• Eat more of these, Ohioans!

Yesterday, the nonprofit United Health Foundation released its annual America’s Health Rankings, and the news for Ohio isn’t so good. We ranked 36th in the country, down from 33rd last year. The percentage of people who smoke, which has been shrinking in the last decade, showed an uptick from 20.3% to 22.5%. Child poverty increased in a year from 18.7% to 22.9%, while the number of uninsured jumped from 11.0% to 13.7%. Now 10.1% of adults have diabetes compared to 7.7% five years ago. And in ten years, the rate of obesity expanded (along with waistlines) from 21.5% to 29.7%. That’s a lot of buffalo wings.

At least our Asian population is healthy, with rates of obesity, smoking and diabetes under 10%. Unfortunately, they comprise only about 1.5% of Ohio’s population.

The study also rates such factors as high school graduation, violent crimes, occupational fatalites, air pollution, prenatal care, infant mortality, and public health funding. Ohioans manage not to kill themselves on the job very often — we rank 8th in that statistic. But we come in 48th in air quality and 47th in the amount of money allocated for public health funding. And it’s depressing to note that, while our legislators are holding hearings on several abortion bills today, Ohio ranks 29th in early prenatal care and 39th in infant mortality.

If you’re trying to decide where to move and where not to move to stay healthy, Vermont is the country’s healthiest state — all the New England states were in the top ten — and Mississippi is its least healthy. Most southern states did poorly, making up most of the bottom ten. — Anastasia Pantsios

Now that conservative Republicans control all of state government, Ohio progressives are fighting back. Janetta King, former policy aide to Governor Ted Strickland, has launched a think tank called Innovation Ohio to be a public voice for progressives in state policy debates. The group was announced at a press conference in Columbus today.

Like the conservative Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Innovation Ohio will commission reports from experts to shore up their positions on issues like education, the economy, health care, and the environment. While the Buckeye Institute, formed in 1994, describes itself as “Ohio’s premier free market think tank,” Innovation Ohio will be “sort of the obverse side of the Buckeye Institute,” says Innovation Ohio spokesman Dale Butland, a former press secretary for Senator John Glenn.

“We are nonpartisan, but we will take a progressive point of view,” he says. “Our primary constituency is the middle class and the disadvantaged. If economic hard times require sacrifice, we believe the sacrifice has to be equally shared. As far as we can tell, the wealthy have not sacrificed.”

• All this in one F150

If you're hauling close to a half-ton of marijuana up from Mexico, here are a few tips:

1. Don't start off by loading it into a vehicle with a cracked windshield.
2. Once on the road, don't follow the car in front of you too closely.
3. For crying out loud, don't keep a giant bundle of the stuff on the seat next to you.

Mexican native Lazaro Montoya, 29, did all of those things.

• An average urine collector

Nothing against a healthy fetish or two, but when a judge has to name a brand new charge—that of "urine collector," for example — just for you, it might be a signal that you shouldn't take your preoccupation to the next level, particularly if minors are involved. But a 59-year-old Dublin, OH man didn't take it that way.

Back in 2008, Alan David Paton spent the mazimum 60 days in jail for criminal mischief after attempting to collect urine in the restroom at an area sports park. In October 2010, he did it again, this time at a Burger King. And yesterday he was convicted of criminal mischief for the second time.

The Columbus Dispatch did its best to explain Patton's collecting methods but there is plenty left to the imagination as far as the details.

Solon is having a hell of a time deciding how best to kill its extra deer. A previous sharpshooting project rid the city of about 600 Bambi-types in the first year but didn’t have the desired result. Vehicle-deer collisions went up from 45 to 64.

Citing budget problems, city council decided to phase out the sharpshooting program and instead thought they would try out a little crossbow hunting. Themselves.

According to Sun News, several city officials were eager to become one of the six to 10 “experienced crossbow hunters” needed for the small-scale deer-harvesting event, which would not be open to hunters from the general public.

This idea didn’t go over well at all with the Solon citizenry.

• Spisak, back in the day

Yep, the bell tolled for Frank Spisak at 10:34 this morning. Last night he had spaghetti with a light tomato sauce, salad with Italian dressing, and chocolate cake. We wonder if it was German chocolate cake.

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It appears that Frank Spisak, the neo-Nazi who shot and killed three people at Cleveland State in 1982, will be executed in a few minutes. The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday rejected his appeal claiming that the state’s capital punishment law is unconstitutional. The high court offered no comment on the appeal.

The Cleveland State killing spree was part of a long shooting campaign of Spisak’s that targetted blacks.

Spisak intends to spend his last moments in true Neo-Nazi style.