Creative Commons/Guilhem Vellut
It’s roughly 3-to-1 in favor of medicinal pot. The latest KSTP-TV/SurveyUSA poll says, “Do you think Marijuana should or should not? be legal … when used for medical purposes? Asked of 600 Minnesotans. Of the group’s 543 registered voters, 68 percent said it should be legal, 24 percent said not.
Jake Laxen of the St. Cloud Times has a story on the UMD college student who survived a night outdoors in minus-17 weather. “Despite amputations up to the knuckles of the fingers on both hands and parts of both her feet, [Alyssa] Lommel is completing everyday tasks while living at her parents’ St. Cloud home. She plans to be living on her own again this fall in Duluth. … She walks normally and no longer needs to wear special boots that protected her skin-grafted heels. Thanks to tools designed for her, she can put on her own makeup and eat by herself. She even started showering by herself and has learned to text and use touch-screen computers on her own.”
Oh hey we’re altering another local stadium! In this case, TCF Bank Field, the Strib’s Rochelle Olson reports. Didn’t we just build that one??! Yeah, but they’re ripping up the artificial turf to install a “hydronic heated field” so the Domeless Vikings can play December and (stop laughing) January games there. 6.6 million smackeroonies for the retrofit.
With the Governor signing the minimum wage increase into law today, Susie Jones at WCCO-AM reports, “Cathy Muldoon, [a] managing partner at MJ Scott Search, a recruiting company, says some small business owners fear that it could affect their ability to offer merit pay increases to employees. ‘The employee who is doing fair to sub par is still going to get an increase, so what does that say to the employee who is going the extra mile,’ Muldoon said.”
Also from ‘CCO, Esme Murphy looks at the “new” Sixth District and wonders what Our Favorite Congresswoman will do next? “I asked [Michele Bachmann] when she appeared on WCCO Sunday Morning. ‘I am not going anywhere. I am going to continue to remain involved on the nation stage because the issues are so consequential and I will be involved in shaping the debate. I will be involved in a number of different areas, whether it’s individual campaigns or just speaking nationally. I intend to do a lot of speaking and I intend to be involved in media, as well’, she said.” This column, for one, remains grateful for all she says.
Likewise grateful … Wisconsin. The AP reports, “The lawyer for former state Majority Leader Bill Kramer says his client will plead not guilty to two counts of second-degree sexual assault. … Kramer is accused of groping a woman after a GOP fundraiser three years ago. She told investigators he tried to kiss her, groped her breasts and told her he wanted to have sex with her. Kramer acknowledged to investigators that he kissed her goodnight but denies groping her.” One woman’s “grope” is one guy’s “smooth move.”
Attention upscale hipsters … . Stribber Janet Moore reports, “After many fits and starts over the years, redevelopment of the Superior Plating property in northeast Minneapolis into a residential and retail enclave appears to be inching forward once again. Just a month ago, the project appeared to be on hold. The 5.4-acre swath of land along 1st Avenue NE — one of the few parcels left for development in the popular city neighborhood — was targeted for about 500 apartments and up to 35,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.”
Another piece on the old Hamm Brewery. This time, as aquaculture, Martin Moylan of MPR writes. “Most operations like it lose up to a quarter of the water they bring in. This one loses just 2 percent, said Fred Haberman, one of the backers of the company launching the effort, Urban Organics. ‘It’s all about water’, said Haberman. ‘The efficient use of water is what makes this work. This will be a key component of re-imagining a new agricultural system.’” Hey, Texas … how does $500 a barrel sound?
Kind of a mini-Mayo … . Bob Shaw at the PiPress says, “It started with a single hospital. And today, seven years later, Woodbury’s medical building zone is home to more than 25 clinics and medical businesses. The growth is so fast that the zone is overflowing, with plans for a new $6 million children’s clinic and $1.5 million general practice clinic in other parts of the city. The new projects will boost the number of medical businesses in Woodbury to more than 40 — which is making the city a magnet for patients and doctors alike.”
What doesn’t taste better with butter? Mike Hughlett of the Strib says, “Per capita U.S. butter consumption has hit highs not seen in about 40 years. The once-demonized fat is downright de rigueur in cooking circles, a star on celebrity chef shows. It has become a natural food darling. Butter owes much of its comeback to its simplicity. …‘There has been a complete resurgence of butter since at least 2008, and it really has everything to do with ‘real food,’ said Melissa Abbott, culinary insights director at the Hartman Group, a market researcher.” I’ll have a smear on my lunch donut and beer, please.
Some of US Never Gave Up Butter
Having been raised around dairy farms, and always appreciating the taste of good milk and butter, and and wanting to honor the work of my friends and neighbors on the smaller farms which surrounded the towns where I lived (and among whom I worked as a youth), I never gave up butter and milk.
I never liked margarine, anyway. It didn’t help that I developed a reaction to the glycerin which is added to margarine to keep the trans fats and liquids emulsified, which meant that, if I ate anything that was cooked with margarine (even when I had no idea it had been) I experienced instant, massive heartburn.
I was always suspicious of margarine because it was such an artificial, chemical product, so I always ate butter, even when the so-called experts claimed it was unwise if not deadly. Strangely, my cholesterol figures have remained in the healthy range which should have been impossible if the “experts” were correct (for which I thank the genetics bequeathed to me by my parents).
I wasn’t too surprised when, over the past few years, it was gradually revealed that the mechanisms behind cardiovascular disease are complex, and that a lot of the “expert” opinion was confusing correlation with causation, and even drawing assumptions based on precious little correlation at that.
I can’t help but suspect that, a few decades into the future we’ll regard the attitudes toward cardiovascular disease, obesity, nutrition and diet which were the “common wisdom” in the medical field in the 70’s, 80’s 90’s 00’s 10’s to be as primitive as were our early 18th Century ancestor’s views about the causes of routine diseases and infections.
It’s too bad, though that so Americans suffer from obesity, these days, primarily as the result of consuming the very high carb, “low fat” diets that the “experts” were telling us were healthy for the past fifty years.
I’m also curious whether experts will eventually discover a previously unknown virus, prion, on other infectious agent which, although it doesn’t cause acute disease (or causes only very brief symptoms), settles in to cause chronic conditions having to do with slowed metabolism, chronic inflammation of blood vessels and other tissues leading to cardiovascular disease, inflammation of the digestive system which patients experience as increased appetite, etc.,
or an already-identified infection shared by most adults; an infection which was presumed to be harmless because it’s chronic effects had not been previously identified as being the result of that infection.
I believe there are several candidates for the latter.
I only hope that in the future our “experts” will not leap to such ill-founded conclusions as the “low fat diet as the antidote to cardiovascular disease” represented. Perhaps our increasing ability to study the effects of variations in the human genome will shed some light on these same areas.
They know the culprit.
Candida albicans
It’s a yeast that thrives on the sugars and carbs that our diet is loaded with and crowds out the beneficial pro-biotics. Our gut is a major player in the health of our entire body.
It’s a major problem.
So funny Greg
When I was a kid, growing up in Pennsylvania which had a thriving dairy industry, if you wanted to sell margarine, you had to sell a disgusting white slap of stuff with a little orange football that you had to “homogenize” into the white slab.
Talk about a turn off.
Julia Child had it right:
“If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.”
What that says…
” ‘The employee who is doing fair to sub par is still going to get an increase, so what does that say to the employee who is going the extra mile,’ Muldoon said.”
What that says is that the marginal employee will perhaps stay off the public assistance rolls and make only occasional visits to the food bank that are being subsidized by that small business’s customers. A small business that’s paying its “better” employees less than $9.50 an hour is a sweatshop, and at best is paying wages that won’t support a family. I’d say those small business owners have plenty to be ashamed of in that context.
Says exactly the same thing
It says exactly the same things it does today:
1. Still making minimum wage.
2. Employer still doesn’t reward ‘going the extra mile’.
Someone needs to tell Ms. Muldoon
she need not worry about the Employee Who Goes THe Extra MIle. Those employees quickly move on and leave the cheapskates with the middling employees they rightfully deserve.
Favorite Congresswoman?
I can’t believe that she actually believes that she adds insight to our nation’s dialogue? Oh my!
Rewards for productivity? Hmm.
Employees in this country have seen their wages remain stagnant over the last few decades while their productivity has more than doubled.
The numbers suggest many employers increase compensation for top management while not sharing the added profit generated by workers’ productivity.
TCF and min wage
Heating coils in TCF are nothing new. I was under the impression they were already placed there prior to the gophers season. Are these different or new somehow?
I also already got my raise for my second part time job so don’t believe the hike will affect me.