www.roanoke.com

... who's to say they can't take your healthy appendix tomorrow and eat it in front of you and your children?"

Jon Stewart channels Glenn Beck, and it's hilarious:

First Oprah, then Roanoke. Yes, the Star City is one of the confirmed stops on Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" book tour, according to an Associated Press story posted on our breaking news site.

Palin is shunning the bright lights of the nation's big cities and is planning to drop by smaller, more Republican friendly towns.

Do any of you plan to read her book or turn out to see her again?

There's a fascinating piece up at Slate.com about Ayn Rand. It superficially is about two recent biographies of the author of "The Fountainhead," "Atlas Shrugged" and other works. In reality, it's about the writer herself, how she came to her beliefs and the people who subscribe to them.

Most people who get suckered into her me-first theories outgrow them. Too many do not, including, I'd wager, a fair number of readers of this blog.

Like her writing or not, the fact is that Rand has had a profound influence on a lot of Americans. It's worth your time to find out a little about her and where her worldview came from.

Or, if you have a few hours to kill, go play Bioshock and you'll get the gist of it and probably have more fun.

Ayn Rand person who invent objectivism. If you not know what it is, is basically philosophy of Dark Side from Star Wars only somehow it also about money. (The Barbarian, from his review of Bioshock.)

It's health care benefits sign-up time around here at the RT, where we're still lucky enough to have them, and the talk this year is of edging toward plans that are less costly for people who do what they can to stay healthy. The emphasis is on preventive care: wellness checkups, smoking cessation -- maybe someday a person's BMI, or body mass index, a measure of body fat based on height and weight. Uh-oh.

That, I suppose, is why I had a more than passing interest in a story that ran last week in USA Today: A then-and-now survey of New York City diners showed that the city's pioneering menu-labeling law (which since March 2008 has required chain restaurants to display the number of calories in their menu offerings) has helped the willing cut down. I say the willing because a little more than half the people surveyed said they saw the calorie postings, but only 15 percent said they actually used the information.

Still, those who did bought food that averaged 754 calories for lunch in 2009, compared to 860 calories for those who didn't see the information or ignored it. "The overall calories purchased decreased at nine chains between 2007 and 2009," the newspaper reported, "including dropping significantly at McDonald's, Au Bon Pain, KFC and Starbucks."

The findings are more hopeful than an earlier and much smaller study that suggested that people who noticed the calories and took them into account said they made healthier choices, but actually made worse ones.

Yeow. If only just wanting to could change us.

Ride Solutions, local political blog Star City Harbinger and the Fork restaurants owned by Roanoke City Councilman David Trinkle (Fork in the Alley and Fork in the City) are teaming up in a get-out-the-vote effort on Tuesday.

Ride Solutions will help get you to the polls if you need assistance. And if you wear your "I voted" sticker to one of the restaurants afterward, you'll get 10 percent off the price of your meal.

Members of the local chapter of Drinking Liberally will be gathering at Fork in the Alley that night - drowning their sorrows if the latest polls are any indication.

I don't know whether to be grateful or not for an item posted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch offering assurance that the flu doesn't have to scare off trick-or-treaters this Halloween. It hadn't occurred to me to regard the little ghosties and ghoulies as a real threat this year, but it should have, given the early flu season and the reported ease with which the H1N1 virus is transmitted between humans. So, to open the door to the kids, and maybe a case of the flu, or not? I'm going to risk it, but follow safety tip No. 1: drop the candy in the bag; avoid direct contract with the visiting humans. Assuming they are humans.

The religious right wants you to celebrate Halloween this year.  No, not in all its pagan glory, in all its damning Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to hell glory.

At overturnroe.com, they urge good Christians to download a pdf of the Democratic duo (warning, 4 mb), head to Kinkos to print out a large version, and burn it in effigy on Halloween.

I suspect they would have included President Obama in the fun, too, but there's a law against threatening the president. Then again, as the host says, "No, this is not a threat to their body, but it is a threat to their soul."

I know this shouldn't be funny, but the video instructions and sample are hilarious. Do yourself a favor and watch.

"If you win this battle over health care but you lose your soul, it's a bad deal."

I can't wait to check back next week to see the best videos America's Christians submit. The grand prize is an expenses-paid weekend in Washington during the Roe vs Wade anniversary, Jan 22-24, including pro-life training seminar, and the full Insurrecta Nex television series. With that up for grabs, competition is sure to be fierce.

(h/t: David Weigel at The Washington Independent.)

Google Voice  has a feature that will transcribe voice mail and send it to you via e-mail. I imagine it's handy, when the transcription works. Former Roanoke Times reporter Andrew Kantor shared a transcription from a recent robocall from Creigh Deeds that didn't turn out that well for the gubernatorial candidate, unless there's a hidden vote out there for creepy rapists:

<em>I don’t know what your with creepy. It’s for governor. I know how important this rapist. If you could give me a moving forward and I know the work with you on the ground makes a big difference. The Washington Post and doors creepy. It’s great to get. I have record of achievement as a legislator Election Day, Tuesday, December 3rd. But we need your help in Virginia today. Call me at the polls on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3rd between 6 and 7 PM. Developer credence for governor.</em>

Shannon for attorney general

The Fairfax delegate promises legal leadership free from ideology, unlike his opponent.

(via Metafilter) I didn't intend or really have the time to read this lengthy, spectacular piece on aging written by a 68-year-old magazine writer. It's a captivating look at the way life changes as you get old.

Here's a brief excerpt, but I recommend the entire piece. Just wait to start it until you actually have the time:

You get old, people don’t notice you. You sit at a bar, sipping your Jim Beam Black, neat now, no water, no ice, when a pretty woman in her 40s sits next to you. You smile at her, say hi. She looks at you and through you around the bar.

You get old, young guys don’t get pissed off anymore that you’re lifting heavier weight than they are on the preacher-curl bench. Now they say, “You sure that weight isn’t too heavy for you, sir?” They used to call you Mack. When you were younger you would have said, “Mind your own goddamned business!” Now you say, “Thanks, guy, I think I can handle it.”

You get old, you lose your anger. It takes too much energy to be angry when you’re old. You have more important things to do with your waning energy, so you hoard it like a dwindling resource.