Gondor has no Paczki.

Gondor needs no Paczki.

I, on the other hand, wouldn't mind trying them. But I think I'll settle for bacon-wrapped chicken.

I just got a message from Dad. (I knew being away from my desk for 20 minutes would do it.) Mom's out of surgery and everything apparently went just fine. She'll be in ICU tonight and in the hospital until Saturday or Sunday.

ETA: Klugman's still alive? I had no idea. I guess I was confusing him with Walter Matthau.

That's good that you heard from your family, and good what you heard about your mother.

eta: He's just written Tony and Me about him and Tony Randall.

Good news!

Brian Bujisse of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven and his colleagues measured the cocoa intake of 470 men between 1985 and 2000 as part of the Zutphen Elderly Study, a longitudinal look at nearly 1,000 Dutch men between 65 and 84 years of age. The nutrition experts identified 24 cocoa-containing foods that the elderly men ate, ranging from dark chocolate bars to chocolate spreads. They summed the total amount of cocoa each consumed and came up with a grams-per-day measurement, which they used to separate the men into three groups: those who ate little chocolate, a modest amount, and the most.

Among those who ate the most chocolate--averaging more than four grams a day--average systolic and diastolic blood pressure was 3.7 and 2.1 millimeters of mercury lower than their chocolate-spurning peers. This result did not hold true for other sweet foods nor did it vary among men who also smoked, were inactive or consumed a lot of alcohol. And, despite being strongly associated with greater intake of calories, chocolate lowered the overall risk of cardiovascular or any other disease by as much as 50 percent.

Good news!

Best news story EVAH!

Best news story EVAH!

My favorites are the studies that show that beer and coffee are good for you.

I have never had Paczki and if there's a bakery that makes them in Atlanta, they're keeping very quiet about it.

I'm trying to listen to a Jack Klugman interview on an NPR podcast, but his voice is so wrecked from throat cancer surgery it's hard to concentrate on it.

I hope it wasn't the Diane Rehm show, cuz that would be painful.

I hope it wasn't the Diane Rehm show

It's Susan Stamberg. Not that I can tell any of them apart but Terry Gross. Well, also enough to notice that if the interviewee seems to be black, so does the interviewer. Blech.

They had an interesting story about a journalist who wrote about a boy who trainhopped from Honduras to the US to find his mother in North Carolina. As part of her research she retraced his steps, riding on the tops of freight trains all the way up Mexico. She also spent time with him in northern Mexico while he was trying to get in contact with his mother and find a way across the border.

It left me a little conflicted. She said she tried not to affect the story, and didn't want to help anyone unduly. So, unless someone was in grave distress (like her titular subject not going to eat on any given day), she just watched and wrote. Minor distresses, like people begging, were ignored. If she did intervene in a large way, the recipient disappeared from her story.

It's the journalist's way, she said.

And she used the word schizophrenic to mean conflicted, internally inconsistent, contradictory. Which irritates. If one was using the accurate definition of schizophrenic, what would it mean when used to describe, say, a situation?

mmm ...chocolate

If one was using the accurate definition of schizophrenic, what would it mean when used to describe, say, a situation?

Split from reality, if I trust my googling hand.

ION, I want to remind people who care about it that Newsradio season 3 comes out today. I am excited to spend my Friday night introducing Bob to "Arcade."

Yay, Newsradio. DVDs are a-shipping!