THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Can The Nutrition Police Lay Off Coffee, Already?: An observational study published in the peer-reviewed journal The Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease links coffee consumption with lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, reports The New York Times:
A team of Swedish and Danish researchers tracked coffee consumption in a group of 1,409 middle-age men and women for an average of 21 years. During that time, 61 participants developed dementia, 48 with Alzheimer’s disease.
After controlling for numerous socioeconomic and health factors, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the scientists found that the subjects who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less. People who drank more than five cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, the researchers said, but there were not enough people in this group to draw statistically significant conclusions.
The researchers are unsure what is causing the protective effect, but earlier studies have correlated coffee consumption with reduced risk of type 2 diabetes – a known risk factor for dementia; animal studies have shown that caffeine reduces formation of amyloid plaques in the brain – a signature characteristic of Alzheimer’s; and caffeine is a potent antioxidant, which some studies suggest may reducing vascular risk factors for dementia.
† NJ Taxpayers Must Choose Between Dollars And Dolphins: Between three and five of the 16 dolphins who have been living in NJ’s Shrewsbury River – now partly frozen - have left for open water, according to the owner and several employees of a Highlands seafood restaurant, reports The Associated Press. Three of the dolphins have died and the whereabouts of the others are unknown, and when the river is navigable the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plans to search for them. However, the likelihood is that they starved or froze to death.
† Actress Grounded After Flying Off The Handle: The Los Angeles Times reports that under the Patriot Act, some 200 airline passengers have been convicted of committing terroristic acts for incidents that “involved raised voices, foul language and drunken behavior” and “some security experts say the use of the law by airlines and their employees has run amok, criminalizing incidents that did not start out as a threat to public safety, much less an act of terrorism.” The Times cites a particularly chilling case:
Tamera Jo Freeman was on a Frontier Airlines flight to Denver in 2007 when her two children began to quarrel over the window shade and then spilled a Bloody Mary into her lap.
She spanked each of them on the thigh with three swats. It was a small incident, but one that in the heightened anxiety after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would eventually have enormous ramifications for Freeman and her children.
A flight attendant confronted Freeman, who responded by hurling a few profanities and throwing what remained of a can of tomato juice on the floor. …
Amy Fleming, the flight attendant who told Freeman to stop spanking her children … called Freeman the most unruly passenger she had seen in 11 years on the job. …
But at least one passenger, John Carlson, a defense attorney who was seated near Freeman, said there was no threat. "There was a nasty, loud exchange," Carlson said. Then Freeman "capitulated and offered no resistance. My sympathy shifted to her." …
After three months in jail, Freeman agreed to plead guilty in exchange for being released on probation. A court-appointed attorney told her that a plea deal would be the fastest way to see her children, who had been taken back to Hawaii and put into foster care.
Her probation required her to stay in Oklahoma City, where she grew up, and prohibited her from flying. Meanwhile, legal proceedings in Hawaii have begun to allow the children's foster parents to adopt them.
Freeman has been denied permission to attend custody hearings in Maui over the last six months, court records show.
"I have cried. I have cried for my children every day," Freeman said. "I feel the system is failing me."
† Dutch Dhimmitude: A Dutch court has ordered that MP Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party be tried on charges of “inciting hatred and discrimination” for likening the Koran to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and for his juxtaposition of Koranic verses calling for jihad with clips of Islamic hate preachers and terror attacks in his documentary “Fitna.” Noting that Dutch prosecutors had previously upheld Wilders’ freedom of speech The Wall Street Journal adds that the capitulation to “outraged” Muslims “is no small victory for Islamic regimes seeking to export their censorship laws to wherever Muslims reside” and that “[l]imiting the Dutch debate of Islam to standards acceptable in, say, Saudi Arabia, will only shore up support for Mr. Wilders's argument that Muslim immigration is eroding traditional Dutch liberties.”
Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within, writes in City Journal that “[f]ar from coming out of the blue, this is the predictable next step in a long, shameful process of accommodating Islam - and of increasingly aggressive attempts to silence Islam’s critics - on the part of the Dutch establishment.”
† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, All The News That’s Fart To Print): The National Pork Producers Council filed a federal lawsuit to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's new regulation requiring livestock farms to inform state and local emergency response authorities of estimated emissions by phone and in writing or face penalties of up to $25,000 per day, reports The Associated Press.
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