Utah Called Most-Depressed State

People in South Dakota are the least likely in the nation to be depressed, according to a new study by a group called Mental Health America. The report found that Utah is the most depressed state.

The rest of the 10 least depressed states were Hawaii, New Jersey, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Louisiana, Illinois, North Dakota and Texas. The other most depressed states were Wyoming, Ohio, Missouri, Idaho, Oklahoma, Nevada, Rhode Island, Kentucky and West Virginia at No. 50 (the District of Columbia was counted as a separate state).

The results were based on rates of depression and suicide. “While a number of factors including biology and environment impact an individual’s mental health, this study shows that states can significantly improve their populations’ mental health status by adopting policies that expand access to mental health treatments,” said Dr. David Shern, the group’s president.

A news release said the group found that factors such as the number of mental-health workers and laws regarding health insurance can help determine suicide rates in a given state. Rates of depression varied from around 7 percent to more than 10 percent Shern said that no state should be satisfied with its current status.

‘Mr. Whipple’ actor Dick Wilson dies

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) – Dick Wilson, the character actor and pitchman who for 21 years played an uptight grocer begging customers “Please, don’t squeeze the Charmin,” died Monday. He was 91.

Dick Wilson played Mr. Whipple in more than 500 commercials for Charmin toilet paper.

The man famous as TV’s “Mr. Whipple” died of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, said his daughter Melanie Wilson, who is known for her role as a flight attendant on the ABC sitcom “Perfect Strangers.”

Wilson made more than 500 commercials as Mr. George Whipple, a man consumed with keeping bubbly housewives from fondling toilet paper. The punch line of most spots was that Whipple himself was a closeted Charmin-squeezer.

The first commercial aired in 1964 and by the time the campaign ended in 1985 the tag line and Wilson, a former Canadian airman and vaudeville veteran, were pop culture touchstones.

He also played a drunk on several episodes of “Bewitched,” and appeared as various characters on “Hogan’s Heroes,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” and Walt Disney productions

Original “Sesame Street” DVDs “intended for grown-ups”. Executive Producer says, ““We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now.”

Sesame Street DVD has kids warning

 

Booing as woman dies in queue

QANTAS staff have been booed by frustrated passengers at Brisbane Airport after leaving their check-in counters to assist an elderly woman who collapsed and died in the long queue.

The 80-year-old woman is believed to have suffered a heart attack shortly after joining Qantas Club check-in queue on Monday morning.

Two doctors at the terminal provided medical assistance until paramedics arrived 15 minutes later but they were unable to revive her.

Julie Bignell, from the Australian Services Union, said that when staff heard of the woman’s plight, two of them went to her aid but were booed when they closed their counters.

“There were only half the number of check-in points operating that morning because six staff had called in sick. The terminal was packed with about 1000 people and no one could move. The public didn’t know what was going on,” Ms Bignell said.

She said it was not particularly unusual for check-in staff to be booed or even spat on when they finished their shift and closed their counters during busy periods.

“The Qantas terminal at Brisbane Airport is chronically understaffed. We’ve been trying for two years to have staffing levels improved, but they’ve actually decreased,” she said.

More than 90 staff had left Qantas from the domestic and international terminals since September 2006, and there were “always people off on stress leave”, Ms Bignell said.

“It’s extremely stressful for staff when they have such big workloads, and now they’ve got people dying in the queues,” she said.

Curtis Davies from Qantas said the airline was employing more than 20 additional staff “to provide even better levels of service”.

“We have done a great deal to improve the check-in process, including introducing online check-in and QuickCheck kiosk,” said Mr Davies.

But Ms Bignell predicted waiting times at Brisbane Airport would worsen in the upcoming school holiday period.

Enjoy a refreshing ham soda

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) – Coming soon next to the Coke and Pepsi in a store near you: ham-and latke-flavored soda to make your holiday feast complete.

Jones Soda’s Christmas Pack flavors are Sugar Plum, Egg Nog, Christmas Tree and Christmas Ham.

It even will be kosher, the company making it says — including the ham.

Jones Soda Co., the Seattle-based purveyor of offbeat fizzy water, is selling holiday-themed limited-edition packs of flavored sodas.

The Christmas pack will feature such flavors as Sugar Plum, Christmas Tree, Egg Nog and Christmas Ham. The Hanukkah pack will have Jelly Doughnut, Apple Sauce, Chocolate Coins and Latkes sodas.

“As always, both packs are kosher and contain zero caffeine,” Jones said in a statement.

The packs will go on sale Sunday, with a portion of the proceeds to be given to charity, the company said.

Jones’ products feature original label art and frequently odd flavors. Last year’s seasonal pack was Thanksgiving-themed, with Green Pea, Sweet Potato, Dinner Roll, Turkey and Gravy, and Antacid sodas.

The ‘Winners’ of the Wired News Saddest-Cubicle Contest

The winner — if you can call it winning — of the Wired News saddest-cubicles contest is David Gunnells, an IT guy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His desk is penned in by heavily used filing cabinets in a windowless conference room, near a poorly ventilated bathroom and a microwave. The overhead light doesn’t work — his mother-in-law was so saddened by his cube that she gave him a lamp — and the other side of the wall is a parking garage. Gunnells recalls a day when one co-worker reheated catfish in the microwave, while another used the bathroom and covered the smell with a stinky air freshener. Lovely.

Without further ado, check out the runners-up for most depressing work space. (click for full size)

Shortage of beer ingredients may mean higher prices

SUNNYSIDE — Fans of Snipes Mountain Brewery’s cloudy Hefeweizen relish the subtle wheat flavor of the bright, summery brew, and like beer drinkers everywhere, they know when their favorite brew tastes a little too hoppy or bitter.

Connoisseurs could be in for a surprise this year, and they may not be alone.

Small brewers from Australia to Oregon face the daunting prospect of tweaking their recipes or experimenting less with new brews thanks to a worldwide shortage of one key beer ingredient and rising prices for others.

Oh, and one other thing: Beer prices are likely to climb. How high is anybody’s guess. Craft brewers don’t have the means to hedge against rising prices, like their industrial rivals.

“I’m guessing, at a minimum, at least a 10 percent jump in beer prices for the average consumer before the end of the year,” said Terry Butler, brewmaster at central Washington’s Snipes Mountain.

Sales have been relatively flat in recent years among the country’s big three brewers — Anheuser-Busch Cos., Molson Coors Brewing Co. and SABMiller PLC. unit Miller Brewing Co — while small, independent brewers have experienced tremendous growth. The craft brewing industry experienced a 12 percent increase by volume in 2006, with 6.7 million barrels of beer. Sales among microbreweries, which produce less than 15,000 barrels per year, grew 16 percent in 2006.

Now the bright spot in the brewing industry is facing mounting costs on nearly every front. Fuel, aluminum and glass prices have been going up quickly over a period of several years. Barley and wheat prices have skyrocketed as more farmers plant corn to meet increasing demand for ethanol, while others plant feed crops to replace acres lost to corn.

A decade-long oversupply of hops that had forced farmers to abandon the crop is finally gone and harvests were down this year. In the United States, where one-fourth of the world’s hops are grown, acreage fell 30 percent between 1995 and 2006.

Australia endured its worst drought on record. Hail storms across Europe damaged crops. Extreme heat in the western United States hurt both yields and quality.

Big brewers can hedge against rising prices for raw ingredients and can negotiate better, longer-term contracts for ingredients, while smaller brewers generally are left with whatever is left.

Snipes Mountain saw its barley malt prices grow between 10-15 percent this year, and paid $12.35 per pound for Cascade hops, far beyond the $5.60 per pound allotted last year.

Those rising prices and, in some cases, shortages, may force Butler to rethink his lineup of 13 beers in the months ahead. He’ll also be tinkering with a Hefeweizen recipe that relies on Saaz hops, a mild variety popular with Bohemian pilsners, after severe weather in Europe dinged as much as 40 percent of the crop.

“Palate-wise, it may change the flavor a little bit, but only a little bit,” he said.

Brewers at Tommyknocker Brewery in Idaho Springs, Colo., already have been doing some tinkering of their own. Last year, a slim supply of bittering Hallertau hops forced them to substitute the Mount Hood variety, slightly altering their three lagers: Alpine Glacier Lager, Butt Head Bock and Ornery Amber Lager.

The brewery contracted for hops a year in advance, allowing it to switch back again this year, lead brewer Eric Rode said. But recipe tweaking is becoming more common, and it’s likely to continue, he said.

Those contracts also enabled Tommyknocker to hold the line on prices, with only a 50-cent increase per case wholesale, largely due to rising glass prices. The numbers could be much bigger when spiking costs of raw ingredients are factored in next year, he said.

So far, price increases have been pretty modest — less than a dollar a 12-pack at retail, said Harry Schuhmacher, editor of the online trade publication Beer Business Daily.

“Brewers are trying to take pricing up, but it’s hard when beer is pretty sensitive to pricing per volume. And when drinkers are leaving beer to go to wine and spirits,” he said.

On the other hand, smaller brewers have more pricing power than the big guys do.

“They’re able to increase pricing more without losing drinkers,” he said.

Big Sky Brewing Co. in Missoula, Mont., which distributes in 16 states, has increased the price of its Big Sky IPA by $1 a six-pack because barley prices doubled. The beer makes up only about 6 percent of the company’s line, led by the popular brown ale, Moose Drool.

Going forward, Big Sky will see what the big breweries do before making changes to pricing, brewmaster Matt Long said.

“Many of the craft brewers don’t do that. They continue to have six packs on sale half the time, and I don’t know how they can continue to operate that way,” he said. “The trend is going to be toward $10 six packs.”

But Long also said he doesn’t think that trend will last long.

“Maybe the pendulum will swing back,” he said. “It might not happen for the 2008 crop, but maybe at some point, it’ll come back halfway, which would be nice.”

It may be too soon to say if, or how high, prices might go up, said Paul Gatza, director of the Boulder, Colo.-based Brewers Association. The bigger hit for craft brewers might be to the fun side — testing ingredients and new or seasonal brews.

“I would think brewers will try to keep their existing beers in the marketplace if they can,” he said. “But this may put a damper on some of that innovation and experimentation for some of those hoppier beers, which is a shame.”

US among worst in world for infant death :)

By The Associated Press Sun Nov 11, 6:32 AM ET

The rate at which infants die in the United States has dropped substantially over the past half-century, but broad disparities remain among racial groups, and the country stacks up poorly next to other industrialized nations.

In 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available, roughly seven babies died for every 1,000 live births before reaching their first birthday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. That was down from about 26 in 1960The United States ranks near the bottom for infant survival rates among modernized nations. A Save the Children report last year placed the United States ahead of only Latvia, and tied with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia.

The same report noted the United States had more neonatologists and newborn intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom — but still had a higher rate of infant mortality than any of those nations.

Doctors and analysts blame broad disparities in access to health care among racial and income groups in the United States.

Not surprisingly, the picture is far bleaker in poorer countries, particularly in Africa. A 2005 World Health Organization report found infant mortality rates as high as 144 per 1,000 births — more than 20 times the U.S. rate — in Liberia.

Report: Myanmar recruiting child soldiers

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Myanmar’s military government, already under criticism for abuses, is recruiting children as young as 10 into its armed forces, a U.S. rights group charged in a report released Wednesday.

The ethnic Karen’s guerrilla army was cited in the report for improving its record on child recruits.

Government recruiters target children because of “continued army expansion, high desertion rates and a lack of willing volunteers,” the 135-page report by New York-based Human Rights Watch said.

“Military recruiters and civilian brokers receive cash payments and other incentives for each new recruit, even if the recruit clearly violates minimum age or health standards,” it said.

Ye Htut, deputy director general of Myanmar’s Information Ministry, said the charges were “another example of biased reporting by this organization, which based its report on the baseless accusations and exaggerated lies of insurgent groups on the border.”

Allegations against both the government and the ethnic groups for using child soldiers are long-standing, and have been acknowledged by both sides in recent years as the United Nations has highlighted the issue.

The newest accusations come as at least 70 Buddhist monks marched in northern Myanmar for nearly an hour Wednesday, chanting prayers for the first time since a crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations, two monks confirmed.

They marched without incident, two monks said in telephone interviews, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Myanmar’s ruling junta faces international criticism for its violent crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations last month. Thousands were arrested, and the government acknowledges 10 deaths among the protesters, though critics say the real number might be closer to 200.

The junta has long been accused of other abuses, including brutal treatment of ethnic minority villagers caught up in counterinsurgency campaigns, and the use of forced labor in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

The report “Sold to Be Soldiers: The Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers in Burma” also charged that ethnic guerrilla groups in Myanmar use child soldiers, though on a much smaller scale than the government. Ethnic minorities along the country’s borders have been fighting for autonomy for decades.

Human Rights Watch said recruiters routinely falsify enlistment records to list children as 18, the minimum legal age for service. It cited the case of a boy who said he was forcibly recruited at age 11, though he was only 4 feet, 3 inches tall and weighed less than 70 pounds.

According to the report, child soldiers are typically given 18 weeks of military training and some are then sent to combat zones.

“Child soldiers are sometimes forced to participate in human rights abuses, such as burning villages and using civilians for forced labor,” said Human Rights Watch. “Those who attempt to escape or desert are beaten, forcibly re-recruited, or imprisoned.”

Myanmar’s armed forces have had regulations in place since 1973 forbidding the recruitment of minors as well as others forced to enlist against their will, said the Information Ministry’s Ye Htut, responding to a summary of the new report.

Enforcement of the regulations was strengthened in 2004 with the establishment of a Committee for the Prevention of Recruiting Underaged Children from Military Recruitment, he wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

“If the authorities find out that a recruit was recruited against his will or he is under 18 years, the responsible personnel will be tried according to the military law,” he said.

Between 2004 and August 2007, some 141 minors were dismissed from the military and returned to their parents, and disciplinary action was taken against nearly 30 military personnel for violating recruitment rules, Ye Htut added.

Human Rights Watch said the government committee has failed to effectively address the problem, and devoted most of its efforts to denouncing outside reports of child recruitment.

The report agreed with U.N. assessments that ethnic guerrilla armies, both allied with and against the government, also use child soldiers, though several have taken measures to curb the practice.

The Karen National Union, whose military arm, the Karen National Liberation Army, was cited by Human Rights Watch for improving its record, said it punishes officers who use child soldiers

Wendys 80’s Training Video

 I never thought of making a burger to be a complex thing to do, but this video proved me wrong.