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Seriously?

From USA Today-

Nutritionists have long warned of the perils of hot dogs: fat, sodium and preservatives to name a few.

Now, the American Academy of Pediatrics wants foods like hot dogs to come with a warning label — not because of their nutritional risks but because they pose a choking hazard to babies and children.

Better yet, the academy would like to see foods such as hot dogs “redesigned” so their size, shape and texture make them less likely to lodge in a youngster’s throat. More than 10,000 children under 14 go to the emergency room each year after choking on food, and up to 77 die, says the new policy statement, published online today in Pediatrics. About 17% of food-related asphyxiations are caused by hot dogs.

“If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, it would be a hot dog,” says statement author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “I’m a pediatric emergency doctor, and to try to get them out once they’re wedged in, it’s almost impossible.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission requires labels on toys with small parts alerting people not to give them to kids under 3. Yet there are no required warnings on food, though more than half of non-fatal choking episodes involve food, Smith says.

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F Off Hitler

From NYT-

WHEN Yitta Schwartz died last month at 93, she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she could claim perhaps 2,000 living descendants.

Mrs. Schwartz was a member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, whose couples have nine children on average and whose ranks of descendants can multiply exponentially. But even among Satmars, the size of Mrs. Schwartz’s family is astonishing. A round-faced woman with a high-voltage smile, she may have generated one of the largest clans of any survivor of the Holocaust — a thumb in the eye of the Nazis.

Her descendants range in age from a 75-year-old daughter named Shaindel to a great-great-granddaughter born Feb. 10 named Yitta in honor of Mrs. Schwartz and a great-great-grandson born Feb. 15 who will be named at a bris on Monday. Their numbers include rabbis, teachers, merchants, plumbers and truck drivers. But these many apples have not fallen far from the tree: With a few exceptions, like one grandson who lives in England, they mostly live in local Satmar communities, like Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Kiryas Joel, near Monroe, N.Y., where Mrs. Schwartz lived for the last 30 years of her life.

Mrs. Schwartz had a zest for life and a devotion to Hasidic rituals, faithfully attending the circumcisions, first haircuts, bar mitzvahs, engagements and weddings of her descendants. With 2,000 people in the family, such events occupied much of the year.

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Eubanks is Out

From People-

When Jay Leno goes back to the Tonight Show, he may need to find a new musical sidekick: Bandleader Kevin Eubanks is said to be leaving Leno’s side after 18 years.

NBC so far has not officially confirmed the latest shock wave to hit Leno’s show, first reported by L.A. radio K-EARTH 101 and also being reported by the New York Times.

Eubanks, a jazz guitarist who joined The Tonight Show in 1992 and became bandleader two years later, simply “wanted a change” and a chance for new opportunities, according to Extra.

It wasn’t clear when he intended to leave. According to Extra, it would be at some point after Leno takes The Tonight Show back from Conan O’Brien on March 1.

RUMORS ON WHO MAY REPLACE EUBANKS-

Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish

Such a Shame….

From The Washington Post-

Maribel Perez breathes in short puffs, panting almost, through a hole cut into her trachea and covered demurely with a patch of gauze. Clear tubes connected to a noisy machine in the living room of her small Alexandria apartment pump pure oxygen into her nostrils.

Crossing the room can leave the 36-year-old woman breathless. Crying sometimes feels like drowning.

Twice in the past two years, she has been told to prepare to die. Twice, she has been rejected for a lung transplant because her case was deemed too difficult. Twice, she has nearly been sent home to Peru because doctors told her there was nothing more they could do here, and if there were, her insurance wouldn’t pay. She refused to believe them.

Then, doctors, social workers, friends, family, priests, politicians and strangers coalesced as a veritable army of guardian angels around her. They pushed for treatment and insurance. They found loopholes, hospital beds and ventilators. They prayed. They set up a “Save Maribel” Web site and Facebook page. They called news conferences in which Perez tearfully pleaded for her life. They raised $60,000 to save her.

So it was nothing less than shattering when, miraculously, a few weeks ago, one of the world’s largest lung-transplant programs, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, agreed to take her, and Perez said no.

Her reason had nothing to do with breath. It was because of blood.

Perez had become a Jehovah’s Witness. The religion teaches that blood is sacred, the seat of one’s soul, and that in the Bible, God specifically prohibits the consumption of blood, whether by mouth or through veins in a transfusion. Many Jehovah’s Witnesses carry cards explaining that in an emergency they are not to receive blood and that no medical practitioner will be held liable if they die as a result.

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An Unlikely Councilor

From The NYT-

Shon R. Hopwood was not a particularly sophisticated bank robber.

“We would walk into a bank with firearms, tell people to get down, take the money and run,” he said the other day, recalling five robberies in rural Nebraska in 1997 and 1998 that yielded some $200,000 and more than a decade in federal prison.

Mr. Hopwood spent much of that time in the prison law library, and it turned out he was better at understanding the law than breaking it. He transformed himself into something rare at the top levels of the American bar, and unheard of behind bars — an accomplished Supreme Court practitioner.

He prepared his first petition for certiorari — a request that the Supreme Court hear a case — for a fellow inmate on a prison typewriter in 2002. Since Mr. Hopwood was not a lawyer, the only name on the brief was that of the other prisoner, John Fellers.

The court received 7,209 petitions that year from prisoners and others too poor to pay the filing fee, and it agreed to hear just eight of them. One was Fellers v. United States.

“It was probably one of the best cert. petitions I have ever read,” said Seth P. Waxman, a former United States solicitor general who has argued more than 50 cases in the Supreme Court. “It was just terrific.”

Mr. Waxman agreed to take the case on without payment. But he had one condition.

“I will represent you,” Mr. Waxman recalled telling Mr. Fellers, “if we can get this guy Shon Hopwood involved.”

Mr. Fellers said sure. “It made me feel good that we had Shon there to quarterback it,” Mr. Fellers said.

The former solicitor general showed the bank robber drafts of his briefs. The two men consulted about how to frame the arguments, discussed strategy and tried to anticipate questions from the justices.

The case was about whether the police had crossed constitutional lines in questioning Mr. Fellers, who had been convicted of a drug conspiracy. Mr. Hopwood said he thought persuading Justice Sandra Day O’Connor would be crucial.

In January 2004, Mr. Waxman called Mr. Hopwood at the federal prison in Pekin, Ill. They had won a 9-to-0 victory. Justice O’Connor wrote the opinion.

Lil Wayne’s Guna Serve a Lil Time

From People-

Lil Wayne is constantly moving. But the hyperactive hip-hop star will find himself suddenly sedentary come Tuesday, when he has to report to prison to serve a yearlong sentence for gun possession.

“I don’t like to stop,” Wayne, 27, tells Rolling Stone. “I believe you stop when you die.”

He says his prison term is God’s will for him and everything happens for a reason.”I look at things as ‘Everything is meant to be.’ I know it’s an experience that I need to have if God’s putting me through it.”

Wayne’s felony charge came after a July 2007 arrest in New York City, when police found a .40-caliber handgun in his tour bus. Initially Wayne, whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., pleaded not guilty – but in October, he changed his plea to guilty in exchange for a reduced 12-month sentence.

But before he finds himself waking up behind bars at New York’s Rikers Island, Wayne is packing in video shoots, recording sessions of songs from The Carter IV and time with his family. He says he’s avoiding getting tips on prison life.

“This is Lil Wayne going to jail,” he says. “Nobody I can talk to can tell me what that’s like. I just say I’m looking forward to