The CSIRO's Total Wellbeing Diet has been voted the most effective way to lose weight by an online panel of Australian dieters. The high-protein diet beat 19 other plans including Weight Watchers and Dr Tickell's Great Australian Diet, which came second and third respectively. Other contenders reviewed included the Atkins diet, the Zone, Herbalife weight management program and the South Beach diet. The first volume of the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet book sold more than 700,000 copies, knocking both Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code off the top of the bestseller list. The authors have since launched a second volume, which tackled criticism of the science behind the original diet.

Consumer Reports Picks Best Diet Plan, Book

Volumetrics is the best carefully researched diet plan, and "The Best Life Diet" is the best diet book, Consumer Reports says.

The report gave middling ratings to eDiets and to Barry Sear's The Zone Diet.

Had we but world enough, and time

I seem to have accumulated a number of items related to time in my bookmarks, and now that I've got a moment, I figured I should unload them on you. You'll understand if I refer you to the linked source material for details, because some of this gets pretty far out there:

* Building on William James' perceptual theory of time, Steve Taylor, a teacher at the University of Manchester and author of "Making Time," posits that the experience of time varies from clock time based on how much new information is being taken in from the environment. To a child (or an enlightened adult), each day is filled with so much new information that time passes slowly, he says, while the weeks whiz by if you're numbed by a fixed daily routine. Taylor's beliefs about elasticity of time also cover the sensation of slowed time, as in an accident or the athlete's "zone," and sped up time during total absorption, as in enjoying a compelling book or movie.

INTERVIEW: KEVIN COSTNER (MR. BROOKS)

Though it's not necessarily surprising to hear someone reflecting negatively on the sorry psychological state of the nation, this cynical tone can't help but sound awfully dissonant when it's coming from Kevin Costner, who is inseparable in person from his amiable onscreen persona. Whether he's playing a boy scout (Elliot Ness in The Untouchables), a rake (Crash Davis in Bull Durham) or a bit of both (the iconic title role in the underrated Wyatt Earp), you're always on his side. Heck, you even fall in love with him as a murderous convict in Clint Eastwood's beautiful A Perfect World. Perhaps in reaction to his three-decade streak as one of the most likeable movie stars going, Costner's taken on another serial killer in Bruce A. Evans's Mr. Brooks, and this time he's playing him... well, he's pretty damn likeable in this one, too.

Manuel Uribe's Obesity In Record Books Again, Likely Going For ...

When you've been tagged with the distinction of being "The World's Heaviest Man," it's not something you go around wearing as a badge of honor. Identified in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most morbidly obese man walking the face of this planet last year was a gentleman from Monterrey, Mexico named Manuel Uribe.But he's been doing something about his weight over the past year that may win him another Guinness record--for the largest-recorded WEIGHT LOSS in history!For those who don't know about Uribe's story, he sent out a desperate cry for help in early 2006 for someone, ANYONE to help him get his weight under control. Weighing in at a "how-can-he-possibly-be-alive" weight of 1,235 pounds--yes, that would be OVER a HALF TON!!!--Uribe was ready to begin his ambitious quest to lose 1,000 pounds to get his life back.

Monday, August 6th, 2007

The state of the labor union has not been a particularly happy one in recent years, what with automation, technology and a diminished sense of fraternal solidarity having sapped the threat of the major weapon in labor's arsenal, the walkout. But that has not stopped the talk among a new class of oppressed worker of […]

Relay for Life emphasizes screening for colon cancer

BY HOWARD BUCK Columbain staff writer

Long overshadowed as a killer of men and women in the U.S., colon cancer gained new respect at the annual American Cancer Society Relay for Life, west Clark County edition. There were several hundred blue glow-sticks that lit up the Columbia River High School track late Saturday — a gift to each fundraiser participant who signed a pledge to seek colon screening or to persuade someone else 50 or older to do so. Hours earlier, a bright red, pear-shaped "Polyp Man" and a hot-pink fabric colon display had to make do. "Colon cancer, and colons in general, are kind of an embarrassing topic. People are kind of quiet about it," said Libby Mongue, a six-year Hodgkin’s Disease survivor and devoted anti-cancer activist. It was her job to entice the families, friends and other teams circling the track to check an informative display and vow to pay attention.

Power to Powerline

But one of the things that makes it such an engaging and successful site is the way it reports on local happenings in and around Minneapolis. Today, for example, it takes apart a column about local real estate by a Star Tribune regular, whom powerline calls, in its unabashed voice, “a third-rate columnist for a second-rate newspaper." Never mind that the issue—the size of a particular house on the shore of Minneapolis's Lake Calhoun—is of little moment to a Brooklynite like me. Powerline manages to bring alive the mindless passions and petty resentments and politically correct politics that seem to permeate the local newspaper of record.

The point is that many of the local stories powerline brings to a national audience are not local at all. The website has been on top of the Flying Imams case from the beginning.

Loons Slide Continues On Turn Back The Clock Day

The Loons celebrated turn back the clock day by emerging from a giant makeshift cornfield in the right field corner, as well as wearing the uniforms of the 1948 Saginaw Bears.

The Loons jumped out to an early lead in the ballgame thanks to a RBI-double by Josh Bell and a Rick Taloa sacrifice fly to make it 2-0. The Cougars would answer in a big way with five runs in the second thanks to five straight hitters reaching base off Loons starter Chris Malone to give Kane County a 5-2 lead. The Cougars would never look back scoring single runs in the fourth, fifth, and seventh innings, including three runs in the ninth.

To rest his arm, the Loons scratched right-hander Josh Wall from his scheduled start. Due to the circumstances, Great Lakes turned to emergency starter Chris Malone who only went three innings allowing six runs while walking four in picking up his first loss as a Loon.