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The latest drug to hit the street is a mixture of Tylenol PM and heroin. The Dallas Morning News says the street name for this deadly mixture is "cheese." USA Today says while the first reports of this new mixture are in Dallas, the Drug Enforcement Administration has sent warnings about this new "starter heroin" to agents nationwide.

The DMN said:

Lois Jordan runs a drug counseling center in Dallas that offers rehabilitation programs for teens, and she aided several families that were caught up in the Plano heroin use in the late 1990s.

She said cheese sounds a lot like "a poor man's speedball," a mixture of cocaine and heroin. The cheap, easily obtained Tylenol PM can contain stimulants and could provide the "rush" associated with cocaine in a speedball, she said.

"It's a unique combination that could give a rush of an amphetamine combined with a floaty high of an opiate." She said the cheap cost of cheese -- it's sold in small packages for between $2 and $10 -- could entice young users.

"The marketing that these drug dealers put together is just phenomenal," she said. "They really know how to tantalize kids and [exploit] their risk factors."

Drugs that are cheap and accessible, she said, "will increase user experimentation," adding that kids who start using drugs at a young age are at greater risk of addiction.

While the mixture of heroin and Tylenol PM appears to be new, the moniker "cheese" is not. Drug dealers and users have long used the term for heroin and other drugs. For example, "macaroni and cheese" is slang for a $10 bag of cocaine and a $5 bag of marijuana.

[Dallas police narcotics Deputy Chief Julian] Bernal said the Dallas Police Department has known about the new drug since around August.

"We didn't want to glamorize this," he said. "We initially wanted to keep this quiet, thinking it would go away. That didn't happen."

Authorities haven't said how potent the heroin is in the cheese they've found. The purity of different forms of heroin varies. Black tar heroin is about 30 to 34 percent pure. A more pure form of heroin that is commonly called "white China" is 80 percent pure or higher.

Police said cheese, even though it only has between 2 and 8 percent heroin, is still highly dangerous.

Watch video from CBS11-TV in Dallas.

Straight Edge: Punk Without Drugs

Here is a story that is worth a look. It is about a hard-core punk cultural movement called Straight Edge. It started in the 1980s and is now making a resurgence.

What is most interesting about this group is that, while it maintains the culture of punk rock, those who are part of Straight Edge abstain from sex, drugs, alcohol and sometimes even caffeine. It is not something you "join" -- it is a lifestyle.

Straight Edge members sometimes wear the mark of an X on their hands; others get X tattoos. Other use the sXe logo. See the urban dictionary for an explanation.

In fact, here is a Web site with the name sXe.

Here is some background from straightedge.com. Also, XSisterhoodX is devoted to Straight Edge girls.    

It might be helpful to take a look at these links. It would be easy for those who do not understand what Straight Edge is about to make assumptions about the lifestyles of kids with tattoos, piercings and punk garb.

More resources:

• Stories from The Independent News in Pensacola, Fla., the Toronto Star, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader (with a multimedia slideshow and audio links) and the The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier
• Straight Edge group discussion
• AlterNet article (from 2003)
  

NCAA Database

The Indianapolis Star has published an extensive NCAA database, which purports to be "the most detailed, publicly available database of college athletic department financial information ever assembled." You can look, school by school, at ticket sales, concessions, advertisements and sponsorships and much more. You can also sort the data. The Star introduces the database with this:

It came from forms required by the NCAA for the 2004-05 school year. While the NCAA reports such information only in aggregate, the data is presented here by individual school -- with the ability for users to sort by category and conference, and to compare two schools.

The Star obtained the forms through freedom of information requests to the 215 public schools that compete in Division I. There were 164 responses, 76 percent.

(Requests also were sent to Division I's 112 private schools, which had no obligation to release the information. None did. In addition, state law in Pennsylvania and Delaware does not require its public schools to comply.)

The numbers are presented here as they were reported to the NCAA. No attempt was made to change or research anomalies. The NCAA does that.

Despite improvements in accounting procedures, schools still differ in how they report certain information. For example, some placed all contributions in the "non-program specific" category, while others broke them down by football, men's basketball, etc.

The Latest Big Thing: High-Dollar Aquariums

Fortune says:

Aquariums, which were popular in the 1970s, are back. But forget the fish tanks in your dentist's office -- these "installations," as they're called, take six months to complete and cost as much as $600,000.

The tanks feature specialized glass for better viewing, custom-made furniture crafted to accentuate the colors of the fish, live coral, and rare creatures like angelfish from New Caledonia, which sell for $3,000 each.

What Would Happen if Jurors Asked Questions?

Last summer, the American Bar Association published a list of 19 recommendations intended to promote more jury participation -- including allowing jurors to ask questions in civil trials.

The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal reported:

While five states ban jury questions in criminal trials, the rest leave the decision up to judges.

But most judges choose not to allow them, according to an ongoing study by the National Center for State Courts.

Only 15 percent of judges permitted jurors to write questions for witnesses in criminal trials, based on 8,200 returned questionnaires.

The National Center for State Court offers two lists:

What are the advantages of juror questions?

Some advantages may include:

• The nature of juror questions often alerts the trial judge and the attorneys when the jurors have misunderstood an important point of the evidence or testimony, thus giving them the opportunity to correct the misunderstanding with new witness testimony, closing arguments, or jury instructions on the issue;
• Permitting jurors to ask question increases the likelihood that the jury will understand the witness testimony and give it appropriate weight during deliberations; and
• Permitting jurors to ask questions helps keep them alert and engaged in the trial proceedings, thus increasing satisfaction with jury service.  

What are the disadvantages of juror questions?

Some disadvantages may include:

• Permitting jurors to ask questions may confuse their role as neutral fact finders, assuming instead the role of advocates;
• Jurors may interpret the trial judge's failure to ask a question as an indication that the witness's testimony should be discounted;
• Jurors may be offended or angry if all of their questions are not answered; and
• Permitting jurors to ask questions of witnesses adds to the length of trial proceedings.

Lists and More Lists

I usually don't get too torked up about random rankings, but when I can pull together a whole list of lists, it seems worthwhile.

1. PCMag.com's list of the worst products released in the first quarter of 2006.
2. Best Jobs in America list from Money magazine
3. Top 30 pet names list from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
4. Most-recorded shows in TiVo
   
5. Top 10 allergy cities in America, from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.