Rapture time?

I always wondered if one of Roland Emmerich's over-the-top disaster flicks was gonna come true in real life.



Personally, I was a bigger fan of "The Day After Tomorrow". I liked the idea of tornadoes eating Los Angeles in revenge for the billions of tons of air pollution that city has dumped on us all.



But lately, I'm starting to wonder: what if the end of the world is a double-feature?

Chilean earthquake photos.

No thank you, really.

The hits just keep on coming over at AlterNet News:

Many women are happy without kids. They'd be even happier if they weren’t reminded all the time how unhappy they should be.



Ummm, didn't Ally (I-Never-Eat) McBeal ... adopt???

Gee, why doesn't this suprise me?

Pancreatic Cancer Linked to Sodas
Study Says 2 Sodas Per Week Raises Pancreatic Cancer Risk
By Kathleen Doheny, WebMD Health News

Feb. 8, 2010 -- Drinking as little as two soft drinks a week appears to nearly double the risk of getting pancreatic cancer, according to a new study.

"People who drank two or more soft drinks a week had an 87% increased risk -- or nearly twice the risk -- of pancreatic cancer compared to individuals consuming no soft drinks," says study lead author Noel T. Mueller, MPH, a research associate at the Cancer Control Program at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C. The study is published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers& Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Cancer of the pancreas was diagnosed in about 42,000 people in the U.S. in 2009, according to American Cancer Society estimates, and about 35,240 deaths from the disease were expected. The pancreas lies behind the stomach. It makes hormones such as insulin to balance sugar in the blood and produces juices with enzymes to help break down fats and protein in foods.


Whole story here


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Let's see what did my vegetarian friend, Richard, tell me way back in 1991? "HFCS fries your pancreas."

And what'd my holistic doctor tell me in the same year? "Eating a lot of sugar causes your pancreas to 'mis-fire' which causes the liver to dump too much insulin into the blood which creates hypoglycemic symptoms, which then leads to eating more sugar."

And soda pop containing HFCS is THE biggest culprit because HFCS is in liquid form so it reaches your stomach lining and then your blood stream in a fraction of the time it takes, say a cookie, to reach your blood stream. And HFCS inhibits the body's ability to produce leptin, a hormone that 'tells' your brain you are full. Essentially, your body can't tell the difference between consuming a half can of Coke, Pepsi or 7-Up and drinking an entire 6-pack. It feels the same.

I have been a lobbyist

Where's my expensive car, paid dinners, etc? Oh yeah, that'd be the pharm/gun/oil/death lobby in Washington, D.C.



But we did get free sandwiches. And buttons! And I now know who at least one of my state legislators are. And his office was really, really small.