Bad Habits

Kaci DeWitt-Rickards remembers being a chunky kid with a steady diet of Burger King chicken tenders, vanilla milkshakes and Papa John's pizza. By her sophomore year in college at the University of Miami, her adolescent pudge had ballooned into a weight problem. The 5-foot-4 exercise physiology major hit her heaviest weight ever that fall in 2010, weighing in at 167 pounds. She felt bad about herself and didn't have a lot of energy. But most of all, she felt like a hypocrite as she studied for a career to help people stay fit. "If you're going to go out and teach a healthy lifestyle, you have to live it," DeWitt-Rickards remembers a professor saying that fall semester.

Well, I'll be. Here we are thrilled with the Soviet Union's glasnost, yet our current love affair with that nation may not mean much. We may blow it, as in smoke!Have you heard? We're sending our new friends a dangerous weapon. We are selling them cigarettes.The Wall Street Journal says the Soviets have said "Da" -- "yes" in Russian lingo -- to Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco Inc."To help alleviate the Soviet Union's worst cigarette shortage in decades, Philip Morris Cos. and RJR Nabisco Inc. have been asked by Moscow to supply 34 billion cigarettes, the largest export order in either company's history.

I need some help to break the disposable bag habit. I know those ubiquitous plastic grocery bags are a major source of litter on land and sea and that such debris can poison fish and choke wildlife. I've cringed at bags stuck in trees along the highway and twisted in tall grasses that line tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. Yet, a reusable cloth bag languishes in the back seat of my car, forgotten until it mocks me when I return from shopping carrying more of the wretched plastic things.

Perhaps government banning of sugary drinks oversteps. It is a meaningful effort to reduce the burden of obesity on everyone. One thing that has stood out in the debate over health care reform is repeated statements from health care consumers that they do not want to pay for the other guy's health problems. There is one sure way to get consumers on board with changes in habits and consumption and to take more responsibility in their lifestyle choices. Through the wallet. How about higher co-payments for folks whose BMI, which does not lie, is over the recommended goal?

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - For almost a half, Kyle Boller almost turned me into a believer. I was about to forgive him for his five previous years of bad football. I was going to forgive him for his fumble nearly midway through the first quarter and give praise to new offensive coordinator Cam Cameron for possibly turning Boller around in a short time. And then reality set in. With 6 minutes, 38 seconds left in the first half, Boller didn't see New England Patriots linebacker Shawn Crable, who stepped in front of intended receiver Adam Bergen and picked off the pass.

MIAMI -- As do a lot of computer users, Justin Hayes spends hours pounding the keyboard or gripping the mouse to finish assignments on time. And as do a lot of computer users, when he's been at it too long, his wrists and hands ache.Unlike most computer users with such aches and pains, Justin's just 17 years old. The high school senior from the Miami suburb of Kendall began using computers before he began first grade."If I have a paper to do, I'll do one to three hours of research on the Net, then a couple of hours of writing," he says.

Brenda Levinson came back from the spa a new woman. "I felt really healthy," says the teacher, 28, recalling the afterglow from a four-day getaway to Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires, in Lenox, Mass. Levinson, who braved the upscale retreat's rigorous fitness and nutrition programs with her mother, was in such fine fettle she had a hard time settling back into the sins of daily life. "A few days after, we went out to dinner with my father," she says. "It was this big Italian meal. My mother and I just looked at each other and looked at the food.

In a series of startling announcements last week, the managers of America's Big Three automakers conceded that a business model that had long produced enormous profits and sparked emulation around the world was no longer working. Facing billions in anticipated losses, GM and Ford executives announced sweeping layoffs of both production workers and managers and an array of plant closings, while DaimlerChrysler unveiled significant production cuts, with the declared intention of transforming their failing companies into smaller, more nimble organizations better able to compete for the dollars of increasingly fickle consumers.

No one can accuse David Read of being a slowpoke, although he certainly hopes that someone will one day.The 44-year-old pension consultant has an inch-thick folder of court papers documenting the many speeding tickets he has accumulated in several states during the past decade.This doesn't make him proud. "I am a responsible citizen otherwise. I don't cheat on my taxes. I don't kick my dog. But I am a lead-foot," he said.Although few can say they've never exceeded a speed limit, Read is among those drivers for whom speeding is a habit.

NEW YORK -- Nobody around the New York Yankees wants to say anything. Nobody wants to suggest that Don Mattingly, once considered the second coming of Stan Musial, now more closely resembles Mike Squires. Nobody wants to say that, least of all Mattingly.He speaks cordially about matters in general but has next to nothing to say about himself specifically. He retreats to his corner stall in the clubhouse, a celebrity corner occupied in years past by Sparky Lyle, Graig Nettles, Ron Guidry and Dave Righetti.