Cutting Monster Pumpkins Down To Size

The Skinny is Keach Hagey's take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.

The Wall Street Journal reports that cross-breeding and better growing techniques have created a new variety of "monster pumpkins." They're called Atlantic Giants and are rapidly approaching a ton in weight. This year, the plumpest winner of the backyard pumpkin growing contests came in at 1,689 pounds.

And like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, these things are ugly.

So they've created a new niche for sculptors - giving them facelifts. As more super-gourds become available each year, giant-pumpkin carvers are in demand at zoos, shopping malls, casinos and botanical gardens. They come armed with chisels and power tools, ready to game the "gargantuan, gnarly and lopsided freaks of nature."

The Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas hired one. He got paid $1,500 a day to transform the gourds into sculpted vistas of corn and leaves and wheat for the casino.

Another, who specializes in etching portraits onto his pumpkins, has been fielding a growing number of requests to do the faces of brides and grooms. "It's a new concept in wedding portraiture," he said.

But there's one big catch: Pumpkins rot. One pumpkin carver, noting that a spoiled pumpkin smelled "like a rotting beaver on the highway," has developed his own embalming process made of antibacterial soap, bleach and Tilex bathroom cleaner. "Most people have no idea what goes into carving a giant pumpkin," he said.

Most people, I would venture to guess, didn't even know there was such thing to carve in the first place.

Unregulated Chinese Chemicals Flow Into World Drug Market

Here's another scary story to start your Halloween off right.

An investigative report by the New York Times found that scores of Chinese chemical companies who are totally unregulated by the Chinese government are able to get their drug ingredients onto the international market - and thereby, into Americans' bodies - by selling them at trade shows and on the Internet.

Mad (and, occasionally, criminally charged) scientists were doing the Monster Mash this month at the world's biggest pharmaceutical ingredients trade show in Milan.

In one corner, there was Honor International Pharmtech, accused of shipping counterfeit drugs into the U.S. in January. In another was the booth reserved by Orient Pacific International, a chemical company whose owner was unable to attend the festivities because he was in a Houston jail on charges of selling counterfeit medicine for schizophrenia, prostate cancer, blood clots and Alzheimer's disease. Also attending were two exporters owned by China's government that had sold poison mislabeled as a drug ingredient, which killed nearly 200 people and injured countless others in Haiti and Panama.

Trick or treat, indeed.

This motley crew points to a deeper problem, according to the Times: Pharmaceutical ingredients exported from China are often made by chemical companies that are neither certified nor inspected by the Chinese drug regulators.

That's because in China, chemical manufacturers that sell drug ingredients fall into a regulatory hole. Pharmaceutical companies are regulated by the food and drug agencies. But chemical companies that make products as varied as fertilizer and chemical solvents are regulated by other agencies. Chinese officials have known about the regulatory gap since the mid-1990s, when the deaths in Haiti happened. But so far the Times says they've "failed to co-operate to stop chemical companies from exporting drug products."

The substandard drugs made from these ingredients often end up in pharmacies in developing countries and for sale on the Internet, the paper reports, where Americans are turning for cheap drugs.

AOL Launches Online Equivalent Of "Do Not Call List"

Do you find it unsettling when Amazon.com recommends a book to you that's open on your nightstand? Or when Gmail scans your email negotiations with a friend over where to make restaurant reservations, and then helpfully pitches you some diet tips?

For those who feel more "hand of Big Brother" than "personalized touch" in such advertising, today should be a historic day. The New York Times reports that the AOL division of Time Warner will announce a new do-not-track list, which will help shield users' Web surfing habits from the prying eyes of marketers.

AOL says it is setting up a new Web site that will link consumers to opt-out lists run by the largest advertising networks. The site's technology will ensure that people's preferences do not get erased later, the paper reports.

But there is, naturally, a catch. The AOL site will try to persuade people that they should choose to share some personal data in order to get pitches for products they might like.

Most Web sites already collect data about users and send them to advertisers. AOL is just "choosing to become more open about the practice" and will run - what else? - advertisements about it in the coming months.

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