridge are guilty of promulgating ignorant fears about something they do not understand…

“They’re saying not in my backyard — now how big is their backyard?” said George Glasier, a local rancher and investor who founded Energy Fuels, the company proposing the mill, and is now a stockholder and consultant. Energy Fuels is a publicly traded company based in Canada; a United States subsidiary would operate the mill.

I hate to say both sides have legitimate points; but, relying on past worst practices to describe how 21st Century mines and mills will be run is not only lousy politics and logic – it begs the question of critics taking responsibility to fight for best practices when the mines and mills reopen.

We live several miles from a closed uranium claim and, again, upstream where we are – and downstream at a tiny community around 400 years old – there has been no trace of radiation-related illness. The processes needn’t be destructive. And we the people have as much a responsibility – maybe more of a commitment – to keep things that way. That doesn’t include being a Luddite.

Safe Haven logo

A 27-year-old mother surrendered her baby girl to firefighters in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve…

She told firefighters at Fire Station 46 that the newborn was just 6 hours old. The firefighters accepted the girl, wrapping her in a blanket. She was healthy and did not appear to have been neglected or abused.

Firefighters named the newborn Noel, in honor of the Christmas holiday, said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Erik Scott.

“We are happy to state that our last report was that the infant was very healthy, and we are moved that this potentially tragic incident had a pleasant outcome,” he said. “There was a sense of relief…”

The infant was taken to an area hospital, Scott said, and would be placed in protective custody.

In California, a parent or legal guardian can surrender a newborn at fire stations and hospital emergency rooms with no fear of arrest. The law is meant to protect infants from being hurt, neglected or killed.

Common sense prevails. Once in a while.

Scientists have upgraded their opinion of Neanderthal cuisine after spotting traces of cooked food on the fossilised teeth of our long-extinct cousins.

The researchers found remnants of date palms, seeds and legumes – which include peas and beans – on the teeth of three Neanderthals uncovered in caves in Iraq and Belgium. Among the scraps of food embedded in the plaque on the Neanderthals’ teeth were particles of starch from barley and water lilies that showed tell-tale signs of having been cooked.

The Ice Age leftovers are believed to be the first direct evidence that the Neanderthal diet included cooked plants as well as meat obtained by hunting wild animals…

The findings bring fresh evidence to the long debate over why Neanderthals and not our direct ancestors, the early modern humans, went extinct.

The last of the Neanderthals are thought to have died out around 28,000 years ago, but it is unclear what role – if any – modern humans played in their demise.

“The whole question of why Neanderthals went extinct has been controversial for a long time and dietary issues play a significant part in that,” Dolores Piperno said…

“As far as we know, there has been until now no direct evidence that Neanderthals cooked their foods and very little evidence they were consuming plants routinely.”

The new discoveries don’t lock any analysis into being most correct – but, some theories which presumed Neanderthals hadn’t reached hunter-gatherer divisions of labor may now be taken from the table.

With prodding from a Bay Area judge, the Obama administration has quietly withdrawn regulations by President George W. Bush’s Justice Department that would have helped California and other states put their death penalty cases on a fast track in federal courts.

The change, authorized by Congress in 1996 but never implemented, was intended to compress a federal review process that can last anywhere from two years to a decade or more.

Death penalty appeals in California now typically take 20 to 25 years to resolve. Most of that time is spent in state court waiting for trial court records to be prepared, appeals lawyers to be appointed, and a badly backlogged California Supreme Court to rule.

But proceedings can also be lengthy in federal courts. The last inmate executed in California, Clarence Ray Allen, was put to death in January 2006 after more than 23 years of appeals – 17 of which were in federal court…

But Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., and an opponent of capital punishment, said revelations about wrongfully convicted prisoners on death row show that this is no time for a speedup…

The fast-track system was authorized by Congress and President Bill Clinton in 1996 as part of a law designed to limit federal court review of state criminal cases, especially capital cases.

It would allow states to speed up federal review of death sentences if they have adequate procedures for appointing and paying lawyers to represent condemned prisoners…

The 1996 law let federal judges decide whether states qualified for fast-track, and the answer was uniformly no…

In 2005, a Republican-controlled Congress voted to bypass the judges and authorize the U.S. attorney general to review the state’s procedures, subject to final approval by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., which has a conservative majority. But the change has never taken effect.

After 14 years, no doubt Republicans and those who see no requirement to balance adequate defense and timely resolution will try, again.

Then there are the judges and lawyers, too often working at their political careers more than anything else.