Daily Loaf

The $500 billion beauty industry is embraces a message that tells women they must correct, conceal and camouflage. Peel away the glitz and glamour, says Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, and you’ll expose the toxic truths lurking beneath the beauty industry’s seedy underbelly. Malkan shares five of the biggies that the major beauty purveyors would rather keep under wraps.

1. Many skincare products contain chemicals toxic to the skin

“A mind-boggling array of products contain chemicals that sensitize skin and trigger skin problems such as rashes, redness, acne, and other symptoms of contact dermatitis”, says Malkan, who notes that doctors often misdiagnose these problems as eczema and prescribe drugs such as steroids or immunosuppressants. Then, of course, there are the toxic chemicals that are known or suspected causes of long-term health effects such as asthma, infertility, learning disabilities, and cancer—ingredients that companies persist in including despite the fact that they “already know how to make great products without these hazardous chemicals,” she says.

2. Companies that donate to breast cancer research still use carcinogens in their products
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I am by no means a Yankee fan.  It’s no secret how I feel about Derek Jeter, and it’s safe to say that I feel pretty much the same way about the entire squadron/organization. (Hank, we get it, you’re a loudmouth and you have useless opinions… can we move on?)

Today, or yesterday, or whenever, new allegations surfaced about Alex Rodriguez and steroid use. With the allegations before (I’ll call this” ’Roiding Round I”) he said “Yeah, I did it, but just for a short time with the Rangers… my b, we should just hug this one out.” Apparently there is now “irrefutable” evidence that he used in high school and/or with the Yankees.

I’m not about to pile on A-Rod. Because, frankly, I do not care. You might call me a Yankee apologist (that is, if you didn’t know me) but, truth be told, I absolutely do not care.

If you had asked me before the previous allegations against A-Rod whether he had done steroids, I wouldn’t have said no, or yes. I would have said, “Well, I’ll tell you, I suppose I don’t find him any more suspicious than anyone else.”

This is precisely the problem with steriod-era baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

He said he had been “young and stupid.” He said he didn’t really know what he was putting into his body. He told the throng of reporters, with a straight face, “I’m here to take my medicine.”

Irony aside, Alex Rodriguez faced the full media at the Yankees Spring Training Complex in Tampa today, holding a tightly choreographed news conference to discuss his steroid use.

The New York Times reported:

2:00 p.m.
The first dramatic moment of the afternoon: After talking about how his cousin and he obtained the drugs and did them from 2001-03 and saying he “thought he knew everything” when he reached the big leagues at 18 – even though this was 7 years before his admitted use of PED’s took place – Rodriguez mentioned his Yankees teammates.

With Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte looking on, Rodriguez stopped, speechless, for 37 seconds. He drank water once, tipped back in his seat, and looked over to his right as they sat on chairs like so many members of the press. He eventually said just two words under his breath: “Thank you.” He appeared to choke up, or at least try to.

This is just coming down the pipe: New York Yankees‘ third baseman Alex Rodriguez sat down for an interview with Peter Gammons of ESPN this afternoon when he admitted to using steroids between 2001-2003. The interview will air on Sportscenter at 6 p.m. tonight.

Here’s an exerpt:

His voice shaking at times, Alex Rodriguez met head-on allegations that he tested positive for steroids six years ago, telling ESPN on Monday that he did take performance-enhancing drugs while playing for the Texas Rangers during a three-year period beginning in 2001.

“When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day,” Rodriguez told ESPN’s Peter Gammons in an interview in Miami Beach, Fla. “Back then, [baseball] was a different culture…

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It didn’t take long for the nickname to change, reports CBC Sports. After SI.com revealed Saturday morning that Alex Rodriguez had tested positive for steroids in 2003, the Yankee third baseman was almost immediately re-christened A-Roid by the New York Daily News — and also by the Dallas Morning News, the Seattle Weekly and the Star Telegram. (And another Post columnist threw in a “Roid-riguez” for good measure.) The New York Times ran an interesting piece of analysis of what might have led Rodriguez into this mess, while the blog Out of Left Field discusses why the A-Roid headlines are just going to distract from the bigger issues: the anonymous testing that wasn’t, and what that means for labor-management relations in Major League Baseball, and the “kindergarten view of the world” that leads to the “shocked, shocked I tell you” reactions to the A-Roid revelations.