One morning earlier this year, my friend Dot and I drove north out of the city. We were taking her dog for a walk. Our destination wasn't far—a beach near Balmedie, eight or so miles from the northeast Scottish city of Aberdeen, a stretch of sand dunes and sparse grass between fields and sea. It was bright and gusty and, although the day before midsummer, chilly.

We drove on past Balmedie and turned onto a path where a sign indicated that the area was protected by a security firm. Ignoring the sign, we drove slowly between high, blowing arrases of grasses and cow parsley, past an empty mansion house, past empty lawns and ponds and landscaped gardens. Another sign stuck incongruously into a flowerbed bore two words, ‘Trump International.' The whole place was empty. Only a Land Rover parked beside what once must have been a farm building indicated human presence. On the rustic wall hung a plaque bearing a grandiose coat of arms. I got out of the car to read the motto but there wasn't one. Instead there was one word: Trump. Read More

 Paranoid Park

The film is washed away by the quirky music choices Van Sant made for the soundtrack. They turn Paranoid Park into a pleasant mix tape made by somebody with okay taste. It doesn't help that his mix tape is offered to teenagers. 

Van Sant's teenagers are mostly numb objects. They're no James Deans, they don't act out, and Van Sant has a Warholian view of them. The girls come off better than the boys, which is strange because the girls appear to be professional actors and the point seems to be how beautifully natural everything is, or naturally beautiful. Read More

The beginning of the end for trans fats came in 1994, when the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) petitioned the FDA to add trans fats to the Nutrition Facts panels on packaged foods. CSPI, a consumer watchdog that receives most of its funding from subscribers to its consistently alarming Nutrition Action Healthletter, based its petition on evidence that trans fat consumption increases the risk of heart disease. Subsequent research has also suggested associations with diabetes, infertility, and brain damage. In 2003, the FDA announced that, beginning in 2006, packaged foods companies would have to list the trans fat content of products on their Nutrition Facts panels.