All kinds of odd things caught my eye today.
• this story is headlined "Low-Fat Diet May Help Breast Cancer," but when you actually read the story you find out that low-fat diets only work in 30% of the breast cancer cases--those that are "non-hormonal" cancers. In 70% of breast cancers, low-fat diets make zero difference. But! If you've had a non-hormonal breast cancer, going very low-fat can reduce your risk of recurrence drastically. So that's sorta good news, I guess. What concerns me is that women will read that headline and immediately start eating ultra-low-fat, which is not good for you. At all.
• Keeping with the women's health theme, a new study says black cohosh does nothing to ease menopause symptoms. I'd like to know in what form the black cohosh was given before I give the study credence, for starters, and for seconds, my teacher says motherwort's a better bet anyway.
• Where's Buster gets its funding back: Foundations cut funding to the perambulating bunny after fundamentalists charged the program with "promoting the homosexual agenda." This, after a 2004 episode of Where's Buster went to a maple sugar farm run by a couple of lesbians and their kids. Nothing much was said about them being lesbians, or about lesbianism, or gay rights or gay anything. Just acknowledging that gays and lesbians have kids was apparently enough to make some people froth at the mouth and the funders panic. Foundations got so nervous about protests that Where's Buster had to stop production in early 2005. PBS and a couple of other funders finally found their spine recently and new episodes will appear at a PBS station near you starting in January. [via]
• Finally, speaking of cartoons, Joe Barbera has died, at age 95. If you grew up somewhere other than the US, Barbera was one half of the legendary cartoon production house Hanna-Barbera, which made among other landmark toons "The Flintstones." Bye, Joe, you made (and still make) a lotta kids happy.
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