WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2007
Wednesday Edition Al's Morning Meeting
The (Mobile, Ala.) Press-Register taught me something. The paper ran a piece about so-called energy drinks that contain alcohol and that stores around Mobile readily sold to undercover cops. Take a look at two of the drinks,
"Sparks" and
"Tilt." Tilt has been on the market for a couple of years now.
The
Press-Register reports:
Each of those contains 6 percent alcohol, according to the
labels, but the can designs and snappy names mimic any of a
number of alcohol-free, caffeine-rich energy drinks, said
Lori Myles, the task force coordinator. Consequently, many
people, especially parents, have no idea what their teens
might be popping open.
The 16-ounce drinks are malt beverages with caffeine and
ginseng, a natural extract heralded as an energy booster.
A teenage Mobile boy wound up in the hospital this summer
after he drank five beers and five cans of Sparks, according
to Myles and the boy's mother.
The new drinks contain more alcohol than beer does, police
Cpl. Emmit Byrd explained Wednesday night during the sting
operation.
The Fresno (Calif.) Bee reports on the rapid rise and fall of hopes for ethanol:
The U.S. ethanol industry, touted by Wall Street as an investment
gold mine and by the White House as a path to energy independence, has
shifted from boom to gloom.
In California and nationwide, ethanol
producers are halting construction of plants and watching their stock
prices tumble, as they struggle with economic forces they helped to
unleash -- a jump in the prices of corn they make into fuel, and a
plunge in the price they can command for that fuel.
What happened to the booming ethanol market? The
Bee explains:
Like the rest of the country's ethanol producers, Pacific Ethanol
rode a wave of investor optimism over the past few years, fueled by
rising oil prices and government incentives and mandates calling for a
massive increase in production of the corn-based fuel.
But as
annual domestic production has grown from 5.6 billion gallons last year
to more than 7 billion gallons today -- and an additional 5.5 billion
gallons of capacity coming -- the laws of supply and demand have taken
over.
All the new ethanol on the market has driven down prices to
between $1.60 to $2 a gallon, less than half the peak price of $4.33 in
June 2006.
At the same time, the demand for corn has led to a
near-doubling in the price per bushel, from less than $2.25 at the
start of 2006 to more than $3.75 in recent trading. Some forecasts call
for corn to grow even more expensive next year.
The result is
that ethanol makers have seen margins shrink from more than $2 a gallon
last year to as low as mere cents per gallon in recent months, although
those margins have recently increased, according to analysts.
Scooters Cause Safety Concern
I am talking here about the scooters that people with disabilities use to get around -- a sort of motorized wheelchair. Here in Florida, people riding these things up and down the street are starting to get in serious accidents.
The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times notes:
At least six people on scooters have been killed in the Tampa Bay
area over the past two years. And with the first crop of baby boomers
settling into retirement, the next decade likely will bring a new
brigade of scooter riders darting in and out of traffic and buzzing
down sidewalks.
"It is definitely something we need to
monitor," said Sen. Carey Baker, R-Eustis, chairman of the state
Senate's Transportation Committee. "We are sort of in a bad position.
You don't want a mobility scooter just driving down the highway, but at
the same time we want to allow people with disabilities the ability to
work and shop and enjoy all the little things that you and I take for
granted."
The story adds:
"Obviously
we didn't see this 10 years ago because there wasn't such a thing as a
mobility scooter 10 years ago," said Baker. "So we are going to see
more accidents because now they are much more prevalent. The question
would be, if these people weren't on a motorized scooter, would they
have been struck just walking on the street?"
Mobility scooters
sometimes called electric scooters or motorized scooters to distinguish
them from the power scooters popular among teenagers look like desk
chairs on big wheels. Each has a seat at the rear of a wheeled
platform, with controls and sometimes hand rests. The primary funding
sources for scooters are private medical insurance, Medicare, and
Medicaid.
Federal officials do not keep up-to-date records on
scooter related injuries, but say they expect the number of such
accidents to continue to rise.
"Power scooter injuries continue
to outrank injuries associated with the motorized scooters," said Scott
Wilson, a spokesman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
"But we are still seeing too many deaths involving motorized scooters."
Did Steroids Enhance Play?
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel took last week's list of suspected steroid-using ball players and laid statistics next to them to see if their performance improved when they allegedly started using. More than half of the players boosted their performances, according to the
Journal-Sentinel's analysis.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and links.
Editor's
Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story
excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as
original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly
from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided
whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends on the
accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and
inaccuracies found will be corrected.
Posted at 2:04:53 AM
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