Readers began to respond as soon as the article went online and was posted on the Times’s Facebook page.
“If you’re with someone who wants a swimsuit model for a partner, then he is free to contact Sports Illustrated and ask to date one directly,” one woman wrote on Facebook. Or why not just buy a larger size dress, asked one reader, a man. Several commenters suggested that the solution to looking good in wedding photos wasn’t losing weight, but acquiring skills in Photoshop.
There were complaints about the commodification of marriage: “Just one more example of the disgusting spectacle weddings have become,” another grumped.
A man jokingly suggested reverse psychology: “I say balloon up so you look as big as a house on your wedding day (wear a fat suit if you have to).” Ten years later, he wrote, people “will say admiringly how great you look today.”
BluePrintCleanse’s Web site was mentioned in the column for suggesting that a bridal party cleanse together. “If a friend asked me to lose weight, or join her in such an awful venture, to be in her wedding, she wouldn’t be my friend any longer,” a woman wrote. (On the blog Jezebel, Erin Gloria Ryan was similarly incensed, saying: “Should I be mandating my bridesmaids tan in tandem and work out the same muscle groups to ensure uniformity?”)
But it was the anecdote about the “feeding tube bride” that was plucked from the dieting options and went viral as it filtered through other news media outlets and Web sites.
Melissa Gilson focused on the ethics of the K-E diet (800 calories a day for 10 days using the nasal tube), saying diet articles encouraged women to starve themselves. “If they didn’t have the tube and just stopped eating they’d be considered anorexic,” she wrote on Facebook. “But under a doctor’s care and with a tube in their nose, it’s a crash diet.”
A publicist for the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition e-mailed to complain that the article was “disturbing” because it failed “to represent the medical and lifesaving uses of feeding tubes.”
Tammy Frank, a nurse in Boardman, Ohio, who has lost 70 pounds on the high-protein Dukan diet in preparation for her wedding on July 14, criticized the casual use of feeding tubes as well. “If all you need are the low-carb fluids, why not just drink them?” she wrote in an e-mail. “But it is going to be the next thing for dieters — almost as dangerous as women eating cotton balls. We are all dying to be thin. I’m just glad I found a healthy lifestyle that works.”
Dr. Louis Aronne, the director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, who was quoted in the original article, e-mailed to say: “The tube approach might be appropriate in those with significant obesity as a short-term kick-start if other techniques that would help with weight maintenance were also utilized. But it hasn’t yet been studied as a weight loss technique to my knowledge, and I called several other experts in the field.”
Times readers were mild, however, compared with reaction elsewhere. A headline on National Review’s site read, “End of the World Watch: The ‘Feeding Tube’ Diet.” A post on the Time blog NewsFeed summed it up with, “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something eww.” The humor writer Dave Barry commented on his blog for The Miami Herald, “You may now remove the bride’s nasal feeding tube.”
“Good Morning America” and the “Today” show did follow-up segments on Monday about the “feeding tube bride,” Jessica Schnaider, a Miami businesswoman, and her physician, Dr. Oliver R. Di Pietro of Bay Harbor Islands, Fla. Ms. Schnaider said she went on the diet because she trusted Dr. Di Pietro (he has been her doctor for 15 years) and had both the money ($1,500) and the desire to drop 10 pounds.
Brickbats were thrown at her — “If we needed more proof that American women are cultivating a collective eating disorder, enter the feeding tube bride,” blogged Julie Gunlock on the Independent Women’s Forum.
Ms. Schnaider said on Thursday that people were uninformed. “I lost the weight,” she said. “There was no other consequence. I wasn’t putting myself at risk. I asked the doctor, ‘Is there any kind of medicine or drug in the mixture?’ because I didn’t want that. And he said, ‘No, just protein powder,’ so I was fine. It made sense to me. Why can they say it’s crazy?”
Criticism was directed at Dr. Di Pietro as well. Juniper Russo, a contributor to Yahoo, opined hyperbolically under the headline “Feeding Tube Diet? Irresponsible Doctors Condone Anorexia” that Dr. Di Pietro’s decision to put a patient on the diet was “an astonishing display of medical malpractice.”
After interviewing Ms. Schnaider, “Good Morning America” reported that “more and more brides” were using the diet. Dr. Di Pietro, an internist who alone has trademarks and patents on the K-E diet in the United States, became the plural “irresponsible doctors” in Yahoo’s headline.
There are other doctors in Europe who are licensed to do the procedure — and who do it for less money. The process, called the KEN, or ketogenic enteral nutrition, diet in Europe, was invented by Dr. Gianfranco Cappello of the University of Rome. It costs about $200 for the initial visit, $79 for the protein solution and $39 for the final checkup. Airfare from New York to Rome is as little as $613 on Finnair, meaning a diet excursion would come in at under $1,000.
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wow :-(
Computerworld - Apple is offering Mac users a free upgrade to OS X 10.6, better known as Snow Leopard, in an attempt to prep them for the June switch from MobileMe to the newer iCloud online sync and backup service.
Snow Leopard, which debuted in 2009, does not support iCloud -- only OS X 10.7, or Lion, does -- but with the free upgrade to the former, users will have to pay only one upgrade fee, the $29.99 for Lion, to use the service.
Lion is available through the Mac App Store.
The offer only makes sense for Mac users running OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, or earlier, on systems powered by Intel processors: Neither Snow Leopard or Lion support older PowerPC processor-equipped Macs.
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- Apple offers free OS X upgrade to prep for switch to iCloud
- Lessons for IT, Apple in Flashback brouhaha
- Apple delivers Flashback malware hunter-killer
- QuickPoll: How does the Flashback botnet infection affect Apple's reputation for security?
- Flashback Mac botnet shrinks, says Symantec
- Mac security software sales jump after Flashback infections make news
- Free tool detects Flashback Mac malware pestilence
- Flashback malware infects 2% of all Macs
- Expert: iPad Wi-Fi issues may be linked to power management
- Update: Apple supplier Foxconn hit on poor working conditions
About 18% of all Mac users, or fewer than one-in-six, ran Leopard or one of its predecessors last month, according to Internet metrics company Net Applications.
Apple will shutter MobileMe on June 30, a move it announced last year.
iCloud is a free service for Mac users running Lion, and for owners of any iOS device -- such as an iPhone or iPad -- running iOS 5 or later.
MobileMe, which cost users $99 per year, or $149 for a five-user Family Pack, has had a checkered history, stumbling badly during its 2008 launch, and was dogged by problems ranging from slow synchronization to extended email outages.
After MobileMe's launch debacle, Apple extended subscriptions by 30 days and turned the service over to a different executive. Then-CEO Steve Jobs also issued a blistering internal email to employees that said MobileMe was "not up to Apple standards" and that it had been a mistake to launch it alongside the debut of 2008's iPhone 3G and App Store.
Current MobileMe subscribers who switch to iCloud retain their email address, and their email, contacts, calendar and bookmarks are automatically migrated to the new service. Files stored on MobileMe's iDisk -- there's no comparable iCloud component -- must be moved to a Mac's or PC's local storage before June 30.
According to the Magasm blog, which yesterday reported the free Snow Leopard offer, Apple has been emailing MobileMe customers notifying them of the deal. Others can request a copy of OS X 10.6 by steering to Apple's website and signing in with the Apple ID linked to their MobileMe account.
The free copy of Snow Leopard will arrive on a DVD.
Apple is expected to launch its newest version of OS X, dubbed Mountain Lion, this summer.
MobileMe customers who fill out this form will receive a free copy of OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard. (Image: Apple.)Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at
@gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed
. His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.
See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.
Read more about Cloud Computing in Computerworld's Cloud Computing Topic Center.
http://reg.idgenterprise.com/insider.html?url=http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226190/Should_the_CIO_know_how_to_code_?source=ctwincpt_ciocode_reg" style="color: #000; text-decoration: none; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">FREE: Computerworld's Should the CIO Know How to Code?![]()
(Credit: Pocket)
Meet Pocket, the successor to the megapopular short-term bookmarking tool Read It Later. Just as simple and platform-compatible as Read It Later, this new incarnation adds extra features and shows off a completely redesigned interface.
If you're not familiar with Read It Later, it's an incredibly convenient app that's useful in countless scenarios. Say you're on your morning commute and you come across a lengthy article that you can't quite (or don't want to) finish reading. Just add it to your RIL list, and go back to it later. Or say you come across an HD movie trailer while surfing on your phone. Go ahead and add it to your RIL list; then you can watch it when you get back to your desktop. The beauty of Read It Later has always been its simplicity and cross-platform compatibility. It was easy to use anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
Fortunately, with today's news we don't lose any of the features we came to love in Read It Later. In fact, in Pocket we get all of the previous app's core functionality, plus a number of significant improvements. Most noticeably, Pocket is head and shoulders above Read It Later when it comes to visual interface. With sleeker colors, icons, panels, and fonts, not only is content more attractive in the new app, it's also easier to read.
And it's more than just a face-lift, as Pocket brings new features to the table. Now there's bulk editing, which lets you mark as favorite, tag, or delete multiple items at once, potentially saving a lot of time for power users. Also, you can filter your list by content type, so you can choose to see only videos, images, or articles.
Finally, Pocket is completely free to all users, unlike Read It Later, which came in both free and paid Pro versions. This means there are no limits on your list, and the searching and sorting features are always unlocked.
After my initial test drive, I have to say I am impressed by the new Pocket app. It looks and feels better than its predecessor, it offers enhanced features, and I even like the name better. Sure, "Read It Later" had a nice ring to it, but it felt a bit constrictive, no? With the new name, Pocket, I feel like the app has a lot more room to grow, and I'm excited to see it do just that.
Pocket (Android | iOS) is available now for free download from Google Play and Apple's iTunes App Store.
Good news!
I wonder if we’re regressing…
Any parent has witnessed the stage, it happens with every kid.
Your little one has her first play date. The kids get along swimmingly, playing with toys, giggling, yammering. And then you notice something, they’re sitting right next to each other, fully aware of each other, happy to be positioned in the proximity of another human of similar knoodlosity. But, they’re actually not playing with each other. Instead, they’re playing by themselves in the presence of each other.
Fancy kid-gurus call this parallel play. It’s, apparently, a perfectly natural evolution for infants. A stage they all go though that helps prepare them for the more genuinely social, and deeply-engaging phase of play where you actually play “with” the other kid. The phase that sets in motion the cultivation of legends and stories that make life so yummy.
But, over the few last years, an odd thing has begun to happen…
Parents, grown-up, tweens and teens are reverting to screen-driven parallel play.
Two people, ostensibly in serious like or love, siting close to each other, comforted by the other’s presence, while being completely absorbed in the whizbang stream of bits, colors and sounds screaming from their screen-bound devices of choice. But it’s actually worse than organic parallel play. Because that’s done in the presence of a playmate with awareness of their existence. And it’s something you quickly grow out of.
When we parallel screen-play as adults, we often remain physically present, but are, in every other way – emotionally, spiritually, psychologically – somewhere else. We’ve slipped so effortlessly into the digital abyss, we don’t even notice our playmate. Nor they us, having similarly dissolved into their own plain-view private screen life. Neither person realizes when the other’s left, because each remains physically installed, though for all intents and purposes, they’re brains have left the building.
Just yesterday, The Boston Globe reported on a 2010 study by the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, that revealed:
“Over the last decade the amount of time family members in Internet-connected households spend in shared interaction dropped from an average of 26 hours a week to less than 18 hours. Meanwhile, complaints of being ignored at times by family members using the Internet soared.”
I wonder if it’s time to reign in parallel screen play, to set aside daily screen sabbaticals? Deliberate windows where we don’t process side-by-side, but rather engage, eyes-to-eyes, words-to-ears, soul-to-soul. I wonder if the very thing that’s flattened the world and enabled relationships on a global scale is now inspidly degrading the ones that exist in our own backyards.
What good is connecting with the world if it disconnects you from the soul sitting next to you?
Intuitively, this doesn’t strike me as a constructive thing.
What do you think?
A HT to Jo for this one. :-)
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Monday, April 9
Session 1: The Photographer's Eye
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Session 9: Composition Part 1
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By JIM CARLTON
PAHOA, Hawaii—Carl Oguss is trying to use psychology to reform a couple of scofflaws, who are meeting with him as part of a plea deal.
"No!" he shouts, jabbing a finger at the miscreants after they appear to snub his attempt to drum some sense into them. One of them, Kala, hangs her head.
The other, Kamakani, gives a defiant response: "Woof!"
Jim Carlton/The Wall Street Journal
Henry and Lindsey Kapu seek help for their dogs from Carl Oguss. right, who operates the East Hawaii Dog Psychology Center on the Big Island.
There's the problem. Local authorities have charged Kala and Kamakani with being "incessant barkers," an offense under a new law here on the Big Island. If the two Italian sheepdogs don't zip it, their owners face $575 in fines, and the dogs could be evicted from the neighborhood.
"We have to say 'no' like a loving parent," Mr. Oguss, who operates the East Hawaii Dog Psychology Center, explains to owners Henry and Lindsey Kapu, whose lenience he thinks makes the dogs feel free to bark. He's administering dog counseling as part of a plea deal the Kapus have made after five barking citations.
Dog counseling has been in demand in Hawaii County since early last year, when county commissioners passed an ordinance banning "barks, bays, cries, howls" that go on continuously for 10 minutes, or intermittently for 20 minutes within a half-hour.
Police can write barking tickets or sentence an incessant howler to a humane shelter. "We had to do something because you have neighbors living next to dogs that are barking and driving them crazy," says Mitch Roth, a Hawaii County prosecutor who takes on barking cases. "Then neighbors start fighting and there's mayhem."
Nuisance yapping is a problem everywhere. Los Angeles passed last year an antibarking law with fines up to $1,000. Two years ago, Centennial, Colo. passed an ordinance imposing fines up to $100 per violation on owners of dogs that bark more than 10 minutes.
Dogs probably aren't yowling more than before. Instead, officials in places like Hawaii County speculate that barking complaints have risen in part because more people are home to hear the yapping after losing their jobs.
This Pacific island needed a stronger bark-abeyance law, authorities here say, because it has a particular pooch-population problem. The average U.S. household has 1.7 dogs, says a 2007 American Veterinary Medical Association report. On the Big Island, where people use dogs for hunting wild pigs, many residents have at least five and some as many 30 dogs, says Debbie Crazatta, founder of the Kohala Animal Relocation and Education Service, which helps find homes for stray dogs.
Dog-less islanders have long complained of dogs that bark around the clock. Jim Radovic says his neighbor's 10 dogs would serenade their block in Hilo, Hawaii, at all hours before the anti-bark law. "We got to the point we had two fans blasting next to our heads so we could go to sleep," says the 51-year-old emergency-room nurse.
Under previous law, officers had to time barking for 30 minutes and then give the owner an hour to quiet the hound. Police were usually too busy to stick around timing dog barks.
Mr. Radovic called police as soon as the law went into effect in May. County officials have since impounded five of the offending dogs. "We can sleep better at night," he says.
Some say the new law infringes on rights, human and canine. "It's nuts, man," says 49-year-old Clyde Wheatley, a bulldozer operator whose Rottweiler and Labrador have no barking violations. "To me, barking is good because it notifies you somebody's around who shouldn't be around."
Indeed, it is OK, under the new law, to bark if your owner is about to be attacked.
A county brochure, "Problem Solving Noisy Dogs," recommends three steps. First: Notify the owner. Next: Call the Humane Society for bark-suppression tips, such as "spraying your dog while it is barking."
Last resort: Call police, the brochure says, "when the dog is actively barking and exceeding the time limits." People have called the agency almost daily since the law passed, compared with once or twice a week before, says Starr Yamada, an animal-control officer.
Donna Whitaker, executive director of the Hawaii Island Humane Society, says often a dog barks because it is bored. Dr. Oguss says sometimes a well-mannered mutt is egged into barking by another dog. One large dog, he found, was blowing his cool after hearing the Chihuahua next door yapping for hours. "A dog who is instigating by being rude to your dog is looking to start trouble," Mr. Oguss says.
The Kapus say their problem—and their hiring Mr. Oguss—stems from a personality conflict between the dogs and neighbor Jack Sailer, a 75-year-old retired hospital broker from Texas who reported their dogs to the police. "He's a creepy old man who stares at us through the bushes," says Mr. Kapu, 28 years old, who runs an organic farm on the one-acre property with his wife, 27. "The dogs bark when they see him."
Mr. Sailer says he harbors no ill will and chuckles at being called creepy. He says trouble started after the Kapus started the organic farm. "The dogs would start barking at six in the morning and still be barking at nine in the evening."
Police issued the couple a citation with a $25 fine, then four more with fines totaling $575. The Kapus cut a plea deal with the prosecutor: He would dismiss their last four citations if they agreed to dog counseling and if their hounds avoided barking violations during a six-month probation.
Sizing up his patients, Mr. Oguss metes out advice. Let the dogs know who's boss, he says, teaching Mr. and Ms. Kapus, for example, not to let their dogs walk ahead of them.
But there may be a fundamental problem: Mr. Oguss suspects Kala and Kamakani bark unnecessarily because they cooped up in a 20-foot-by-20-foot enclosure with three goats. "There's very little for them to do," Mr. Oguss says. "Barking is their TV."
The two dogs have learned to pipe down long enough for the county to dismiss the four citations. They aren't out of the woods yet. "If the Kapus re-offend within six months," Mr. Oguss says, "then the matter will be revisited."
A version of this article appeared April 9, 2012, on page A1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Hawaii Turns to Dog Shrinks As 'Incessant Barkers' Enter Pleas.
A HT to my daughter-in-law, Stephanie, for this.
These days, most people consider themselves lucky if a new car lasts 5 to 10 years. Make it to 100,000 miles in your vehicle, and the car company might make a commercial about you. That makes 93-year-old Rachel Veitch a notable exception. Veitch is retiring her 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente after more than 576,000 miles on the road.
"I am legally blind, so I can no longer drive my lovely Chariot," Veitch told FoxNews.com. "They don't have to take it away, I would not dream of driving that car again." The car itself is fine, but Veitch has macular degeneration in both her eyes, making her legally blind. After running a red light in March, she decided to voluntarily give up the vehicle she's been driving since Lyndon Johnson occupied the White House.
"I have taken it in stride," she said. "I don't have cancer, I don't have Lou Gehrig's disease. I am lucky."
Yet for all the miles she has put on her vehicle, it doesn't come close to the world record. The Truth About Cars blog wrote that Irv Gordon's 1966 Volvo P1800 is scheduled to reach 3 million miles this year. Gordon has held the record in the Guinness Book of World Records for most miles on a noncommercial vehicle since 1998.
Even without the world record, Vietch is fond of noting that the car has outlasted three marriages. Mechanically, it's worn through three sets of shocks, 18 batteries and eight mufflers. Veitch bought the car in February 1964 for just $3,289.
She credits the longevity to a "near-obsessive" approach to the car's maintenance. "I've never been a destructive person and I've just taken care of everything, except my husbands," she told FoxNews.
Veitch, who appeared with the vehicle on an August 2010 episode of the "Tonight Show," said she would be happy to sell the vehicle to host Jay Leno, a known car afficionado. She's not sure if Leno would be interested, but her four children, nine grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren, aren't in line.
"It wouldn't matter if they did, they're not going to get it. They couldn't take care of it like I did," she told FoxNews.