The Back Page, Before They Cut It All To Fill The Back Page With The Royal Wedding

With it hailing out, and me working on something larger- might be tomorrow, might not, but still- today we'll do something of a back-page roundup. I'm going to fire four stories at you that I'm banking you haven't seen today, and we'll see if anything socks you in the eyeballs.

*Bolivia is on track to to pass a law, the Law of Mother Earth, giving nature the same rights as man. The Guardian shows them as "the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered," as well as the right of nature "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities." They're also trying to get something similar through the United Nations, though that shows far poorer chances of success.

*The FDA has given approval to a hat, the NovoTTF-100A, that fights brain cancer by generating electric fields using the electrodes on your scalp to attack tumor cells. It comes with a gazillion caveats- the type of brain cancer, how much the cancer has progressed, what else has been tried- but it got a narrow approval after a clinical study showed it was as effective in the test group as chemotherapy, with less of some side effects (and more of others). That paves the way for further testing in other circumstances.

*Women in Tajikistan are increasingly taking note of a quirk in Tajik society that leaves them at major risk, according to Eurasianet. Divorce rates are on the rise, but the common way for Muslim spouses to get married is a religious ceremony called a nikkah. Couples that opt for a nikkah frequently do not obtain paperwork officially recognizing the marriage. No official marriage means no prenuptial agreement, and with women's rights lacking in that part of the world, the husband-that's-not-officially-a-husband can easily wind up with just about everything; according to the article, about 80% of female spouses wind up without property or child support, usually because they didn't register. Women can be hit from the other end as well, as even the ones that register and obtain a divorce (Tajik law enforces a 50-50 split) can end up shunned by their community because of the divorce.

*And finally, let's head over to Alicante, Spain, where authorities have recovered two priceless paintings stolen in the late 1990's: "La Anunciación" by El Greco and "La Aparición de la Virgen del Pilar" by Francisco de Goya. The paintings are reportedly undamaged; the thieves looked after them well. That's about all they could do; as they were both placed on the Art Loss Register and made known to the art community and to police, they couldn't easily be resold. When they reportedly started trying to do so in October, the cops got wind of it and began an investigation that led to the paintings' eventual recovery.

The Disney Aging Process

Last July, we discussed here the struggles Miley Cyrus was having in her transition from a child into an adult. It was theorized that a major contributing factor to her difficulties was the fact that her formative years were stunted via Disney imposing a heavily-regulated teenhood in order to maximize her marketability.

She is not the first teenager to be put through the Disney teen idol machine and not come out quite right on the other side. Nor is she the last.

Just ask Demi Lovato, one of the next teen idols in line. Her vehicles are the series Sonny With A Chance, and the movie series Camp Rock, in which she co-starred with the Jonas Brothers. In October, during a world tour with the Jonas Brothers, Lovato cracked. Lovato had been bullied so badly in school that she pulled out and took up home schooling. Self-image problems had led to her cutting herself, an incident that her camp passed off as candy jewelry leaving an indent. Further teasing during the tour, in which she was called 'Demi Drama', plus the fact that she had recently broken up with Joe Jonas but still had to share a concert tour with him, plus a promotional blitz for Camp Rock 2, eventually all proved too much, culminating in an airport in Peru where Lovato reportedly got into an "altercation" with a backup dancer and made threats to Joe's new girlfriend.

Unlike other Disney teen idols, though, Lovato did not sweep the incident under the rug so as to continue the tour and the show. Instead, she pulled out of the tour, cleared her schedule completely, and on November 1, she checked into a treatment center in Chicago, spending three months pulling herself back together, remaining at the center even while she won two People's Choice Awards in absentia. Yesterday, Lovato completed her stay in the treatment center and will now begin an outpatient program back at home in Los Angeles; she reportedly appeared fairly chipper upon her return. There is no timetable for her return to Sonny With A Chance as of yet; it's not yet certain that there will even be a return.

I'm proud of her for sticking to the program, and more importantly, I'm proud of her having the guts to admit she needed help. That's an extremely hard thing to admit for a lot of people. But at the same time, I can't comfortably stomach the prospect of her returning to Sonny With A Chance. She'd be going back into the Disney machine that put her into the treatment center in the first place. I don't want them to do that to her again. It's a bit scary that, in their story about her release, the Examiner asked "How happy are you that Demi is back in a more accessible position yet again?", a question that carries some troubling connotations.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm not a kid anymore myself. When you're the age that Disney is targeting with these shows- when you're the age to star in these shows- you don't know any better. You're really not supposed to. You're just asked to sit and enjoy the childhood escapist 'what do you want to be when you grow up' fantasy of being a rock star or a wizard or a psychic or the object of affection for a cute guy or girl. You're asked to cheer on these little kids who are big stars, made possible through Disney. But when you grow out of it, when you enter college or the workforce, those fantasies fade. You can't be a teenage rock star. You're not a teenager. What do you want to be when you grow up? You're grown up now and you're some schlub flipping burgers at McDonald's.

I remember when I had that epiphany. For me, it was Chuck E. Cheese's. Back in my childhood, we'd go there for my birthday, unless I got sick, which was fairly often because my luck with such matters was awful back then. We'd go a couple other times as well, and when we did, it was the most fun in the world- the ball pit, the pizza, the arcade games, and there was Chuck E. Cheese himself singing on stage.

Then after a hiatus, we went one last time in my early-mid teens, I want to say around age 15. This last time, though, things seemed... different. The ball pit seemed too small. That's odd, it seemed so much bigger last time. The games seemed fairly expensive. That's strange, I never noticed the price before. Chuck E. Cheese wasn't singing anything good, and also, he was some stupid animatronic robot. And this pizza is terrible. How do people eat this stuff?! The prizes you could buy with the tickets you won at the games weren't even any good, even though they were largely the same kind of prizes as last time.

I may have only been in my teens, but I spent the next few days feeling very, very old.

In a similar way, with age came altered feelings about teen idols. Once, they were the stars of shows I knew and... well, not really loved; I was more about Nickelodeon back then- Salute Your Shorts, Clarissa Explains It All, Hey Dude, Secret World of Alex Mack. The basic concept is the same, though. I knew them almost by heart at the time. But as time progressed, the older names faded (quick, who played Alex Mack? What's she done since?), and I became more aware of the kind of all-consuming vortex that a child had to step into in order to achieve that kind of ultimately temporary stardom, I went from cheering them on as a peer, to finding them annoying as a comparative elder, to ultimately feeling sorry for them, hoping less that their respective vehicles do well and more that the stars can merely hang on and come out of the other end of the machine as well-adjusted adults.

They're kids. They never had any idea what being a teen idol actually entailed. They didn't know any better.

They were never really supposed to.

That Was Tina Fey, Dammit

From XKCD:

That's a hell of an idea. Get cracking. Odds are sooner or later we'll get to one or more items on the list in further detail, and in fact we did get to one of them on Friday, but to get you started:

*Sarah Palin didn't say 'I can see Russia from my house',
*Al Gore didn't say he invented the Internet,
*Napoleon wasn't short,
*You can't see the Great Wall of China from the moon,
*Cold weather doesn't give you colds,
*Shaving doesn't make your hair thicker,
*Guys don't think about sex every couple seconds, and even if we do, there's no way you can actually test that,
*If a guy's in the water waving his hands and screaming that he's drowning, he's not drowning,
*A fatwa is not a death sentence,
*A jihad is not a holy war,
*And they don't dump toilet waste out of moving airplanes.

Now never say these things again.

Paint the Roof, Burn the Town, Shut It Down, Or Something

The Daily Beast, in time for New Years', has compiled a ranking of the 40 drunkest cities in America, compiling data based on average drinks per person per month, percentages of heavy or binge drinkers, and the prevalence of deaths from alcoholic liver disease. The winner: Milwaukee. No big shocker there.

By and large, the top 40 list (warning: slideshow) is predominantly northern cities...

1- Milwaukee, WI
2- Fargo, ND
3- San Francisco, CA
4- Austin, TX
5- Reno, NV
6- Burlington, VT
7- Omaha, NE
8- Boston, MA
9- Anchorage, AK
10- San Diego, CA
11- Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
12- Denver, CO
13- Providence, RI
14- Sioux City, IA
15- Toledo, OH
16- Hartford, CT
17- Tampa, FL
18- Portland, ME
19- San Antonio, TX
20- Philadelphia, PA
21- Spokane, WA
22- Cleveland, OH
23- Sacramento, CA
24- St. Louis, MO
25- New Orleans, LA
26- Tuscon, AZ
27- Buffalo, NY
28- Tallahassee, FL
29- Chicago, IL
30- Seattle-Tacoma, WA
31- Springfield-Holyoke, MA
32- Portland, OR
33- Davenport, IA
34- Phoenix, AZ
35- Cincinnati, OH
36- Las Vegas, NV
37- Baltimore, MD
38- Cedar Rapids, IA
39- Casper, WY
40- Jacksonville, FL

Residents of the list should probably watch themselves. There's an old myth that drinking keeps you warm. All the drinking does is draw heat out from your core. It helps temporarily, but once that heat seeps away, you're just going to freeze that much faster.

The Mythbusters proved this and everything.



In addition, a note to city #1, Milwaukee: today the forecast calls for showers with a high of 48 (living 35 miles west of Milwaukee, I'm currently seeing fog out my window), but tonight it's supposed to drop to 26, with rain still coming down, and not get above freezing again for at least the next few days. So the roads aren't going to be the greatest. Add in a bunch of drunken New Years' revelers, on a Friday night yet, and if you don't get where I'm going with this, just ask Fargo, city #2, what happened last night in their neck of the woods.

Third-World Health News

In 1989, the United Nations called for the elimination of neonatal tetanus. A decade later, they tossed in maternal tetanus. I'm sure you know what a tetanus shot is.

Well, a few days ago, Mozambique managed to eliminate it; elimination being defined as less than 1 case per 1,000 live births. The WHO estimates there are 40 countries to go, but hasn't updated to reflect Mozambique, so really, 39 to go now.

Myanmar knocked it out back in June.

The death rate has come down 92% from the late 1980's to the last available numbers in 2008. But it's always those last annoying percentage points that prove the toughest. They were hoping to have it gone by now.

Not-Recommended Diet of the Day

27 pounds lost on Twinkies, Doritos and Oreos.

This was undertaken by Matt Haub of Kansas State, who did this diet in an effort to drive home the point of calorie-counting in weight loss. He also tossed in celery, vitamins and protein shakes, but now watch as porkenheimers the nation over start gleefully sucking down the Twinkies (while ignoring the celery, vitamins and protein shakes) while claiming it's healthy and that it's a "lifestyle choice" to not move under their own power.

C'mon, One Won't Hurt!

Over the past decade, Subway has gained a reputation as a fast food restaurant that... isn't. The fast food place that you can actually eat at and have a reasonable chance of eating healthy. The restaurant Jared Fogle ate at, and of which they've said since 2000. Subway: Eat Fresh. As seen on The Biggest Loser. Everywhere you look, there are healthy options. Instead of the cheese, have some lettuce. Instead of that root beer, have some lemonade. Or milk. Instead of those Doritos, have some Sun Chips. Or don't have any chips. Have some apple slices.

But then you hit the cash register, and amongst all this potentially healthy food, there they sit.

Cookies.



Oh yes. Yes, they will. According to Calorie Count, the, well, calorie count of Subway's various cookies reads as follows:

Peanut butter: 220
Sugar: 220
White macadamia nut: 220
Chocolate chip: 210
Double chocolate: 210
M&M: 210
Chocolate chunk: 200
Oatmeal raisin: 200

By comparison, the turkey breast wrap pulls down only 190 calories.

As several Subway sandwiches are (properly) advertised as having 6 grams or less of fat, one sugar cookie has 6 grams of saturated fat, never mind the overall, which stands at 12. The peanut butter cookie has 16 grams of sugar; the 6-inch cold cut combo has 8. Just about any wrap has fewer carbs than just about any cookie- the oatmeal raisin, for instance, has 30 total carbs, while the tuna wrap has only 16.

Just to remind you, we're comparing a single cookie to six inches worth of sandwich.

Subway is privately owned and doesn't release sales figures, so there's no information available on how many cookies- or how much of any other item- are sold in a given period. The fact that the cookies have remained on the menu for so long, though, surviving all those years of healthy-eating efforts, suggests a substantial amount of cookie sales.

How much fatter does America get from just those cookies? How many collective pounds could consumers shed just by cutting them out? Just by skipping that cookie at the register?

Subway did not respond to an e-mail asking for an explanation.

Dead Like Me

It's not unheard of for someone who's been declared clinically dead to subsequently come back to life. (Let's be clear, by 'clinically dead' we don't mean 'we thought he was dead but it turns out he was just in a coma or sleeping'. We mean verified, flatlining beeeeeeeeeeeeep.) Clinical death is actually medically distinct from what everyone thinks of as death.

But if you're going to come back, you've generally got a window of, at the most, three minutes, at least if you're expecting to go on to make a full recovery. That's how long your brain will usually begin to sustain permanent damage due to ischemic injury, a thing all organs accumulate due to loss of blood flow.

Generally, at least. Every human dies, and seeing as we document as many deaths as we possibly can, you have what amounts to an immense sample size. And in a sample size that large, there will be outliers. So what's the record?

It appears to be an hour and a half, set by Don Piper of Houston, Texas.

Going into his near-death experience, Piper was a minister, having been one since 1984. Five years into his ministry, in 1989, Piper was on his way back from a church conference when his Ford Escort was struck head-on by a tractor-trailer. Clinically, he was killed instantly. Four different EMT's arriving on the scene would verify this.

Meanwhile, from Piper's perspective, he was standing outside the gates of Heaven meeting with dead loved ones. His experience interpreted Heaven as Christian-exclusive. The thing is, though, Piper admits that to be merely his interpretation; he was not told that explicitly by a higher power and in fact went the duration of his experience without a meeting from Jesus. He rather, in his website, uses John 14:6 to back up his claim, "No man comes unto the Father but through me", as well as having only met with other Christians.

In addition, near-death experience researcher Rene Jorgensen notes that Piper's experience is not unique. Jorgensen argues that people with near-death experiences tend to see afterlives compliant with whatever faith they've practiced in life, even if some experiences turn out to contradict one another. Essentially, you see the afterlife you think you're going to see. If you're a Christian, you get sent to a Christian afterlife. If you're Muslim, you get sent to a Muslim afterlife. Jewish, Buddhist, Shinto, Baha'i, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, Aztec/Hindu Fusionism, the afterlife aims to please. As Jorgensen sees it, there seems to be no one single way to a desirable afterlife. You follow your own path, the other guy will follow his, and perhaps everyone can have their own happy ending.

Back to the side of the road in Texas. A fellow minister, Dick Onerecker, showed up within the hour and, according to him, God told him to start praying, which he promptly did next to Piper's body, which authorities allowed him to remain next to. After his praying, Onerecker began to sing the hymn "What a Friend We Have in Jesus".

Which Piper ended up singing along to. Cue a long, hard recovery, followed by rock-star status in the Christian community, his own ministry, and a book, 90 Minutes In Heaven, followed by Jorgensen's rebuttal and expansion on the subject, Behind 90 Minutes In Heaven.

Piper got 90 minutes. You likely have three at the most.

The Strangest Wii Fit Injury Ever

Amanda Flowers of Manchester, England has developed persistent genital arousal disorder after falling off her Wii Fit balance board.

And before you say anything along the lines of 'boy, I'd like to have that injury' or 'so she's a sex addict now?'... no, no, no, Amanda hates you now, and no. It's the kind of thing for which there is a support group.

I wouldn't be able to do the disorder justice here, so I'm just going to shut up and say click the links.