Watercooler Sensation

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Want To Be A Waif? HALLELIUJAH!

• You’ve tried everything: South Beach. Atkins. The master cleanse. And they all resulted in the same damned thing: too-few pounds lost, and a hankering for donuts. Well, chronic dieters, we’ve got a new fad for you. And this one’s God-approved. [ABC]
• Enter The Hallelujah Diet — and eating plan devised by 73-year-old Rev. George Malkmus that’s already garnered quite the international following (folks from Nigeria are catching on).
• Malkmus, a Gospel minister who takes the Bible literally, said that — long before South Beach or Jenny Craig — God laid out his own diet plan in the book of Genesis. Take, for instance, Genesis 1:29, in which God says (and Malkmus is paraphrasing here) “That your food shall be all of those plants that are in that garden. You will not find anything of animal origin in the garden diet. You will not find Twinkies either!”
• The program consists almost entirely of raw fruits and vegetables, seeds and nuts. Under the Hallelujah plan, only 15 percent of the vegetables are supposed to be cooked.
• And lo and behold, the diet’s followers are preaching miracles. Some of Malkmus’s disciples credit the Hallelujah Diet with clearing up a host of health problems, including acid reflux, arthritis, body odor, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome and cancer.
• Experts, though, are wary of some of the diet’s principles — namely its lack of protein. But that hasn’t stopped the regime’s followers. Telephone operators field hundreds of calls each day, selling such Hallelujah Diet products as barley juice and vitamin supplements. Malkmus and his son, Paul, who runs the business operation, have ambitious plans for building Hallelujah Acres, a residential and commercial complex complete with a 72-room hotel, condominiums and homes.

And God said that you shall be skinny. And it was good.

Britney Loses Her Kids

• Britney’s Very Bad Year just got a whole lot worse. [CNN]
• The popstar trainwreck lost her kids yesterday, when a judge ordered her to give up custody of young Jayden and Sean Preston as of Wednesday, noon.
• The boys, ages 2 and 1, will go to their father, Kevin Federline.
• The court records from yesterday remain sealed, but Brit Watchers speculate the judge got his hands on highly publicized photos of Momma Spears driving her children around LA over the weekend. Britney Spears has never had a California driver’s license.
• Last month, Superior Court Judge Scott M. Gordon said Spears engaged in “habitual, frequent and continuous use of controlled substances and alcohol” and ordered her to have drug tests twice a week. She was also ordered to attend parenting classes. [AP]
• Another source reports Britney skipped her court-mandated parenting classes and was not complying with her mandatory drug testing. [TMZ]

Bad news for Britney, but very, very good news for Jayden and Sean Preston.

Newspapers Don’t Want Your Subscription Anyway

• Guess what, The New York Times doesn’t really care if you subscribe or not. [NY Times]
• Newspapers across the country are discovering that sometimes having a lot of subscribers is more trouble than it’s worth.
• Newspaper circulation is down 10% since 2000, a fact most attribute to the rise of the internet, but major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post aren’t too concerned, and are shifting focus to the “quality” of their subscribers rather than their quantity.
• The reason? Advertising dollars.
• The internet has spoiled advertisers into being able to cost effectively target very specific markets (people who google “meat mallets” for instance).
• Newspaper advertisers care more about the folks reading within five miles of their business, within certain zip codes, or of a certain level of affluence, so they’ve been telling papers that “some circulation just is not worthwhile.”
• The Dallas Morning News recently imposed a 100 mile limit to delivery service to cull their subscribers and cut delivery costs. The New York Times has seen subscribers decline in New York, but has attracted upscale readership in cities across the country.
• But there are costs to this targeted approach: “some executives and analysts think newspapers have gone too far in cutting investments meant to cultivate new readers, like advertising on radio or distributing papers in schools.”

A mighty fine life, carryin’ the banner through it all.

Ritalin Kids

• Hey kids, turn off that TV. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and American Academy of Pediatrics have found that children under five who watch two hours of TV a day increase their chances of developing attention and behavior problems as adolescents. [MIC CHECK]
• Another study out of New Zealand bore similar results. “Although it doesn’t prove causation, it certainly provides evidence that the causal link is in that direction,” said study author Carl Erik Landhuis of the Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago. [REUTERS]
• But wait, there’s good news. If you’ve been using the television as an electronic babysitter, you’re still kind of a horrible person, but the JHU study concluded that children who had reduced their exposure to less than two hours by age five showed no increased risk of developing such problems. [BBC]
• While it could very well be that the visual stimulus that is television may be causing children to become bored with “real life,” it might also simply be that watching too much TV replaces time spent doing other developmentally important things like reading, exercising, socializing, etc. You know, minor things like that.

Maybe your baby Einstein can do the math: TV + More TV = A.D.D.

Stock Up On The Vonnegut And Morrison — It’s Banned Book Week!

• Get out your library card and head over to your local Borders – September 29-Octoberis Banned Book Week! [ALA]
• Harry Potter lost his slot at the top of the list. According to the American Library Association, this year’s most-banned book is Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s sweet tale, “And Tango Makes Three.” The story follows two penguins who hatch and raise an orphaned baby penguin. The controversy? It’s two male penguins.
• Said right-wing president of the Campaign for Children and Families Randy Thomasson, “The huge majority of parents would avoid this book if they knew it was brainwashing their children to support and experiment with homosexual behavior.”
• Others topping the list: The “Gossip Girl” series by Cecily von Ziegesar (sex, drugs.) The 25-year-old “Scary Stories” series (violence, the occult.)
• Believe it or not, two of the usually banned books didn’t make the list this year. Congratulations to “Huckleberry Finn” and “Of Mice And Men”!
• The number of challenged books in 2006 rose 30% from 2005, with book banners challenging 546 different titles.
• Twenty-nine books were successfully removed from library shelves, including “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and old standbys like Judy Blume’s “Forever.”
• The Office for Intellectual Freedom has compiled a list of the more than 6,000 challenges to books in U.S. schools and libraries in the 1990s. How many have you read?
• #18: The Color Purple, Alice Walker
• #22: A Wrinkle In Time, Madeleine L’Engle
• #41: To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• #43: The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton (Stay gold, Ponyboy!)

We’d like to take this moment to quote Ray Bradbury: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

By the Numbers

Spy Diversity

A record percentage of racial and ethnic minorities are being recruited to work as spies and covert agents for the CIA. It’s no surprise, really, we’re doing a lot less spying on pasty white Russians these days. Here are the numbers: [USA Today]

5%

Share of undercover spy force of Asian descent (including South Asian and Middle Eastern)

13%

Percentage of 2006 recruiting class which was of an ethnic minority

27%

Percentage of the 2007 class

50%

The percent by which President Bush would like to increase the total number of spies by 2010. The agency will miss this target by three years, insiders predict.

Celebrities: Unfiltered

“I’m constantly trying to smoke less marijuana. I’d like to take less and to a degree it’s a problem.”

— Fading pop star George Michael, on his struggle to not smoke as much weed. [Perez Hilton]

Speed Round

AUDIO: ACCIDENTAL FASCISM

Morris Casuto, of the Anti-Defamation League, weighs in on that Navy facility that looks like a swastika from the sky (and more importantly, on Google Maps).

TELEVISION

Bad news for all of us waiting patiently for the Deadwood movies we were promised: Actor Ian McShane says they’ve been officially scrapped, adding, “You feel cheated? Imagine how I feel…But everything has to come to an end, babe.” [Cinematical]

CAMPUS TRAGEDY

University of Memphis football player Taylor Bradford, 21, was fatally shot in a targeted attack late Sunday night. [CBS News]

CHOWING DOWN

People, blinded by the “health halo” surrounding food at places like Subway, are more likely to over-order and consume more calories than they are at places like McDonalds. Damn you Jared and your hypnotizing oversized pants… [USA Today]

MOVIE NEWS

HEARSAY! Rumor has it Will Smith is in talks to re-make The Karate Kid as a vehicle for his son Jaden. Say it ain’t so, Will! [Dark Horizens] via [Pop Candy]

WOW.

Remember the guy who bought a meat smoker at an auction, only to find a mummified leg inside? Now the man who had the leg amputated wants it back so he can be buried with it, but its new owner wants to keep it and charge people $3 for a peek. [USA Today]

THRILLA WITH THE GRILLA

Boxing legend Evander Holyfield wants to challenge George Foreman, but not in the ring. Holyfield is planning to knock Foreman out with the “Evander Holyfield Real Deal Grill,” a direct challenge to the “Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine.” [AP]

GLOBAL WARMING KILLED THE GREAT PUMPKIN

Global warming has killed this year’s pumpkin crops. Don’t worry, kids; maybe you can carve scary faces into onions or something. [AP]

FRANCE CONTINUES TO BE FRANCE

“France honors The Police, David Lynch” [AP]

38 SECONDS

The time it took for tickets for the Spice Girls reunion concert to sell out. [BBC]

BETWEEN THE SHEETS

Faking orgasms is really just one big cost-benefit analysis. From Slate, naturally. [Slate]

HEAD CASES

Female high school athletes suffer more concussions than male players in the same sports. [NY Times]

TICK TICK VROOM

Remote control cars are coming under scrutiny at airport security checkpoints. [NY Times]

BYE BYE BABY ONE MORE TIME

Britney Spears loses custody of her children to Kevin Federline “until further notice” a judge rules. [Reuters]

SEX AFRICA

South Africans, once condemned to a life without pornography and strip clubs under puritan Afrikaner rule, are enjoying the nations first ever “sex fair” where guests can “learn about sex toys and pole-dancing.” [Reuters]