Flavor and packaging break new ground, yet again, at Philip Morris with the introductory promotion of the latest menthol from Marlboro's line of 21st-century smokes: Marlboro 54s. The boldest new twist on the minty madness of smoking pleasure is more boldly displayed in the shiny forest green, golden-edged Flip-Top box of 20 Class A cigarettes than in the not-so-new taste.

(I wonder whether the Marlboro Man's been moonlighting with Cover Girl, in a kind of clandestine balcony tryst, exchanging color codes. Look how deeply the bold green sheen of the newest menthol grit in the Philip Morris line resembles the similarly-opaque quality of a well-painted set of acrylics!)

Unlike Marlboro Smooths, however, the 54s don't bring a stark change in the menthol mania; it's just another menthol, really. For menthol lovers, that's enough. We menthol maniacs are just happy to have more variety, and if there is anything to be said for the packaging, then the saying might be “the proof's in the package” (not the pudding, of course, because pudding has not been considered as any kind of additive to the present additives!).

As I have obviously digressed into the sweet nothingness of absent pudding, I may as well announce to my faithful following that I have officially and formally become a real quitter! Only smokers can claim, with any veritable hubris, that it is indeed admirable to be a quitter. Finally. After all my greatest failures as a human being, I can proudly (if not profitably, amid the rising costs of maintaining one's worst habits) quit something! The one time in my life when my dad would have been proud of me for quitting. Almost guilt-free!

The only guilt I suffer for becoming a quitter, at this point, extends to the retailers I hounded mercilessly for more product when the promos ran out! Just a couple weeks ago, two outlets owned locally by Griffin's made sure to stock certain lines of Marlboro, Body Shots, and Camel Snus because I made so much noise about the empty trays of my favorite addictive goodies.

Any success Marlboro 54s may gain remains to be seen because the effective promotions offered by the cigarette companies beat all coupons one may receive online or via snail mail. When those promotional periods end, I stop buying the product-no matter how good it tastes. The real success of a new product, lies in the demand maintained after the promo ends.

That is the deciding factor.

Will anyone buy the new Marlboro 54s when the price puffs up to the $4-per-pack, tax-laden rip-off level that will soon hamper all cigarette sales? Will the Snus sell when the price skyrockets back to the ridiculous $3.89 mark for 15 pouches of smokeless, spit-free nicotine-saturated gold?

Dunno. I quit.

The tobacco in cigarettes hosts a bacterial bonanza — literally hundreds of different germs, including those responsible for many human illnesses, a new study finds.

“Nearly every paper that you pick up discussing the health effects of cigarettes starts out with something to the effect that smokers and people exposed to secondhand smoke experience high rates of respiratory infections,” notes Amy Sapkota of the University of Maryland, College Park. The presumption has been that smoking renders people vulnerable to disease by impairing lung function or immunity. And it may well do both.

“But nobody talks about cigarettes as a source of those infections,” she says. Her new data now suggest that’s distinctly possible.

If these germs are alive, something she has not yet confirmed, just handling cigarettes or putting an unlit one to the mouth could be enough to cause an infection.

The idea that tobacco might contain viable germs isn’t just idle conjecture. Several research teams have isolated bacteria from tobacco that they could grow out in petri dishes. Those earlier investigations tended to hunt for — and, when found, attempted to grow — only one or two species of interest, Sapkota says.

What’s novel in her study: She and her colleagues probed for genetic material from any and every bacterium in a cigarette’s tobacco. Under sterile conditions, the researchers opened up cigarettes and then performed a series of tests on the leafy bits. For instance, they isolated all of the ribosomal material and then homed in on its long, species-specific stretches known as 16S regions. These genetic segments were then compared to 16S patches characteristic of known bacterial species.

Sapkota’s team had 16S probes for close to 800 different bacteria and found matches to many hundreds in the four brands of cigarettes screened: Marlboro Red, Camel, Kool Filter Kings and Lucky Strike Original Red. These cigarettes are “among the most commonly smoked brands in Westernized countries and represent three major tobacco companies,” Sapkota notes. All were purchased in Lyon, France, where she was completing her postdoctoral studies.

Among the large number of germs whose DNA laced these cigarettes were: Campylobacter, which can cause food poisoning and Guillain-Barre Syndrome; Clostridium, which causes food poisoning and pneumonias; Corynebacterium, also associated with pneumonias and other diseases; E. coli; Klebsiella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, all of which are associated not only with pneumonia but also with urinary tract infections; and a number of Staphylococcus species that underlie the most common and serious hospital-associated infections.

Sapkota’s team lists many of these — including the most prevalent bacteria in the tobacco they studied — in a paper published early, online in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Some people have criticized the idea of infectious cigarettes, arguing that as tobacco burns, it would kill any germs present. But Sapkota is not so sure that’s true. The tobacco farthest from the burning tip might be a balmy temperature, from a bacterial point of view. And here’s “a really wild idea,” she says: What if the smoke particles traveling through the still-unburned part of a cigarette pick up some germs and then ferry them deeply into the lung, where they’re unlikely to be cleared? Wouldn’t that be the prescription for disease?

Of course, there’s also plenty of chances for a smoker to become exposed prior to lighting up. And, of course, the potential for highest oral exposure would come from chewing tobacco — and nasal exposures from snuff.

Sapkota, an environmental health scientist, plans to follow up her preliminary data to see which types of tobacco are most likely to host viable germs, and whether those bacteria are transported into the body, either during smoking or by the insertion of unburned tobacco products (including chewing tobacco) into the mouth.

Several thousand potentially toxic chemicals have been isolated from cigarettes. Sapkota says that it’s not hard to imagine that the number of germs hosted by tobacco products could rival that of the carcinogens and other poisons residing in or produced by burning tobacco.

How so, when she’s only found genetic material indicting hundreds of germs? Owing to the bacterial probes available when Sapkota began her tobacco work, she was only able to screen for 700-odd species. But newer probes on the market can now screen for the bacterial 16S genetic material of 5,000 or more germs. And if she used such huge batteries of probes now, she said she fully expects she could turn up at least 1,000 hitchhiking bacterial species in tobacco products.

Image: Flickr/alphadesigner

See Also:

• The Cigarette of the Future: All the Cancer, None of the Nicotine
• Philip Morris Tries to Engineer the Cancer Out of Tobacco
• Toxic Soup: Plastics Could Be Leaching Chemicals Into Ocean
• Anti-Smoking Drug Succeeds When Antidepressants Fail
• Darker Skin Linked to Nicotine Dependence
• The Inevitable USB Powered Cigarette

You wouldn’t think it would be worth the bother of trademarking her nickname, given the fact that about 13 of Nicole Snooki Polizzi’s 15-minutes are already over. The tiny reality star is following in the footsteps of fellow Jersey Shore castmate, The Situation (whose only situation seems to be a limited vocabulary).

Snooki has filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. She wants to gain the sole right to use the nickname Snooki, as she claims she will use the name for two purposes; for entertainment-related personal appearances, and on printed matter (namely books). I think a Colouring In With Snooki book would be a great idea, and I have no idea why she didn’t think of it sooner. Who this clown thinks will buy her book is beyond me, but she is going to try to make her claim anyway. The 22-year-old reality star paid $650 for the claim, submitted by an intellectual property lawyer with Buffalo-based firm Phillips Lytle.

Below are the SmokingGun.com February 7, 2010-filed Marlboro, New York, resident’s U.S. Patent and Trademark Office application documents.

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Introduction: Not all photos turn out perfect, even ask the experts. This is only one aspect of photo editing, and a simple one at that, perfect for any Photoshop beginner, or if you want to learn more techniques and tricks in this program. In this Photoshop tutorial, you'll learn how to brighten and whiten teeth to create the perfect, bright, and white smile on any portrait.

Step One: Open up your photo that you want to work on as a canvas in Photoshop. It's best to open it up as JPEG format usually. You can use a photo that's in color or in black and white. Make sure that enough of the teeth in the photo are clearly visible, otherwise you'll end up editing wrong areas. It's best to work with a portrait usually since the teeth can be a main focal point.

Step Two: Locate the dodge tool on the vertical menu bar. This is the main tool you'll use to create the perfect and beautiful smile on your photo. The dodge tool simply makes any part of the photo brighter.

Step Three: On the brush drop down menu, choose a “fuzzy” brush, if you work with a solid brush, the edges of where the brush didn' go over will be clearly visible, which isn't a good thing. Choose one that is an accurate size to work with. If your photo is larger, you'll need a larger brush. My image was originally 600×800 and I worked with a 14 pixel brush because it's size worked best for my photo.

Step Four: Select Midtones and a 50% exposure. This will be bright, but not too bright. Never start out with 100% exposure.

Step Five: Now go over the teeth with the dodge tool nice and evenly. If the teeth start to look too white, go back a step and drop down the exposure to about 30% or so. If you need to adjust the setting again, do so appropriately.

Step Six: After you've gone over the teeth, make sure they look even without any awkward spots or uneven areas.

Step Seven: Use the desaturation tool to edit out any highly saturated spots. Use a fuzzy brush with a 2 pixel radius and at about 25%. Saturated areas are speckles of bright colors.

After that you're done! Sometimes it takes a few tries to get the whiteness and brightness just right. Remember, the teeth should not be freakishly bright, but natural.

Important: Still using Acrobat or Reader 7?

Adobe no longer supports or patches for Acrobat/Reader 7 and earlier.

These versions and all previous versions are missing critical updates and users are recommended to upgrade.

For more information, see Adobe Support Policies.

NOTE: As described in Adobe's Supported Product Versions, Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.x and Adobe Reader 7.x support ended on December 28, 2009.

Read on to learn more about why it is important to keep Acrobat up to date.

Why Keep Acrobat Up-to-date?

Adobe Reader and Acrobat are an interesting target to hackers in some ways. These products have some browser-like capabilities, connect to the internet and interact with the file system.

I've previously written about how Acrobat can be extended via JavaScript to add all sorts of new capabilities. Indeed, there are a great many customers who take advantage of this.

Unfortunately, JavaScript can be used in some malicious ways. Hackers try to embed JavaScript in a document which could deliver a malicious payload.

To help you keep your software up to date, the Adobe Updater periodically checks with our servers and alerts you if a new update is available. You can also check yourself at any time by choosing Help—> Check for Updates.

It is alarming to me how many customers I talk to do not keep Acrobat up to date.

Quite simply, not patching is bad. You put you, your clients and your organization at risk by not keeping your software up to date.

Security Alerts

If you are in IT or just curious, you can sign up for the Adobe Security Notification Service.
The Adobe Security Notification Service is a free e-mail notification service that Adobe uses to send information to you about the security of Adobe products. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Security Blogs

Adobe has several Security-related blogs which are interesting reads, especially if you are on the geeky side.

The Security Matters Blog offers general insights about Adobe products and security.

The Adobe Reader Blog often covers security topics and will definitely be of interest to IT folks who deploy Reader.

Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has a blog that covers security across all Adobe products or interactions with operating systems and other tools.

Earlier this week, Adobe updated both Acrobat and Reader to versions 8.2 and 9.3. These updates offer major security features and are recommended for all users.

In a security bulletin released on Tuesday, Adobe cites “critical vulnerabilities” that could crash your apps or “…potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.” Definitely something you'll want to avoid. They recommend that anyone using version 9.2 and earlier update to Adobe Reader 9.3 and Acrobat 9.3 right away. Likewise, those using Acrobat 8.1.7 should update to version 8.2.

You can get all of the details and downloads from Adobe here. Get patching, folks. You'll want these older versions off of your Macs. As usual, we ask that you let us know if anything goes wonky after updating.

[Via PC Magazine]
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Digital Cameras have really changed the way people record and share their photographs. Today, we'll talk about how to make pictures from your digital camera web or email ready using Adobe Photoshop.We'll crop an image, resize it, and save it in a format optimized for the web and email.

An image from a camera can be quite large, however, making it less than ideal to email or post to a web site. For example, the picture I used in this tutorial is 792 kilobyte's, or about 8/10th of a megabyte, and takes up 2288 x 1712 pixels. With an average computer screen displaying only 1024 x 768, someone opening this image as-is would have to scroll to see the whole image.

For this tutorial,. I'm using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 running on a Mac with OS 10. If you have another version of Photoshop or run a system with windows, don't worry…the basics will be pretty much the same, so this should still be a useful tutorial for you.

Now, let's get started. First, open the file in Photoshop.

First, we'll crop the image to frame it more effectively. In this image, I want to cut out as much of extraneous items in the image, but keep the main subject.

To do this, select what is called the “rectangular marquee tool”, which is the upper left of the tool palette, and looks like a rectangle with a dotted border.

Now, click and hold the mouse button down and select the area of the photograph you'd like to keep. When you release the mouse button, a rectangle with dotted lines will appear around your selection.

Next, to go the “image” menu and select “crop”. The image is reduced to just your selection.

Now, we'll resize the image to make it easier to email or display in a web page. Go to the “image” menu again and select “image size”. Make sure that “constrain proportions” is checked, as this will maintain the ratio of width and height in your image as you resize it.

Look at the numbers in the height and width boxes in the window. Change the larger of the two to a much smaller number, such as 600 pixels. Notice that the other number automatically changes because we checked off “constrain proportions”.

The image now looks much smaller on the screen. You'll notice that the image is being displayed at only one third it's actual size. To show the image at it's true size, double click on the “Zoom Tool” in the lower right of the tool palette, which looks like a magnifying glass.

Next, we'll save the image in a format that is ideal for posting to the web or emailing.

In the “File” menu, select “Save for Web”. The “save for web” window appears. Under the settings to the right of your image, select JPEG and maximum. Notice at the bottom of the window that it shows you the type of image you selected, the file size of the new image, and approximately how long it would take to download the image on a 28.8 modem. Click the “Save” button, name your image, and click save again.

You now have an image that is cropped to look better, and is ready to email or post to the web at about 10% of the original file size.

Important: Still using Acrobat or Reader 7?

Adobe no longer supports or patches for Acrobat/Reader 7 and earlier.

These versions and all previous versions are missing critical updates and users are recommended to upgrade.

For more information, see Adobe Support Policies.

NOTE: As described in Adobe's Supported Product Versions, Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.x and Adobe Reader 7.x support ended on December 28, 2009.

Read on to learn more about why it is important to keep Acrobat up to date.

Why Keep Acrobat Up-to-date?

Adobe Reader and Acrobat are an interesting target to hackers in some ways. These products have some browser-like capabilities, connect to the internet and interact with the file system.

I've previously written about how Acrobat can be extended via JavaScript to add all sorts of new capabilities. Indeed, there are a great many customers who take advantage of this.

Unfortunately, JavaScript can be used in some malicious ways. Hackers try to embed JavaScript in a document which could deliver a malicious payload.

To help you keep your software up to date, the Adobe Updater periodically checks with our servers and alerts you if a new update is available. You can also check yourself at any time by choosing Help—> Check for Updates.

It is alarming to me how many customers I talk to do not keep Acrobat up to date.

Quite simply, not patching is bad. You put you, your clients and your organization at risk by not keeping your software up to date.

Security Alerts

If you are in IT or just curious, you can sign up for the Adobe Security Notification Service.
The Adobe Security Notification Service is a free e-mail notification service that Adobe uses to send information to you about the security of Adobe products. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Security Blogs

Adobe has several Security-related blogs which are interesting reads, especially if you are on the geeky side.

The Security Matters Blog offers general insights about Adobe products and security.

The Adobe Reader Blog often covers security topics and will definitely be of interest to IT folks who deploy Reader.

Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has a blog that covers security across all Adobe products or interactions with operating systems and other tools.

January 28, 2010

Free eSeminars: Learn Acrobat Online

The always suave Mark Middleton and I will be hitting the "interwebz" for a series of educational eSeminars over next few months.

Not all of these eSeminars are legal-specific, but many of them offer content that may be of interest.

• All eSeminars are FREE
• 1-hour long
• Register Online for as many as you want

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My second cigarette review has to of course go to the first brand of cigarettes I have ever smoked in my life. Marlboro Light 100's.

I was 18, and for some reason (on my birthday of course) I figured I was old enough to make my own choices…for my birthday I wanted a cigarette. I went into my moms purse (bad teen! Bad teen!) and removed one long Marlboro Light.

I went outside and lit up. The smoke at first was a bit harsh, but 4 puffs later my head was spinning! I felt high! This felt good! No stresses! I was hooked from that day on. The high feeling I got from my very first cigarette though never happened again.

I continued smoking the cigarettes for nearly 4 years, until they went and changed the cigarettes paper.

I was happy with my ciggs, up until one day I bought a fresh pack, and lit one up. The cigarette was not burning right. It was ashing off in odd places, the head of the cigarette would fall into my lap at times burning me, and the paper would burn and flake off causing multiple burns.

I had to change my brand, all because of this new paper concept. This paper concept that was supposed to be safer!? Hah!

Until I quit though I enjoyed every puff I ever inhaled. Marlboro Light 100's are light and puffy, the filter is soft, and collects harsh chemicals that would otherwise enter your lungs. -I know the filter does not do much for protecting you against lung cancer…but hey, at least it's there.

Anyway on to the actual cigarette…

Marlboro Light 100's have a smooth flavoring to them. There is no yucky after taste, and they are definitely different compared to the smaller packs. In my opinion the smaller Marlboro Light packs have a stronger more harsh after taste, so I prefer the longer smokes over the regular ones.

Recommendation:

Now although the cigarette has a nice light taste to them, I cannot recommend them only because they are still making them with this new paper that will flake off and burn you. Until they change the paper back to what it once was, I cannot recommend them. For me, they seem more dangerous than before, and I have been burnt many, many times till I finally switched brands.

-Cigarette smoking causes cancer and other health issues, and pregnant women should not smoke them. I feel I should add that in just because some prick may try and sue me.

-This review was intended for those who DO smoke and are looking to try out new brands. So negative comments are not necessary.

Packaging:

Marlboro Light 100's have the same design as Marlboro Reds, only the coloring is a metallic gold. You can buy them in hard packs or soft ones, the preference is yours.

Pricing:

A pack of Marlboro Light 100's will run you anywhere from $5.00 to $6.00 depending on where you live.

The tobacco in cigarettes hosts a bacterial bonanza — literally hundreds of different germs, including those responsible for many human illnesses, a new study finds.

“Nearly every paper that you pick up discussing the health effects of cigarettes starts out with something to the effect that smokers and people exposed to secondhand smoke experience high rates of respiratory infections,” notes Amy Sapkota of the University of Maryland, College Park. The presumption has been that smoking renders people vulnerable to disease by impairing lung function or immunity. And it may well do both.

“But nobody talks about cigarettes as a source of those infections,” she says. Her new data now suggest that’s distinctly possible.

If these germs are alive, something she has not yet confirmed, just handling cigarettes or putting an unlit one to the mouth could be enough to cause an infection.

The idea that tobacco might contain viable germs isn’t just idle conjecture. Several research teams have isolated bacteria from tobacco that they could grow out in petri dishes. Those earlier investigations tended to hunt for — and, when found, attempted to grow — only one or two species of interest, Sapkota says.

What’s novel in her study: She and her colleagues probed for genetic material from any and every bacterium in a cigarette’s tobacco. Under sterile conditions, the researchers opened up cigarettes and then performed a series of tests on the leafy bits. For instance, they isolated all of the ribosomal material and then homed in on its long, species-specific stretches known as 16S regions. These genetic segments were then compared to 16S patches characteristic of known bacterial species.

Sapkota’s team had 16S probes for close to 800 different bacteria and found matches to many hundreds in the four brands of cigarettes screened: Marlboro Red, Camel, Kool Filter Kings and Lucky Strike Original Red. These cigarettes are “among the most commonly smoked brands in Westernized countries and represent three major tobacco companies,” Sapkota notes. All were purchased in Lyon, France, where she was completing her postdoctoral studies.

Among the large number of germs whose DNA laced these cigarettes were: Campylobacter, which can cause food poisoning and Guillain-Barre Syndrome; Clostridium, which causes food poisoning and pneumonias; Corynebacterium, also associated with pneumonias and other diseases; E. coli; Klebsiella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, all of which are associated not only with pneumonia but also with urinary tract infections; and a number of Staphylococcus species that underlie the most common and serious hospital-associated infections.

Sapkota’s team lists many of these — including the most prevalent bacteria in the tobacco they studied — in a paper published early, online in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Some people have criticized the idea of infectious cigarettes, arguing that as tobacco burns, it would kill any germs present. But Sapkota is not so sure that’s true. The tobacco farthest from the burning tip might be a balmy temperature, from a bacterial point of view. And here’s “a really wild idea,” she says: What if the smoke particles traveling through the still-unburned part of a cigarette pick up some germs and then ferry them deeply into the lung, where they’re unlikely to be cleared? Wouldn’t that be the prescription for disease?

Of course, there’s also plenty of chances for a smoker to become exposed prior to lighting up. And, of course, the potential for highest oral exposure would come from chewing tobacco — and nasal exposures from snuff.

Sapkota, an environmental health scientist, plans to follow up her preliminary data to see which types of tobacco are most likely to host viable germs, and whether those bacteria are transported into the body, either during smoking or by the insertion of unburned tobacco products (including chewing tobacco) into the mouth.

Several thousand potentially toxic chemicals have been isolated from cigarettes. Sapkota says that it’s not hard to imagine that the number of germs hosted by tobacco products could rival that of the carcinogens and other poisons residing in or produced by burning tobacco.

How so, when she’s only found genetic material indicting hundreds of germs? Owing to the bacterial probes available when Sapkota began her tobacco work, she was only able to screen for 700-odd species. But newer probes on the market can now screen for the bacterial 16S genetic material of 5,000 or more germs. And if she used such huge batteries of probes now, she said she fully expects she could turn up at least 1,000 hitchhiking bacterial species in tobacco products.

Image: Flickr/alphadesigner

See Also:

• The Cigarette of the Future: All the Cancer, None of the Nicotine
• Philip Morris Tries to Engineer the Cancer Out of Tobacco
• Toxic Soup: Plastics Could Be Leaching Chemicals Into Ocean
• Anti-Smoking Drug Succeeds When Antidepressants Fail
• Darker Skin Linked to Nicotine Dependence
• The Inevitable USB Powered Cigarette

Welcome To The Thunder: This Is Your Hump-Day Trans-Am

Wednesdays suck. 1960s American muscle does not suck. Road racing does not suck. YouTube also does not suck. Can you see where we're going with this? In-car video of a 7500-rpm AMC Javelin and loud noises below. Eat me, Wednesday.

My dad is a funny guy. Because he and I both have weird work schedules, I'll often go a week or two without talking to him over the phone. We communicate a bit more regularly through email, but even then, it's limited to sporadic bursts of excellence: 500 words on why the much-abused BMW 2002 race car that we share needs more cam. Three paragraphs on the glory of Mark Donohue's The Unfair Advantage. Five sentences on how he needs to buy a Vincent Black Shadow and listen to more Richard Thompson while drinking small-batch bourbon. You get the picture.

Of all the things my dad geeks out on, the one subject he repeatedly comes back to is the original Trans-Am. (The racing series, not the Pontiac.) The Trans-American Sedan Championship of the 1960s and early 1970s is one of our shared touchstones, the kind of unspoken father-son weirdness that we both understand and never have to explain.

All of this is an elongated way of saying that, a few days ago, Dad sent me the clips below, along with a few appropriate comments (”Holy hell, Marlboro was tiny!“). For a number of different reasons, none of which I will bore you with, I absolutely hate Wednesdays. Maybe you do too. And maybe this will help.

Highlights: Peter Revson narrating a lap in his AMC Javelin. Someone saying “…the start, which is frequently a short run to disaster here.” At several points, you catch a glimpse of the all-conquering Penske/Sunoco Camaros. The oft-forgotten Dan Gurney/Swede Savage AAR Plymouth 'Cuda can be seen peeking its nose through the pack on a start. And Mark Donohue does heroic, Captain Nice Mark Donohue things.

Photo/Screencap Credit: Historic Trans-Am, Dave Friedman/DF Photo Services

Send an email to Sam Smith, the author of this post, at sam@jalopnik.com.

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