The Feds' War on ... Buckyballs!



It's come to this: In the name of protecting parents from their own lack of responsibility and common sense, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is waging all-out war on an innovative consumer product company in New York.

The vengeful, destructive feds won't stop until the world is safe from tiny, magnetic Buckyballs -- and until every last job created by the firm is wiped out.

Where are the defenders of American innovation and entrepreneurship when you need them? While the White House doles out billions of taxpayer dollars to failed crony ventures, this phenomenally successful toy maker is fighting for its life.

Last week, the agency filed an "administrative complaint" against the manufacturer/distributor of Buckyballs and Buckycubes, New York-based Maxfield and Oberton Holdings LLC. The legal action -- only the second of its kind in 11 years -- seeks to stop all sales of Buckyballs products, force a recall and order full refunds. According to the bureaucrats, "dozens of young children and teenagers swallowed" the adult desk toy, causing "internal injuries requiring surgeries."

A dozen swallowing incidents have been linked by the CPSC to Buckyballs since 2009. Compare that to the estimated 30,000 emergency room visits that occur every year as a result of children swallowing government-minted coins.

There are no fewer than five cautionary labels on every Buckyballs or Buckycubes product box; the company distributes an educational video on the dangers of swallowing the toys. And Maxfield and Oberton has cooperated with the government on safety policy since its inception.

Yet, several feckless retailers (including Brookstone, Amazon and Urban Outfitters) under the regulatory gun have already yanked the magnets from their virtual and physical shelves despite the company's clear warnings that Buckyballs and Buckycubes are for adults -- not children.

"Obviously the bureaucrats see danger everywhere, and those responsible people -- like our company who have vigorously promoted safety and appropriate use of our products -- gets put out of business by an unfair and arbitrary process," Craig Zucker, founder and CEO of Maxfield and Oberton, said in a statement.

Obama's big-business pals sit on do-nothing jobs councils and host countless dog-and-pony shows touting their commitment to "Startup America." But when a 3-year-old startup that has earned $50 million in sales all on its own faces ruthless bureaucratic extinction, the government jobs blowhards are nowhere to be found.

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Hunter-gatherers, Westerners use same amount of energy, contrary to theory

Modern lifestyles are generally quite different from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, a fact that some claim as the cause of the current rise in global obesity, but new results published July 25 in the open access journal PLoS ONE find that there is no difference between the energy expenditure of modern hunter-gatherers and Westerners, casting doubt on this theory.

The research team behind the study, led by Herman Pontzer of Hunter College in New York City, along with David Raichlen of the University of Arizona and Brian M. Wood of Stanford measured daily energy expenditure (calories per day) among the Hadza, a population of traditional hunter-gatherers living in the open savannah of northern Tanzania. Despite spending their days trekking long distances to forage for wild plants and game, the Hadza burned no more calories each day than adults in the U.S. and Europe. The team ran several analyses accounting for the effects of body weight, body fat percentage, age, and gender. In all analyses, daily energy expenditure among the Hadza hunter-gatherers was indistinguishable from that of Westerners. The study was the first to measure energy expenditure in hunter-gatherers directly; previous studies had relied entirely on estimates.

These findings upend the long-held assumption that our hunter-gatherer ancestors expended more energy than modern populations, and challenge the view that obesity in Western populations results from decreased energy expenditure. Instead, the similarity in daily energy expenditure across a broad range of lifestyles suggests that habitual metabolic rates are relatively constant among human populations. This in turn supports the view that the current rise in obesity is due to increased food consumption, not decreased energy expenditure.

The authors emphasize that physical exercise is nonetheless important for maintaining good health. In fact, the Hadza spend a greater percentage of their daily energy budget on physical activity than Westerners do, which may contribute to the health and vitality evident among older Hadza. Still, the similarity in daily energy expenditure between Hadza hunter-gatherers and Westerners suggests that we have more to learn about human physiology and health, particularly in non-Western settings.

"These results highlight the complexity of energy expenditure. It's not simply a function of physical activity," says Pontzer. "Our metabolic rates may be more a reflection of our shared evolutionary past than our diverse modern lifestyles."

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