Idaho Hall of Fame names Senator Larry Craig…

Craig named to Idaho Hall of Fame

BOISE, Idaho - Sen. Larry Craig was named Saturday night to the Idaho Hall of Fame, marking the Republican lawmaker’s first ceremonial appearance back in his home state since his arrest in an airport bathroom sex sting became public in August.

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Craig, 62, seated near the front of the banquet room, received polite applause and a few encouraging hoots when he was introduced.

“I hope in a very sincere way that the attention that’s been brought to me has not lessened the honor you receive,” Craig told the other nominees and about 200 people who attended the dinner.

He was chosen for induction last spring, well before his arrest at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June. Among the other inductees are Chris Petersen, coach of the Boise State football team, Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter and Lt. Gov. Jim Risch, who is vying to replace Craig in 2008.

Before he was honored, Craig entered the Boise convention center through its front doors, accompanied by family members including his wife, Suzanne Craig, and mother, Dorothy Craig. They walked through a crowd of about a dozen photographers, TV cameras and reporters.

“I’m doing very well,” Craig said, responding to a question. “I’ve got my whole family with me.”

Before the event, Michael Ritz, an Idaho Hall of Fame board member, said he had been bombarded with calls from national media outlets wanting to know whether they could set up cameras at the $50-a-head function. And while even some Republican Party members suggested withdrawing or delaying Craig’s nomination until another year, Ritz said the 12-member board opted to go ahead.

“We thought, ‘It’s kind of going back on your word,’” he said before the event. “Once a person has been sent a letter and voted into the Hall of Fame, it would be kind of like breaking a promise.”

Idaho’s senior Republican lawmaker pleaded guilty in August to disorderly conduct, then unsuccessfully tried to withdraw his plea after the episode became painfully public.

He initially said he intended to resign but now vows to serve out the last 15 months of his term.

The master of ceremonies for the event, former Republican Lt. Gov. David Leroy, acknowledged that attention on the senator and his arrest had raised the profile of the private, nonprofit Idaho Hall of Fame. Since 1995, it has inducted some 113 members, but before 2007 hadn’t made any new nominations for four years.

“As the cameras outside testify, this banquet is a hot ticket,” Leroy joked.

He then offered a quote that he attributed to actor Brad Pitt on the subject of fame: “Fame’s a bitch, man.”

Craig later quipped: “My fame of the last month, I would liken to the definition Brad Pitt gave it.”
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Thank you JOHN MILLER, Associated Press Writer, AP News and for the photos from Buddy Stone.
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Well, Baby Boomers…I don’t care what two consenting adults do as long as they have the common sense to use protection.

But the only Hall of Fame…I would put Senator Larry Craig in would be “The Sen. Potato Head Hall of Flam”

Come on, those of you who are in office…have you no decorum?

Malvolio’s tirade in Twelfth Night, “My masters, are you mad, or what are you? Have you no wit, manners nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night?…Is there no respect of persons, place nor time in you?

~The Baby Boomer Queen~

Scientists explain chocolate cravings…

Scientists explain chocolate cravings

From WASHINGTON {{wouldn’t you iknow it…}}, if that craving for chocolate sometimes feels like it is coming from deep in your gut, that’s because maybe it is.

A small study links the type of bacteria living in people’s digestive system to a desire for chocolate. Everyone has a vast community of microbes in their guts. But people who crave daily chocolate show signs of having different colonies of bacteria than people who are immune to chocolate’s allure.

That may be the case for other foods, too. The idea could eventually lead to treating some types of obesity by changing the composition of the trillions of bacteria occupying the intestines and stomach, said Sunil Kochhar, co-author of the study. It appears Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Proteome Research.

Kochhar is in charge of metabolism research at the Nestle Research Center in Lausanne, Switzerland. The food conglomerate Nestle SA paid for the study. But this isn’t part of an effort to convert a few to the dark side {or even milk} side of cocoa, Kocchar said.

In fact, the study was delayed because it took a year for the researchers to find 11 men who don’t eat chocolate.

Kochhar compared the blood and urine of those 11 men, who he jokingly called “weird” for their indifference to chocolate, to 11 similar men who ate chocolate daily. They were all healthy, not obese, and were fed the same food for five days.

The researchers examined the byproducts of metabolism in their blood and urine and found that a dozen substances were significantly different between the two groups. For example, the amino acid glycine was higher in chocolate lovers, while taurine, an active ingredient in energy drinks, was higher in people who didn’t eat chocolate. Also chocolate lovers had lower levels of the bad cholesterol, LDL.

The levels of several of the specific substances that were different in the two groups are known to be linked to different types of bacteria, Kochhar said.

Still to be determined is if the bacteria cause the craving, or if early in life people’s diets changed the bacteria, which then reinforced food choices.

How gut bacteria affect people is a hot field of scientific research.

Past studies have shown that intestinal bacteria change when people lose weight, said Dr. Sam Klein, an obesity expert and professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.

Since bacteria interact with what you eat, it is logical to think that there is a connection between those microbes and desires for certain foods, said Klein, who wasn’t part of Kochhar’s study.

Kochhar’s research makes so much sense that people should have thought of it earlier, said J. Bruce German, professor of food chemistry at the University of California Davis. While five outside scientists thought the study was intriguing, Dr. Richard Bergman at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, had concerns about the accuracy of the initial division of the men into groups that wanted chocolate or were indifferent to it.

What matters to Kochhar is where the research could lead.

Kochhar said the relationship between food, people and what grows in their gut is important for the future: “If we understand the relationship, then we can find ways to nudge it in the right direction.”
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Thank you On the Net, The Journal of Proteome Research and SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
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Wouldn’t you know it would be WASHINGTON…who would take the pleasure out of eating CHOCOLATE. Breaking it down to the fact that you crave CHOCOLATE because you have Bacteria in your digestive system.

If it is bacteria that makes Godiva CHOCOLATES so wonderfully delicious…so be it!

Let me tell you men out there if you got your Significant Other, CHOCOLATE, at once a month, your life would be a lot easier!

Washington can put that in their studies!

Personally I love Dark CHOCOLATE. MMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmm

I even put a small amount of Coco in my chili.

Any out there who has CHOCLATE they don’t want, feel free to send it to me…I WILL BLOG for CHOCLATE!

I don’t know if I could/would trust anyone, who doesn’t like CHOCLATE…they could be a serial killer or some other type of social deviant…{smiling}

I say…eat more CHOCOLATE!

~The Baby Boomer Queen~