news notes

phillie phanatic mascot sued for tossing woman in hotel pool - ahhh, philly.  now even the mascots are getting in on the violent action.

coronor: dingo took baby in notorious case - so elaine was right, all along.  ok, seriously, 32 years later?!  how did this possibly take so long?

massachusettes town approves $20 fine for swearing in public - i mean, i can see where they're coming from.  look, i can swear like a drunken sailor if you get me going, but not in public. not around children.  nothing irks me more than standing at the train station and hearing some asshole on the phone screaming obscenities while 3 kids are staring up at him.  like, come on, dude, have a little class.

new tehnique to prevent olive oil fraud - so my sister is a chemist.  she majored in chemistry at penn state and (eventually, sometime) plans to go to grad school for a further chemistry degree.  yeah, she clearly got the brains in the family.  anyway, she works for a neutraceutical company - she tests the raw materials before they go into the products that they make.  so she has kind of an obsession with materials in things.  she only buys all-natural bath and body products now.  and she's had this thing with olive oil for the last few months.  i remember her and my mom (also a food chemist) talking about it over christmas and i thought it was ridiculous.  so what if there are impure ingredients in olive oil?  it's not like a chug it by the gallon.  well, apparently, there was a big crackdown on some company in spain and so now they're making the process much more hard to fake.  callie's thrilled, even though it will only last a short amount of time until someone else figures out some other way to cheat the system.  i told her that i'm very excited for my limited-edition pure evoo.  i love having science nerds in the family.

newborn seized in pa hershey medical center - this story breaks my heart, you guys.  for so many reasons.  those poor parents.  how terrifying that experience must have been for them.  it breaks my heart for social workers every where - this stupid, awful woman has given all of us a bad name.  people already have this negative preconceived notion about hospital social workers, and now this?  i'm shocked beyond belief that this happened at hershey medical center, one of the top hospitals in the region.  i always thought i would some day move back to hershey and get a job at the med center - it's where anyone in central pa in the health field wants to be.  now?  not so much.  i would not want to be associated with that social work department.  what an embarrassment.  i'm anxious to see how this lawsuit is going to play out over the next few months, or years.