New, salt flavored twizzlers?

Who'da thunk?? Low-sodium foods from soup to salad dressing have been around for a while, and we all know how important low-sodium diets are to people with or at risk for heart disease. However, some very unexpected foods are quite high in sodium. Here's a partial list:

Twizzlers: Nearly twice the sodium of a serving of salted peanuts
Prego Heart Smart Traditional Italian Sauce: 4x the sodium of a serving of salted peanuts
Kraft Snackables cheddar and monterrey jack cheese cubes: Nearly 3x the sodium of a serving of salted peanuts

Amazingly, a serving a Planter's salted peanuts has quite a reasonable amount of sodium per serving. The New York Times has some more detail.
Bottom line- it's important to know what you are eating, and there is only one way to do that:
ALWAYS read the label!
Click here for the Mayo Clinic's recommendations on sodium intake, and recommendations on how to decrease yours if it's too high.

Japanese win space beer race

The Russians may have been first in space, and the Americans the first to the moon, but the Japanese are the first to make space beer - beer brewed with barley grown on the International Space Station.

Unfortunately, only 100 liters of the extraterrestrial elixir were produced and they are only available for a limited sampling in Japan.

Kampai!

Via Gizmodo


Photo gratuitously lifted from Gizmodo who ostensibly borrowed it from AFP without intent to return.

Make your own bacon-flavored vodka

Because who doesn't want bacon-flavored vodka?

Bacon Vodka

makes up one pint

Fry up three strips of bacon.
Add cooked bacon to a clean pint sized mason jar. Trim the ends of the bacon if they are too tall to fit in the jar. Or you could go hog wild and just pile in a bunch of fried up bacon scraps. Optional: add crushed black peppercorns.
Fill the jar up with vodka. Cap and place in a dark cupboard for at least three weeks. That’s right- I didn’t refrigerate it.
At the end of the three week resting period, place the bacon vodka in the freezer to solidify the fats. Strain out the fats through a coffee filter to yield a clear filtered pale yellow bacon vodka.

Decant into decorative bottles and enjoy.

Photo blatantly ripped off of Brownie Points.

The Empire State Building has been stolen!

The New York Daily News has stolen the Empire State Building.

"And it wasn't that hard"

Don't worry, they gave it back.

photo graciously borrowed from the NYDN

US interrogator found better way

When so many others were bending and breaking the rules, using a Gitmo interrogation style, one US Air Force interrogator in Iraq preferred to play by the rules, get a little creative, and get results. Without using torture, he managed to get information critical in leading to the death of Zarqawi. In this article, originally in the Washington Post, he gives some insight on the war and American conduct in Iraq. An excerpt:

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo...The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

Via The Liberator Magazine.

Impeachment ornament selected for White House holiday tree

One of the ornaments selected for the Fraser Fir in the White House Blue Room includes statements by various Congressmen advocating impeachment of the White House's occupants.

Laura Bush asked members of Congress to have local artists create ornaments. Washington State's Jim McDermott chose artist Deborah Lawrence.

"I was at first nauseated, then realized it was an opportunity," said Lawrence, 55, who frequently combines politics and satire in her work and saw this as the perfect way "to highlight Jim McDermott because he's a hero of mine."

More on the ornery ornament.

Photo courtesy Deborah Lawrence

Pentagon deploying more troops inside US

The Pentagon is deploying 20,000 uniformed US soldiers within the country. The troop deployment is part of an expansion of the Department of Defense's role in homeland security.

The move has civil liberties advocates on edge and there is talk of a possible conflict with the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. The law, enacted following the Reconstruction, severely restricts the ability of uniformed military personnel to act as law enforcement on non-federal land.

Image courtesy of Getty

Bush apologizes... sorta

It seems as though President Bush has kind of apologized for screwing up the economy and the War in Iraq.

Some gems:

"I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess," Bush added.

"That is a do-over that I can't do," Bush said.

Reflections on the Bush II Presidency, courtesy of the man himself.

Photo courtesy of AP