seattle

A recent poll shows Tampa is the most caffeinated city in the United States. In the study, the Florida city is closely followed by Seattle, birthplace of the coffeehouse culture and coffee titan Starbucks, with Chicago placing third. Rounding out the top five are the top two most populated US cities, New York and Los Angeles. The poll looked at all caffeine consumption, including coffee, tea, energy drinks, chocolate, soda, pain relievers, and caffeine pills. The firm that conducted the study, Prince Market Research, also generated a list of the least caffeinated cities in America. The sleepiest city turned out to be the California twin cities area of Riverside/San Bernardino, followed by Atlanta, San Diego, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Dallas. Overall, 49 percent of all people surveyed said they drink caffeinated coffee on a daily basis. A surprising 20 percent admitted to drinking cola every day, tied with tea.

I'm taken aback to hear this, since everybody — from friends to people I pass on the street — seems to be more tired and less wired these days. What do you think of these numbers?

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When people live somewhere as naturally beautiful as the Pacific Northwest, I imagine they stop at no limits to help keep their environment clean and green. The University of Washington has banished all things plastic from its dining hall, opting for serving products that can be tossed directly into a compost pile.

The cups, containers, plates, and utensils are made of corn, reed work, and sugar cane. Sweet! The "silverware" wasn't so hot at first. Not only did it break down in the soil, it broke down in warm dishes like soup, too. But a year and a half after it began the creative-green initiative, the campus found a product that gets the job done.

Seattle should thank the University of Washington for the trial-and-error success because starting Jan. 1, all food establishments in the city will have to stop using foam, and by July 2010 all plastic must be substituted with recyclable or compostable containers. Sounds like hometown-company Starbucks has to rethink its lids!

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An usher at a Seattle Mariners baseball game asked a lesbian couple to stop kissing because it was making another fan uncomfortable. I didn't know ushers were PDA police!

A woman in the audience asked the stadium official to interrupt the romance because there were kids at the game. The Mariners responded to the controversy, stating the usher intervened on account of the team's no-groping, no-making out rule, not because of their sexual orientation. The team's spokeswoman maintained that the couple was told they could continue to kiss, but they had to tone it down.

But the women deny they were getting touchy feely, saying that they just gave each other brief kisses while enjoying garlic fries. The garlic fry detail sort of makes their not-making out story more believable.

If there is a double standard, I'm not sure where it applies. Would a spectator complain, and an usher interrupt, if the pair was not gay? Does political correctness dictate that these women be allowed to violate the stadium's code of conduct otherwise applied to straight couples? Why are public displays of affection (gay or straight) inappropriate for a family environment?

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A mentally ill man who shot three people at a music festival in the Pacific Northwest last week had obtained his weapon with a valid concealed weapon permit. A bullet from his Glock 19 handgun hit three victims last Saturday while Grainger was fighting another man. The bullet passed through a man's nose, another's wrist, finally ending up in a woman's leg.

22-year-old Clinton C. Grainger suffers from anxiety and schizophrenia and has been receiving treatment for a meth addiction since he was 18. Grainger's issues did show up as disqualifying conditions when he applied for a gun permit in January 2007. A mental illness diagnosis alone is not enough to restrict a citizen's right to bear arms under Washington state and US federal law.

To find out what federal law is regarding mental illness and gun permits, read more

At least four large homes are currently on fire in the "Street of Dreams" model home development near Seattle this morning. The fires are considered suspicious as they were set in multiple places in each of the separate homes.

Fire officials say that a sign saying ELF was found at the scene. ELF stands for the Earth Liberation Front, and they have claimed responsibility for other arson attacks, including one at the University of Washington in 2001.

The Pacific Northwest just got a little bit sweeter. At least, the Puget Sound did. After weeks of holiday baking and eating, Researchers at the University of Washington are stating that the Puget Sound is now being flavored by cinnamon and vanilla.

Keil and UW researcher Jacquelyn Neibauer's weekly tests of treated sewage sent into the sound from the West Point treatment plant in Magnolia showed cinnamon, vanilla and artificial vanilla levels rose between Nov. 14 and Dec. 9, with the biggest spike right after Thanksgiving.

Using benchmarks from a published scientific study, they were able to estimate that people in Seattle and a few outlying areas served by the sewage plant scarfed down the daily equivalent of about 160,000 butter- or chocolate-chip-type cookies and about 80,000 cookies containing cinnamon during the Thanksgiving weekend.

So far, there's no evidence that the abundance of vanilla is taking its toll on any sea creatures, but who's to say that it won't. Does this mean that vanilla salmon will be the new hot trend in 2007? I suppose if all of the coffee that made its way to the Puget Sound had little effect on the fish, hopefully vanilla won't either.

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