Prop 215 supporters protest today at noon, Would you know if the government put a GPS device on your car? and pro basketball season is scuttled

                     Good Morning Humboldt County!

Looks like Mother Nature is going to be kind with another sunny day with a touch of hawk wind. Step right in my humble blog, and grab a cup of coffee. There’s plenty of seats to go around. Here’s what I have for you today:

Prop. 215 supporters from around the state will be protesting the federal government's attack on medical marijuana at the U.S. Courthouse in Sacramento, 501 I Street, today at noon.The protest is sponsored by a coalition of organizations including California NORML.

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Several justices on the U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday they have reservations about allowing law enforcement to do such monitoring without a warrant

Has the government attached GPS to your car?

Most of us really appreciate the benefits of GPS — except when it's surreptitiously attached to our vehicle by the government. And how would you know?

You wouldn't. That's the point, of course: Feds and police agencies investigating bad guys don't want them to know they're being tracked.

But what if you're not a bad guy? What if you're just ... you?

The Supreme Court is expected to rule before June on the issue of whether a warrant is needed for GPS monitoring. Until then, wouldn't hurt to check your car or ask your mechanic to do so. Just in case.

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           NBA Basketball season probably isn’t going to happen

On Tuesday NBA players’ union team representatives met, rejected the owners offer on the table and said they wanted more negotiations. According to tweets from Marc Stein at ESPN, the consensus at that meeting was to go with the 50/50 split of league revenues the owners want if the owners will give a few more things on system issues.

Then just more than an hour later David Stern went on NBA TV and said the owners were not changing their offer. At all. Neither system or revenue. When David Aldridge asked Stern if there was wiggle room on the owners offer, he replied: “As of Sunday morning at 3 in the morning there was none left.”

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Good Karma: Man helps motorist who then saves his life miles later

A Canadian man who had just helped a motorist change a tire in western Wisconsin had his good deed quickly repaid when, just minutes later, that same motorist helped to save his life.

According to the Wisconsin State Patrol, Victor Giesbrecht, of Winnipeg, was driving Saturday evening on Interstate 94 about 9 miles east of Menomonie when he stopped to help another motorist change a tire. Patrol Sgt. Michael Newton said that after driving off, Giesbrecht was stricken by a heart attack within a mile or two. His wife, Ann, helped bring their pickup truck to a stop, called 911 and waved her arms for help.

At about the same time, the motorists they had just helped pulled up. The Star Tribune reported Monday (http://bit.ly/vrvfEP ) that one of them, Lisa Meier, of Eau Claire, performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him until emergency personnel arrived. A state trooper and two Dunn County deputies took over and used an automated external defibrillator to help Giesbrecht regain a pulse and resume breathing.

A medical helicopter took Giesbrecht to Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire. He was in serious condition Monday. Newton said if Giesbrecht hadn't helped with the tire change, his initial rescuer may have remained stranded for too long to play a life-saving role.

"If he had been a few more miles down the road and had his heart attack, it could have been a different outcome," Newton said. "It's an interesting turn of fate." He said Giesbrecht had suffered another heart attack about a year earlier. Newton added that Dunn County having an AED on hand "was the tipping point" in saving Giesbrecht's life.

British students to face plastic bullets if things get out of hand

A mass protest is being organized by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, which said it expected 10,000 people to join in a march from Bloomsbury in central London to the center of the city Wednesday.

Some activists from the anti-capitalist Occupy London Stock Exchange movement in London said they would join the march, according to local reports.

For the first time ever, British citizens will face plastic bullets tomorrow. The same type of bullets which have caused deaths in past riots in Northern Ireland.

London police authorize plastic bullets if riot erupts at protest

“London police were authorized to fire plastic bullets to quell riots and dozens of letters were sent out to activists warning of arrest for "criminal or antisocial behavior" ahead of planned mass student protests on Wednesday.”

A Tribute to Led Zeppelin: Today is the 40th anniversary of ‘Stairway To Heaven’

I know I’m showing my age, but who gives a damn! I think this song is a classic … I was 23 when it came out…

Ya gotta love it!

Here we are forty years later since the British rock juggernaut Led Zeppelin released their magnum opus, "Led Zeppelin IV."

Rife with flourishes of haunting folk, gritty blues and rafter-shaking rock of the heaviest order, "IV" swiftly became the band's defining album, largely thanks to the epic 8 minutes and 2 seconds of the fourth song on the LP, "Stairway to Heaven." Rock music hasn't been the same since.

Smokin’ Joe loses battle with Cancer, Mom rescues tot from washing machine, and Crosby & Nash to play at Occupy Wall Street

Breaking sports news video. MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL highlights and more.

Frazier was small for a heavyweight, only 205 pounds, but fought like a much bigger man with his deadly left hook.

          Good Morning Humboldt County!

It sure is nice to be back home! I’m glad you could make it today. C’mon in and grab a cup of hot Joe with me. There’s so many thing happening in our world that all I can do is give you a brief snapshot – three to be exact – of what’s in today’s headlines. I hope you enjoy them and I’ll see ya tomorrow.

           Smokin’Joe Frazier dies at 67

Frazier, who died Monday night after a brief battle with liver cancer at the age of 67, will forever be associated with Ali.

No one in boxing would ever dream of anointing Ali as The Greatest unless he, too, was linked to Smokin' Joe.

         Mom rescues tot from washing machine

A Washington state woman used a wrench to break the window of a running washing machine and rescue her 5-year-old daughter at a Laundromat in Okanogan. The girl either climbed in or was put in the washing machine Saturday night and it started running even though it had been marked "out of order," the Okanogan County sheriff's office said.

The girl's 29-year-old mother ran to her car, grabbed a wrench, smashed the washing machine door and pulled out her daughter, the Wenatchee World reported. The girl suffered a 10-inch cut on her back and was treated at a hospital in Omak. The hospital declined to comment on the girl's condition.

David Crosby, Graham Nash to play at Occupy Wall Street

Longtime musicians and activists David Crosby and Graham Nash are scheduled to perform a concert at the Occupy Wall Street protest site in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park.

The Occupy Wall Street website says the Tuesday afternoon concert will be an acoustic set of protest songs.

Crosby, a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer of Crosby Stills and Nash fame, visited the park last week.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

I’m taking a blog break and will be back with your morning coffee and stories on Tuesday Nov. 8

Time for me to walk on down the road…

my latest path will take me through the hinterlands of America where I’ll be associating with a lot of 99 %ers!!!

Peace out!

They said it – Quotes ripped from stories in the headlines today

Students in Shanghai, a booming Chinese city, shocked the world last year when they beat every other country on international exams. After reading the article one commentator (Celtic Curmudgeon) said;

“Welcome to the third world, America. By the time the teahadists and GOP get done with dismantling the U.S. educational system, we'll all be living in single-wides watching NASCAR, and wondering what happened.”

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On Oct. 22, Ms. Zucker, 21, and her friend Alex Fischer, also 21, were stopped by the police in Riverside Park and given tickets for trespassing. Mr. Fischer was permitted to leave after he produced his driver’s license. But Ms. Zucker, on a visit to New York City with a group of Carnegie Mellon University seniors looking for jobs in design industries, had left her wallet in a hotel two blocks away.

She was handcuffed. For the next 36 hours, she was moved from a cell in the 26th Precinct station house on West 126th Street to central booking in Lower Manhattan and then — she was brought back to Harlem. The judge proceeded to dismiss the ticket in less than a minute. Zucker summed the experience up;

“While it may have been one out-of-control officer that began the process,” she said, “no other officer had the courage to stand up against what they knew was a poor decision.”

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What do you think? Do animals really know right from wrong?

My pug Millie certainly knows when she’s done something wrong. Like Tank (the dog on the left) she cowers and looks at you with her big pleading eyes…

which usually works!

This is an interesting article on the subject and well worth your time to read. Enjoy, it might give you some insights into your pet.

“In a famous YouTube video, Tank the dog sure does look guilty when his owner comes home to find trash scattered everywhere, and the trash can lid incriminatingly stuck on Tank's head. But does the dog really know he misbehaved, or is he just trying to look submissive because his owner is yelling at him?

In another new video from the BBC "Frozen Planet" series, Adelie penguins are seen gathering stones to build their nests. One penguin stealthily steals a stone from his neighbor's nest every time the neighbor goes a-gathering. Does the penguin thief know its covert actions are wrong?”     Read the rest here.

Warlock and witches enlisted in drug wars, City lights could point the way for aliens, and Trump accuses Jon Stewart of being racist

  Good Morning Humboldt County!

It’s another day in paradise and I’ve got the coffee on. C’mon in and join me for a cup. I’ve selected a trio of stories that’ll get your gray matter going today:

Warlocks, witches enlisted in Mexico drug wars

CATEMACO, Mexico — In the dimly lighted back room of a modest house in this tourist city now largely devoid of tourists, Luis Tomás Marthen Torres, a warlock with 50 years of experience, closes his eyes and chants as he briskly rubs a stark white egg over the arms, chest and neck of a worried customer.

The ritual is old and common here in Mexico’s dominant hub for masters of the occult — where wizardry is passed from generation to generation — but like so many things in Mexico, the requests for help have changed.“People ask us for assistance because they’re scared of threats, of extortion. They’re full of negative energy,” says Mr. Marthen Torres. Visitors to this middle-class town of around 67,000 people, which attributes its mysticism to the region’s ancient Olmec roots, had for decades sought wizards to cast love spells and cure physical ailments.

    City lights could point to E.T.

Astronomers suggest that artificial illumination creates a signature that could point to the existence of civilizations on other worlds — and they say we should get started on a survey of the edges of our own solar system, just in case.The suggestion comes from Harvard's Abraham Loeb and Princeton's Edwin Turner, in a research paper submitted to the journal Astrobiology. A version of the paper appears on the arXiv.org preprint server and sparked a write-up today on Technology Review's Physics arXiv Blog.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Trump accuses Jon Stewart of 'racist rant'

Let's face it, Donald Trump feuding with someone is hardly shocking.

But that doesn't stop the Republican supporter from pointing the finger at somebody when duty calls. So who's the entrepreneur yellin' at now?

Jon Stewart is facing the real estate mogul's wrath after making what Trump calls a "racist rant" about Herman Cain on "The Daily Show."

The comedian commented on the Republican presidential candidate's confusing reply to reports that he faced sexual harassment charges during the 1990s, joking that it was like responding to the question, "Have you ever kidnapped a baby?" with the response, "No. Well, other than the Lindbergh baby."

Time to walk on down the road…

The Backlash: Propaganda Posters of the 1% …

 

posters via Visual News

Humboldt County Story: dog stays with deceased owner for 8 days

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Roxy is a true friend of the Millsap family…

This is a bittersweet story that tells of the untimely death of Humboldt County resident, Corkey Millsap, and how his loyal boxer stayed at his side after the fatal accident for eight days.

When daughter Delana and others found Corkey, who had gone over a 200 ft. cliff in a car off of Hwy. 299, Roxy the boxer was next to the car. She had survived the fatal plunge.

Dangerous baby shampoo & wash, more weather disasters ahead, and if you want to live longer – get happy!

             Good Morning Humboldt County!

It’s a chilly morning and I have a pot of streaming hot coffee on, so c’mon in and grab a cup. I have a few stories to start your day. You might call them the “Good, Bad, and the Ugly!”

Activists call for boycott of Johnson & Johnson over chemicals in baby shampoo

Two chemicals considered harmful to babies remain in Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo sold in the U.S. and some other countries, even though the company already makes versions without them, according to an international coalition of health and environmental groups. Now the coalition is urging consumers to boycott Johnson & Johnson baby products until the company agrees to remove the chemicals from its baby products sold around the world.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has unsuccessfully been urging the world's largest health care company for 2 1/2 years to remove the trace amounts of potentially cancer-causing chemicals — dioxane and a substance called quaternium-15 that releases formaldehyde — from Johnson's Baby Shampoo, one of its signature products.

More weather disasters ahead, climate experts report

Freakish weather disasters — from the sudden October snowstorm in the Northeast U.S. to the record floods in Thailand — are striking more often. And global warming is likely to spawn more similar weather extremes at a huge cost, says a draft summary of an international climate report obtained by The Associated Press.

Want to live longer? Get happy, study says

If you’re happy and you know it, maybe you really should clap your hands. That’s because being happy might make you live longer. In a study published today in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from University College, London found that happy people reduced their risk of premature death by as much 35 percent.

Unlike other “happiness” studies that rely on a participant’s long-term recall of emotional states, the researchers used a technique called Ecological Momentary Assessment, which gives a quick picture of what a person is feeling in real time. In this study, the nearly 4,000 participants, ages 52 to 79, were asked to rate their feelings of happiness or anxiety on a sliding scale four times over the course of one day, beginning when they woke up in the morning. The scientists then followed them for five years, recording the number of deaths during that time.

Time to walk on down the road…

It’s Kinda Scary: Zombies worth over $5 billion to economy

Zombies may be the walking undead, but their contribution to Main Street’s economy is very much alive. In modern times, the zombie genre has evolved from a cult following to a highly popular theme. 24/7 Wall St. estimates that today’s zombie genre economy is worth billions of dollars.

Think way beyond zombie movie ticket sales. Think about DVD sales, video games, comic books, novels, Halloween costumes, zombie walks, merchandise, conventions and even zombie art. Add to that all of the websites, homemade movies, Facebook sites, YouTube sites and other forms of “digital” zombies, not to mention music. And if you think the financial tab has been high so far, by the end of 2012 the tab is going to be far larger.

They said it: quotes ripped from today’s news…

What were Steve Jobs final words? His sister said, they were: “Oh wow.. Oh wow.. Oh wow..”

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A recording of transmissions between a JetBlue pilot and Bradley International Airport near Hartford, Conn., captured the pilot's frustration at being stuck on the runway during a snowstorm for more than seven hours on Saturday:

"We can't seem to get any help from our own company. I apologize for this, but is there any way you can get a tug and a towbar out here to us and get us towed somewhere to a gate or something? I don't care -- take us anywhere."

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 An 80-year-old man who went to retrieve the morning papers on his lawn sank into an 8-foot hole on New York's Long Island.  Michael Ciron joked that throughout the ordeal,

"I held on to the papers."

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Tony La Russa retired as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals on Monday, three days after winning a dramatic, seven-game World Series against the Texas Rangers.

"I think this just feels like it's time to end it," the 67-year-old La Russa said at a news conference at Busch Stadium.

Happy Halloween: Beware of costumed pugs prowling the night!

   Good Moring Humboldt County!

 Welcome to my special Pug Halloween post. Grab a cup of coffee and pull up a chair, I’ve got some entertaining little monsters to start your day:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time to walk on down the road…

As It Stands: Next Stop Africa: American Imperialism on the March

UPDATE BELOW – Monday 10/31                                                                 
“The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.”    

--John T. Flynn, conservative American writer, 1944

                                                     By Dave Stancliff/For The Times-Standard
   I once thought only Communists used the word imperialism when referring to American politics. As a Vietnam veteran against the war when I came home in 1971, I was in solidarity with those protesting against it.
  Still, some slogans like “Imperialistic Pigs” or “Imperialistic Puppets” vaguely troubled me. I didn’t like that word for some reason. It made me uneasy.

  Of course I really didn’t understand it’s full meaning and admittedly didn’t go out of my way to find it out. Instead, I  went with a knee-jerk reaction and put the word in my Commie file. After all, back in those days Commies used the word in scathing verbal attacks against America.
   In fact imperialism is defined as extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations.
   It’s been a long and painful road since the Soviets were our mortal enemy. Along the way America invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of national security. Ours. We extended our military presence in the world to 126 countries under the guise of protecting democracy.
   President Obama announced the majority of our troops will be out of Iraq by January 2012, but what about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan?
   More alarming, Obama and his corral of Chicken Hawks recently announced the invasion of a new frontier. They sent 157 Green Berets to Uganda as military advisors in what is being described as the first phase of a military operation that will spread to other nearby African states.

  The Pentagon’s questionable reasoning for this mission is based upon lies designed to hide our capitalistic goals – there’s oil in Libya – and other African states have natural resources we can plunder.
   We’re going in – wearing White Hats and all – to save Uganda from some roving gang of thugs that’s supposedly terrifying all the good people in southern Africa. An earlier generation of Chicken Hawks in Washington said the same thing about Vietnam.

  The warmongers are ready to rip Africa apart, like the vultures they are, in order to keep the industrial complex rolling. Africa screams…but no one hears. The ghosts of thousands of American troops who have died in dirty little imperialistic wars/actions since Vietnam must be restless.
   As long as we have influential Chicken Hawks lobbying for wars and military actions, they’ll continue. Military ambitions will run rampant as long as obscene profits - made on the back of the American taxpayer - can be made. All under the guise of democracy and national security.
   Capitalism became patriotism as politicians persuaded the public that America needed a worldwide military presence. The lies flowed with the cash. Business as usual.
  Our government has created a system of proxy rule, by way of client states and dependent regimes. Few dare call it imperialism. Indeed, the most militant defenders of the policy greatly resent the term. They call it leftist propaganda.
  My sentiments are the same as Mark Twain’s were back on Oct. 15th, 1900, when he wrote the following for the New York Herald:

   “I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”
    Here we are over 100 years later, still putting our talons into other countries. That’s very discouraging. As much as I love America, I’m ashamed that we act like a superpower with no soul.
   As It Stands, I watch Americans protesting the economy daily now, and I find myself hoping that this growing movement of outrage will add demands to pull our troops out of every country we now occupy.

EDITOR’s NOTE:

I seldom comment on emails I get in response to my columns, but felt compelled to thank all the people who filled up my mail room (in the last 24 hours) with feedback on this column! Wow! It appears I struck a nerve. The thing that really surprises me is it was ALL positive feedback. That’s almost scary this Halloween!!!  

What Me Worry? There’s phobia’s for everything under the sun

Seems like everyone has phobia’s nowadays so I looked around for a definitive list of the things that scare and irritate people. Here’s the best roundup of phobia’s I’ve found to date. It provides an alphabetic index for easy reference.

Here’s one example:

                               Papaphobia: fear of the Pope -

Regarded as one of the most benevolent and wonderful individuals in the world, millions flock to him, hoping for his blessing... except for those who suffer "Papaphobia": an abnormal or persistent pathological fear of the pope or the papacy.

 Symptoms can include shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea, and overall feelings of dread. And it might not be only about the pope himself; a person with papaphobia may also be fearful of the Roman Catholic Church, so keep that popemobil away from them!

More examples:

10 Weirdest Phobias

10 Most Rare and Strange Phobias

Python eats deer, Cardinals win World Series, and Canada looks to Polar Bear for it’s new national symbol

     Good Morning Humboldt County!

Glad you could make it this morning. Grab a seat and a cup of hot coffee and let’s take a look at three stories to start your day.

16-foot python found in Florida had eaten a deer

Officials in the Florida Everglades have captured and killed a 16-foot-long Burmese python that had just eaten an adult deer.

Scott Hardin, exotic species coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, said workers found the snake on Thursday. The reptile was one of the largest ever found in South Florida.

Hardin said the python had recently consumed a 76-pound female deer that had died. He said it was an important capture to help stop the spread of pythons further north.

     Cardinals win World Series

About the time the St. Louis Cardinals fell 10 1/2 games out of first place in late-August, manager Tony La Russa paid a visit to commissioner Bud Selig during a series in Milwaukee.

Recalling that meeting before World Series Game 7, Selig said: "I congratulated him on his year, and he said, 'we're not done'. And he wasn't kidding. When you think back, a lot of things had to happen. It's been amazing.''

Then the Cardinals went out and finished one of the unlikeliest, unexpected World Series championships — a fitting end to a captivating postseason.

Polar bear threatens beaver as Canada national symbol

A Canadian senator has launched a campaign to replace the industrious beaver with the indomitable polar bear as Canada's national emblem, saying the incumbent is "a dentally defective rat."

Conservative Senator Nicole Eaton delivered her damning criticism in the Senate on Thursday, noting that the beavers wreak havoc on the dock at her waterfront cottage every summer."A country's symbols are not constant and can change over time," she said. "The polar bear, with its strength, courage, resourcefulness and dignity is perfect for the part."

The beaver became Canada's only official national animal in 1975. Trade in the beaver pelts, used to make fashionable fur hats, drove European expansion in North America in the 1600s and early 1700s. Eaton said the ever-busy dambuilders are now nuisance, but avoided mentioning another gnawing problem with the emblem: In modern times, its name is slang for female genitals.

Time to walk on down the road….

As It Stands: Reflections on Haunted Houses…

It seems like every Halloween someone gets seriously injured in a “haunted house” sponsored by various organizations. Here’s the first case I ran across this year which took place at the Creepyworld house in Fenton, Mo., a St. Louis suburb, last night.

Speaking of haunted houses, the Coast Guard won’t be sponsoring one here in Humboldt County this year. Not because of past problems, quite the contrary it was a successful fund-raising event, but because of cutbacks in the Coast Guard’s budget. It’s hard times everywhere.

Personally, I’ve never been interested in going to them. I went once, back in 1974, with my wife who was pregnant with our first child.

The haunted house was at Knotts Berry Farm and only a ten minute drive from where we lived. In retrospect, it seemed like a stupid thing to do, but she insisted on going, and I quit arguing with her about anything (I lost every time) during her pregnancy.

To make a long story short…I stayed up with her all night. The good news was that she wasn’t so shocked or horrified that it caused a problem (she still had five months to go). The bad news is I had to go to work the next morning.

When I was in elementary school my family lived in a house in El Monte, California, that was haunted. I’m not kidding you. Even my parents felt it was haunted. We only lived there for four months and we moved! The rumor in the neighborhood was that the prior resident had killed himself and his wife there. Too many strange things happened to all of us – my two sisters, brother, and father and mother in the short time we were there. I still get the creeps when I think of that place.

My wife and I never bothered taking our three sons to a haunted house, but they all went on their own when they hit their teen years. Showing my generation gap, I once asked one of them if he went to get scared with his buddies?  He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Dad…I take a girl with me because I know she’ll get scared and want me to hug her!”

As It Stands, I think our economy is more scary than any old haunted house!

Bela Lugisi’s Dracula cape for sale, licorice–a scary treat, and book a hotel room with a boo!

                 Good Morning Humboldt County!

It’s getting colder in the mornings and that first cup of steaming coffee is golden. Grab a cup, pull up a seat, and join me. I’ve got a Halloween themed trio of stories for your entertainment this morning: 

              Bela Lugosi's 'Dracula' cape up for auction

The cape Bela Lugosi wore as Count Dracula in 1931 movie "Dracula" is set to be auctioned off. The cape will be one of 17 Lugosi lots consigned by the horror icon's son, Bela Lugosi, Jr., available at the Profiles in History sale in December.

Lugosi gave the cape to his wife Lillian before his death in 1956 and told her to keep it for their son. Upon Lugosi's death, the family decided that he should be buried in his Dracula costume, but given the actor's wish that his son should have the cape, the family dressed the body in a lightweight version of the cape he used when making personal appearances. Lillian Lugosi left the cape to her son upon her death in 1981.The item is expected to fetch up to $2 million when it goes under the hammer during the sale, Dec. 15 to Dec. 17.

Scary treat? Black licorice can harm heart, warns the FDA

While indulging our sweet-tooth may be a time-honored Halloween tradition, there’s one tasty morsel that could turn out to be more of a trick than a treat for some of us, the Food and Drug Administration warns.

Black licorice can lead to heart arrhythmias and other health problems when consumed by adults in large quantities, the FDA noted in its pre-holiday alert.

Experts say that consuming 2 ounces of black licorice per day for two weeks can set the heart stuttering in susceptible individuals. The culprit is a compound called glycyrrhizin, which is what gives licorice its sweet flavor.

Book a hotel room with a boo!

If you’re thinking of avoiding the trick or treaters at your door by spending Halloween in a hotel, be ready to sleep with one eye open. Hotels, lodges and B&Bs around the country are offering spooky packages that may include ghostly gifts, complimentary costumes and scary surprises.

                           13th floor special
The Renaissance New York Times Square and Madame Tussauds are offering a “Dare to Check-In” Halloween package that includes an after dark VIP tour of Madame Tussauds New York and a stay in a 13^th floor suite decked out with scary wax figures, a séance setup, over-the-top spooky décor and special effects that follow guests into the shower. The price may be the scariest detail of all: $5,000 per night during Halloween weekend. Many Renaissance hotels outside New York City are offering less-expensive Dare to Check-In packages that include a stay in a 13th floor room, ghoulish cocktails and goodie bags filled with treats.

                                                      Bed down with the Bordens   
The restored Fall River, Mass., home where an infamous, ax-wielding Lizzie Borden may – or may not – have brutally killed her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, is now a six-room bed & breakfast offering tours in the daytime and spooky stays at night. Guests may choose from bedrooms that include those once occupied by Lizzie or her parents. Those who make it through the night are served a breakfast much like the one Andrew and Abby Borden ate on their last morning.                  Go here for more examples

Time to walk on down the road…