Yes, it’s carnival time again and this time around, we have 35 posts covering health, fitness, wellness, dieting, and everything in between. So grab a coffee and start clicking… Madeleine Begun Kane’s back with another limerick all about Gray Matters posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog. Fiona King lists 25 Painless Ways You Can Reduce Your Water Consumption posted at Organicasm. Andre Blackman looks at Google Maps and the Push to Keep Your Car Parked posted at Pulse & Signal, s

FROM LA WEEKLY: MTA’s Toxic Towers in Van Nuys Metro wants to cram 2,000 renters onto land that faces a Chevron oil plant By STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - 6:29 pm LESS THAN 72 HOURS BEFORE last Thursday’s Metropolitan Transit Authority board meeting, a proposal to build a vast, “transit-oriented” luxury-apartment complex sprinkled with 30,000 square feet of shops on a little-used Park & Ride lot in Van Nuys got yanked from Metro’s agenda. “It needs more work,” noted County

Search and browse, news sources updated continuously. Probe finds illegal hiring at Justice Department. Local wisdom Five things to know about growing native plants. Wolves finding a home in NCW. Decisions being made in the next few weeks could alter that vision, as the temporary California Nevada Lake Tahoe Fire Commission makes its recommendations on whether to open Tahoe. S hne, jewelry panerai Van Cleef amp. Shasta s most popular recreation area, Why we can no longer overharvest Maxxam PL

In most recessions, drugs are usually considered a bright spot for marketers. Consumers may skimp on food, fuel and clothes, but the business of health often benefits from “nondiscretionary” spending. But that is not the case this time round.

Marketers are predicting an overall decline through 2011, which would be the first setback the business has ever seen.

The decline is unrelated to the economic woes of the rest of the country. Instead, it is caused by an unusual confluence of events:

• Many patents have expired or are about to expire
• The FDA has become more skittish about approving new drugs
• Drug companies’ R&D pipelines won’t have any major new launches until 2011
• The growing number of uninsured Americans is impacting the total number of prescriptions written

Analysts expect to see more drug marketing money go online or into CRM programs, which are cheaper than commercials.

This fall, California voters will consider the most comprehensive farm animal rights law in the country. The measure would ban cramped metal cages for egg-laying hens, metal gestation crates for pregnant sows, and veal crates for calves, all practices in which animals are kept so confined that they can barely move.

Earlier this year, the Colorado Legislature became the first in the nation to prohibit the use of gestation crates for pregnant pigs and veal crates for calves. Florida and Oregon voters have banned gestation crates, and Arizona voters banned both gestation crates and veal crates.

California’s egg industry, which is the fifth largest in the country, is preparing an all-out campaign to defeat the measure. The United Egg Producers and the Pacific Egg & Poultry Association are arguing that the measure would threaten the health of hens and eggs, since hens allowed to roam free might contract avian diseases from exposure to the outside.