Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:08:30 +0000

Credit card companies have powers unique in the world of retail lending. After a consumer has agreed to the terms of a credit card account and used the card to make purchases or obtain cash advances, the card issuer may lawfully rewrite the agreement or demand a higher rate of interest, even on funds previously advanced. In a one-year period between 2007 and 2008, issuers used these powers to raise interest rates on nearly one quarter of cardholde accounts. These added charges are not reflected in the advertised annual interest rate, which is the key price point consumers use when choosing credit cards. By rewriting agreements, and by giving themselves broad contractual rights to impose fees and rate increases automatically—practices that the Federal Reserve and other regulators have called “unfair and deceptive”—credit card issuers have rapidly expanded their businesses and billed cardholders tens of billions of dollars more per year.

In 2007, The Pew Charitable Trusts launched an effort, in partnership with the Sandler Foundation, to address growing concerns about abuses in the credit card industry. The project team, led by a former credit card company chief executive officer, researched consumer use of credit cards, conducted economic analyses of credit card practices and revenues, and closely reviewed hundreds of credit card products. In addition to this research and analysis, our team spent more than a year in discussions with over 20 credit card providers and consumer groups, with the goal of identifying balanced approaches to improving the safety of credit cards used by millions of Americans. As part of our research, we looked at all general purpose consumer credit cards offered online by the largest 12 issuers, which control more than 88 percent of outstanding credit card debt in America. As of December, 2008, this assessment covered more than 400 credit cards.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:42:23 +0000

In recognition of california’s growing obesity epidemic, competing environmental forces and fragmented efforts, the legislature mandated that california department of Health services (cdHs) create this strategic plan to guide a statewide response to this crisis. (Budget Act of 2005, sB 77, item # 4260.001.0001, Provision 7)

case for Action: california, like much of the rest of the world, is experiencing an obesity epidemic for which there is no single cause or simple cure. The case for action to address this epidemic is based on three principal factors:
1. california’s current Health status - Poor nutrition and inactivity are causing serious health problems – including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and cancer – now, and if left unchecked, will lead to worsening conditions in the future.
2. competing environmental forces – choices that lead to poor nutrition and inactivity are often more available, affordable, and convenient than healthier options.
3. fragmented, Uncoordinated efforts – many actions are being taken by government, industry, voluntary, and philanthropic sectors, but without concordance.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:26:26 +0000

There is an overwhelming body of scientific evidence in support of the relationship between fruit and vegetable intake and health. At present, there is no published scientific evidence that low carbohydrate diets are more effective in producing long-term weight loss than adopting healthy eating habits and regular physical activity.

Low-carbohydrate diets—to the extent that they restrict fruit and vegetable intake—are unhealthy and inhibit intake of important nutrients, fiber and phytochemicals.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:59:27 +0000

If you answered yes to any of the questions, you are not alone! As we grow older, we sometimes lose our enthusiasm for food, and cooking and eating. We can just feel plain old tired and burned out! Here are some ideas to help you overcome “kitchen fatigue.” Before you know it, you’ll find that eating and cooking your food is enjoyable again.Eat regular meals. Small, frequent meals may be the best. Use high nutrient foods at every meal. This should help prevent feeling overfull.

Put the focus on heart healthy foods that are low in fat, cholesterol, saturated fat, sugar and salt. You’ll feel better just knowing you are eating healthfully! Don’t hesitate to check out convenience foods that are healthy and tasty. You can add vegetables or fruits to the meal to balance things out. Many grocers are becoming more sensitive to the single shopper and offer smaller portions of meats, fruits, vegetables, half loaves of bread, ½ dozen portions of eggs. This will help you know you won’t be wasting food before you can eat it. Keep preparation simple.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:48:25 +0000

You’ve just decided to go on a diet and lose weight.Maybe you’ve made previous attempts to diet or it’s your very first time. But, you decided to ‘do it right’ and go online, research what’s out there, and take the time to make an informed decision, choosing the diet that’s right for you.How will you know what’s right? What do you really need to know to make the right choice? You could spend months reading the best selling diet books or watch infomercials for the latest weight loss pills, potions and machines.

Or, you could seek professional assistance.But, in most situations, that’s not necessary to get yourself on a diet that will work for you. You don’t need to know everything there is to know about dieting to be successful. Fortunately, good common sense still applies. In fact, eating food close to the way it’s found in nature (e.g.baked potato instead of instant mashed potato), in moderate amounts and choosing some kind of regular exercise routine can be very helpful. But there are some specific issues you need to be aware of.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:14:50 +0000

What to eat when your stomach is not working right can be challenging for anyone, but is particularly so for individuals with Type I diabetes mellitus,
who are also faced with a slow-emptying stomach (gastroparesis). Wide swings in blood sugar levels can be an early sign of gastroparesis in someone with diabetes mellitus. Others may experience digestive symptoms that punctuate life's routines, rob one's appetite, or develop into patterns of nausea and vomiting.

Dietary manipulation can greatly assist you in regaining blood glucose control. Proper use of your insulin or diabetic medication is also of utmost
importance. You will have good days and bad days. Your medical team will
help you get through the tough patches. Your team members should include a
diabetologist, or primary care physician, dietitian, psychologist, and diabetes nurse specialist. For those who are experiencing moderate to more severe digestive symptoms, eating may become inconsistent from meal to meal, day to day, or week to week, depending upon the frequency and intensity of digestive distress.

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:10:13 +0000

The project of this book is to gaze, steadily and attentively, at the deep pool of emotions that converge on one point: longing. When we long, we encounter our own absence. Rilke imagines this aching state: my life without me. This flight from immediacy takes us swiftly elsewhere—to pure intensity, to abandon, to, irrevocably, the other. The gesture of desire, of yearning, is one of surrender; it grasps nothingness greedily. But it also makes nothingness its power; it says “here I am: empty.” Yearning lives the emptiness at the back of being: it points to the essential openness at the heart of existence.

Standing always under the sign of longing is the dangerous lover—the one whose eroticism lies in his dark past, his restless inquietude, his remorseful and rebellious exile from comfortable everyday living. His ubiquity marks him as always central to what we mean when we talk about existence and the modern self. And this is not despite the fact that he lives and moves and has his being today in popular historical romances and romantic cinema—female-coded genres—but rather because of this low-brow presence. Or, more essentially, because of his lasting and pervasive presence everywhere: he stretches his pained existence back to Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy and forward to the mass-market romance and to, well, all points in between. Why do we desire so readily, so uninterruptedly and incessantly, the demon lover? Why is it that the subject who lives imprisoned in the blighted landscape of his own mind, who is doomed only to repetition and a desire for death until his possible redemption by the utterly unique moment of love, becomes himself the true cipher of longing, the essence of the movement of desire?

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:34:34 +0000

The following thesis aims to track the evolution and application of certain fundamental American cultural mythologies across international borders. While the bulk of my discussion will focus on the cycle of mythic American innocence, I will pay fair attention to the sub-myths which likewise play vital roles in composing the broad myth of American innocence in relation to understanding American identities – specifically, the myth of the Virgin West (or America-as-Eden), the yeoman farmer and individualism. When discussing the foundation of cultural American mythologies, I draw specifically from the traditional myth-symbol writers in American Studies. Those works which I reference are: Henry Nash Smith’s, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth, Leo Marx’s, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America and R.W.B. Lewis’s, The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century.

I focus much of my discussion on the applicability of the myth of innocence, rather than the validity of the actual myth throughout history. In this sense, I follow the myth as a cycle of innocence lost and regained in American culture – as an ideal which can never truly reach its conclusion for as long as America is invested in two broad definitions of innocence: the American Adam and the Noble Savage. By considering “innocence” as both naïve and pure (in the sense of Adam) and violent and primitive (in the sense of the Noble Savage), I propose that the myth of American innocence finds its timelessness in its cultural malleability. That is, as long as the myth continues to evolve with cultural and societal advances, its relevance will be omnipresent. However, in order to widen the field of myth-symbol scholarship in American Studies, I have opted to filter the myth of innocence through an international lens of Italian cinema.