Obama’s tendency to pass the buck was one of the very first things I ever noticed about him. It’s one of his strongest and deepest character traits, and one of his least attractive. But apparently, it’s always worked for him.
For some reason, it all makes me think of this:
…than to ever ever ever post another thread that has anything whatsoever to do with dieting.
But I guess I just lack willpower :-), because I couldn’t resist this news [emphasis mine]:
Gwyneth Paltrow’s new cookery book will be based on the elimination diet, which she claims helped her shed lots of weight as well as feel more energetic at the same time.
You all remember, don’t you, back when Palrow was fat?
Neither do I.
But maybe to Paltrow, five pounds is “lots of weight.” Movie stars have different ways of measuring these things, and the demands made on them for leanness are quite extreme.
[NOTE: And since posts involving movie stars and weight seem to almost inevitably attract comments that mention Marilyn Monroe, I thought I’d finesse that by linking to this article of mine on the subject of Marilyn’s weight.]
(Hey, is that racist?)
The other day I was looking for some information about a certain passenger on one of the 9/11 flights that crashed. To find it, I Googled something like “passenger lists 9/11 flights,” thinking that would do the trick, and up popped this—link after link to 9/11-truther sites, with only a few links here and there featuring the straight information.
You have to get all the way to page 4 to find the Wiki links on the 9/11 airplanes, and even then that’s just a little blip in the cascade of 9/11-truther articles that follows. I got all the way to page 10 and still found that the truther links seemed to outnumber the bona fide ones on that page. Truther articles are either more numerous than the straight ones, or else they seem to be designed or promoted in some manner that raises their status on the Google algorithm.
Either way, the person seeking information about 9/11 passengers is now led through a labyrinth of truther lore, so much so that it overwhelms the search for the actual 9/11 story.
Sad, and telling.
I’m not sure who the average truther is (Wiki says their backgrounds are varied), but the ones I know (all two of them) are on the left. I’ve written before about the need to see conspiracies everywhere, but something about the 9/11-truthers—the weakness of their arguments, the intransigence of their beliefs, and the fact that they cannot accept what the 9/11 attacks meant and still mean—really gets my goat.
Truthers are numerous, too:
The first [poll] was conducted in August 2004, on the eve of a Republican National Convention, on 808 randomly selected residents of New York State. It found that 49 percent of New York City residents and 41 percent of New York state citizens believe individuals within the US government “knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act”. The margin of error for this poll was 3.5 percent…
Rasmussen Reports published the results of their poll May 4, 2007. According to their press release, “Overall, 22% of all voters believe the President knew about the attacks in advance. A slightly larger number, 29%, believe the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. White Americans are less likely than others to believe that either the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. Young Americans are more likely than their elders to believe the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance.”, “Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.” and “Republicans reject that view and, by a 7-to-1 margin, say the President did not know in advance about the attacks. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view.”…
It’s worldwide, too:
There’s no doubt that part of the reason for all of this is the tendency in human nature to doubt the official word and to try to get inside info, the “real” scoop on what happened. Still other motivations are the tendency to blame and distrust government. But there is also a specific motivation on the left: to blame Bush et. al. and to simultaneously exonorate the Islamacist terrorists who actually committed their vile deeds on 9/11. From the looks of it, the left has been rather successful in doing so.
It’s amazing that Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist managed to live past the year 1944, much less live long enough to die in his bed at the age of ninety.
A brave man and the last surviving member of the Valkyrie plot:
As a 22-year-old German army lieutenant, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist volunteered to wear a suicide vest to a meeting with Adolf Hitler and to blow himself up along with the Nazi dictator.
The assassination didn’t come to pass, but von Kleist went on to play a key role in the most famous attempt on Hitler later that same year, and was the last surviving member of the group of German officers who tried and failed to kill the Fuehrer on July 20, 1944…
Von Kleist came from quite a family, too:
Von Kleist’s father, Ewald von Kleist, was an early opponent of Hitler even before he came to power, and was arrested many times after the Nazi dictator took control in 1933. The elder von Kleist famously traveled to England in 1938, the year before World War II broke out, to try and determine whether other Western nations would support a coup attempt against Hitler, but failed to get the British government to change its policy of appeasement.
Despite his family’s opposition to the Nazis, younger von Kleist joined the German army in 1940, and was wounded in 1943 in fighting on the Eastern Front.
During his convalescence, he was approached in January 1944 by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, another officer from an aristocratic family, and presented with a plan to kill Hitler. Von Kleist had been chosen as the officer to model a new uniform for Hitler, and von Stauffenberg proposed that he wear a suicide vest underneath, and detonate it when he stood next to the dictator.
Years later von Kleist remembered explaining the suicide plot to his father, who paused only briefly before telling his 22-year-old son: “Yes, you have to do this.”
“Fathers love their sons and mine certainly did, and I had been quite sure he would say no,” von Kleist recalled. “But, as always, I had underestimated him.”
The suicide attack plan never came to fruition.
Months later, however, von Kleist was approached again by von Stauffenberg to take part in what would become known as the July 20 plot – for the day in 1944 that the assassination was attempted – which was brought to the big screen in 2008 in “Valkyrie,” starring Tom Cruise as von Stauffenberg.
Von Kleist was supposed to play a key role as the person who was to carry a briefcase packed with explosives to a meeting with Hitler. In a change of plans, however, von Stauffenberg decided to plant the bomb himself.
Von Stauffenberg placed the bomb in a conference room where Hitler was meeting with his aides and military advisers at his East Prussian headquarters. Hitler escaped the full force of the blast when someone moved the briefcase next to a table leg, deflecting much of the explosive force.
Von Kleist remained in Berlin, charged with overseeing the arrest of officers and officials loyal to Hitler in the city.
But when news spread that Hitler had survived, the plot crumbled and von Stauffenberg, von Kleist’s father, and scores of others were arrested and executed in an orgy of revenge killings. Some were hanged by the neck with piano wire. Von Stauffenberg was shot by firing squad.
Von Kleist himself was arrested, questioned at length by the Gestapo, and sent to a concentration camp, but then inexplicably let go and returned to combat duty.
Following the war, von Kleist founded the Ewald von Kleist publishing house, and became involved in public education on security issues and trans-Atlantic relations. In 1952 he founded the independent defense affairs association known as the Society for Military Studies, and the European Military Studies magazine in 1954.
His widow says he didn’t want “anything big” for a funeral.
[NOTE: I’ve written about the assassination attempts on Hitler before, here.]
[BUMPED UP once again, probably the last time for a while—although of course you don’t have to wait for me to pass the hat in order to donate.
And many many heartfelt thanks to all of you who’ve donated so far.]
I’m going to ask you again to use the “donate” button on the right sidebar beside the photo of the hat, and give whatever you see fit.
Every single donation— large or small—adds up, and helps me a great deal in continuing the blog. If each and every reader gave even a few dollars, it would be a glorious thing. But whether you decide to donate or not, please keep visiting and keep commenting. I appreciate all of you. Comments and readers are a very big part of what makes this blog work.
I thank you all in advance. I’ll probably repeat this notice every now and then, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat. But I’ll be discreet about it. And it’s a lot better than those fund-raising drives they have on TV, isn’t it? No interruption of the scheduled programming.
Of all the topics I habitually write about, the only posts that generate more flak than the ones on Israel are the ones on dieting and weight.
I’m not sure why that is. But I’ve observed a very marked tendency (and now I’m talking about people in general, not just on this blog) not only for strong disagreement on the mechanisms of overweight and the remedies that might be applied, but for highly disapproving moral judgments on overweight people.
And so I’m going to revisit part of a post I wrote last December on the subject (I also refer you to the comments on that thread, as well as the comments on this thread):
…]I]n a very narrow (pun intended) sense, fat people do take in more than they burn. But why? And how much is that? I know quite a few fat people who eat no more and are not less active than the thin people I know. I’ve lived with thin roommates who cannot put on weight no matter how much they eat, which is already quite a bit. I’ve lived with heavy roommates who eat 1200 calories a day and can barely lose weight.
Of course, there are fat people who eat a lot more than average. They’re the people you see featured on TV programs where you can watch them having twenty hamburgers at a sitting…Short of that type of true gorging situation, the subtleties of why people get fat…are not only subtle but also poorly understood (although we’re learning more all the time), complex, and powerful factors for most people in their own personal fat-thin equation.
I’ve already written about my own efforts in this direction. I’ll recap by saying I’m not fat. But, like so many women, I’d like to lose ten or fifteen pounds to look my best. But to lose that weight it takes cutting back to ridiculously low levels of food intake (and in case you’re going to suggest I go on a lo-carb or paleo or other diet of that type—I have, many times, and they don’t work for me, and I find them singularly unpleasant as well, and I’ve written about it before). I’ve also noticed that if I eat a lot I’m only about seven pounds or so heavier than if I eat very little. My range seems to be very narrow, because my body seems to defend a certain weight quite tenaciously. And that was even true when I was young. When I was a dancer, I had to keep my intake to around 1000 calories a day, day after day, despite intense exercise, to achieve anywhere near the requisite thinness.
If you want to read some interesting articles on current theories about weight gain and the “why” of it, take a look at this. Also see this:
“Like many other medical conditions, obesity is the result of an interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Polymorphisms in various genes controlling appetite and metabolism predispose to obesity under certain dietary conditions. The percentage of obesity that can be attributed to genetics varies widely, depending on the population examined, from 6% to 85%. As of 2006, more than 41 sites on the human genome have been linked to the development of obesity when a favorable environment is present….Numerous studies of laboratory rodents provide strong evidence that genetics plays an important role in obesity.”
And then there’s this.
As well as this:
“When the body needs food, rising levels of the hormone ghrelin, produced in the upper stomach and pancreas, signal the brain and trigger a desire to eat. At the end of a meal, specialized endocrine cells in the wall of the small intestine release other hormones (like cholecystokinin, glucagon-like peptide-1, and oxyntomodulin) that signal satiation. In obese individuals these signaling networks malfunctioned, Laferré¨re [an endocrinologist specializing in obestiy] knew, leaving them perpetually hungry.”
Perpetually hungry. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
And those are just a few random articles written for popular consumption. I could go on and on and on, and include the scientific literature as well. But I think the point is clear, which is that the “why” of obesity is not clear, for many if not most people suffering from it.
Maybe in the future, whenever I write about diet and weight, I should include a link to this post, so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. But I have little doubt that the disagreements will continue.
[ADDENDUM: To clarify another point, I’ll add an excerpt from a previous comment of mine:
[T]he combination of the abundance of food readily available (a long-held dream of mankind, and much preferable to intermittent involuntary starvation) combined with our modern conveniences such as cars (not having to labor so hard being another long-held dream of mankind) most definitely has contributed to the growth of overweight in this country and elsewhere. But nevertheless we are living a lot longer than we used to””in part, perhaps, because mild overweight (the more common kind) does not seem to have the deleterious effects many people think it does.]
Multiple sources tell L.A. Weekly that Charles and David Koch — the infamous right-wing billionaire brothers — are considering an offer on either the Tribune Co. newspaper group, which includes the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun or the entire Tribune Co., which includes more than 20 stations like WGN and KTLA Channel 5.
Dare we hope?
Whether or not this ends up happening—and my guess would be it’s just an idle rumor—something like this would be a good start on a conservative version of ye olde Gramscian march.
…and most of the Republicans in Congress don’t really seem to want to do very much of it.
There’s a reason for that: human nature. Such cuts are unpopular with people.
Ever since the 1930s, this country and Europe have fostered an ever-expanding percentage of people depending on government programs of various kinds. I almost wrote “government largesse” but I changed it because the word “largesse” has more of a “gift” connotation. While it is certainly the case that some people pay a minimal amount of taxes (although everyone pays sales taxes in states with them) and get a lot back, so that that group could be called recipients of a gift, and other people pay much more than they ever get, there is still a huge population in the vast middle who fall somewhere between those two extremes on the pay/receive continuum.
That means that even though most of us have never been and will never be on welfare or food stamps, the majority of us are looking forward to that Social Security check and that Medicare in our supposed golden years. What’s more, the economy has changed in ways that make most of us more dependent on getting that assistance—for example, the near-ubiquity of third-party payments is one of the things that has helped put a great many medical costs out of the reach of the average retired citizen if he/she had to depend on income and savings alone.
And so why should it be a surprise that, as DrewM of Ace’s writes, in speaking of the proposed Ryan budget and the fact that it only slows but does not halt the continuing growth of government:
People will keep telling pollsters they want these problems solved but when it comes to voting they will send people to DC who will support more spending (which is what the voters really want) that will only make it worse.
Please read the whole thing.
Thinking back to the growth of government under President Bush and his Republican Congress, it seems to me that Republicans face a built-in conundrum, which Bush and especially that Congress solved by becoming Democrats-lite (or maybe not even so lite). It didn’t serve to keep Congress Republican in 2006, did it, or keep the presidency in Republican hands in 2008? As the saying goes, given a choice between a fake Democrat and a real one, the public will choose the real one every time (although Bush’s election and re-election indicates the saying is not always true).
I have another question, though: how often, given the choice between a real Republican and a real Democrat, will the public choose the real Republican? Well, it depends on the state. On the national level, at least since the 1930s, the only time I can think of when the public chose a real Republican over a real Democrat was Reagan’s two victories (and the only time another “real Republican”—i.e. conservative—was nominated was in 1964, when Goldwater was defeated in a landslide). It also depends on the politicians in question and their “likeability,” whatever than means.
And it also depends on what people see as their most pressing problems, and what they feel most threatened by. It’s that latter thought that Obama exploited most effectively in the last election.
[NOTE: The above is why conservatives were so worried about the passage of Obamacare and why the Democrats were so eager to pass it ASAP, despite its lack of public support at the time. “Try it, you’ll like it,” was the bet the Democrats made, and the Republicans knew it might indeed work just that way.
Notice how, since the election of 2012, there hasn’t been so much talk of doing away with it, since the Senate would be an obstacle and Obama’s veto would also stand in the way? However, Ted Cruz is still on the case:
]This week, [Cruz] will introduce an amendment he calls “Restore Growth First” as the Senate considers a continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of the year. The amendment would cut funding for the implementation of Obamacare, at least until economic growth — currently at a terrible 0.1 percent — returns to its historic average of about 3.3 percent.
“My preference is to repeal Obamacare in its entirety,” says Cruz. “But at a minimum, it doesn’t make sense to implement Obamacare now. It would kill jobs, it would have an enormous negative impact on the economy.”
Of course, actually passing such an amendment is impossible, given the Democrats’ 55-seat majority in the Senate. The question is whether Cruz, his co-sponsors Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson and James Inhofe, and fellow Republicans would be willing to jam up the continuing resolution — that is, risk a government shutdown — over Obamacare.
“I am willing to do anything possible to ensure that we get a vote on this,” Cruz says. “There are a variety of procedural mechanisms that a senator can employ to get a vote. I am confident we are going to get that vote.”
So the vote itself is the important thing. But even pushing for a vote has exposed some serious Republican divisions on continuing the fight against Obamacare. In the House, the GOP leadership wouldn’t allow a vote on a defund-Obamacare measure before passing a continuing resolution last week. And at a meeting of Senate Republicans recently, several lawmakers spoke out against Cruz’s plan, with some raised voices. Obamacare is a reality, one lawmaker argued; there’s just been an election that was in part a referendum on it, and Republicans lost.
To Cruz, opposing Obamacare, even after it has been passed by Congress, signed by the president and upheld by the Supreme Court, is about sticking to principles.
I’m with Cruz on that one. But I see the dilemma, and Republicans could be successfully demonized for it.
Between a rock and a hard place.]
At least for now:
Judge Tingling determined that Mr. Bloomberg exceeded his authority by sidestepping the City Council and placing the issue before the city’s Board of Health, a panel whose members were each appointed by the mayor.
Mr. Bloomberg said at the news conference he has no plans to bring the measure before the City Council.
Rick Hills, a law professor at New York University, said, “There’s a sense that Bloomberg has an imperial disdain for the City Council, and this ruling says ‘no more rule by mayoral decree.'”…
The judge ruled the regulations are “fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences,” noting how there would be uneven enforcement within a single city block. The regulations didn’t affect the Big Gulp at 7-11 because supermarkets and convenience stores are regulated by the state, not the city.
He wrote that regulations exclude other beverages that have significantly higher concentrations of sugar sweeteners and calories on “suspect grounds.” The regulations don’t limit patrons from getting refills; that provision, the judge said, appears to “gut the purpose of the rule.”
I continue to be puzzled by the comparison of this law to the ban on smoking in restaurants and other public places. Although it’s true that, as the article states, there is “irrefutable statistical evidence that smoking is bad for people in innumerable ways,” and the deleterious effects of soda are less clear, that’s by no means the only—or even the most important—difference. The argument behind the restaurant smoking ban has little to do with the health of the smoker him/herself. It is based on evidence (somewhat controversial, by the way) that second-hand smoke harms the health of the passive recipient of the smoke, and therefore is an attempt to protect the smoker from harming others.
Right now I’m not going to go into an analysis of the data about second-hand smoking’s danger; let’s just say that a while back I read up on the arguments pro and con and found all the research to have been poorly done and nonpersuasive, in part because there are problems inherent in measuring exposure to second-hand smoke.
However, that’s not really the point. The point is that protecting the non-smoker from the dangers of second-hand smoke was the argument used to ban smoking in public places such as restaurants. There is no similar argument that the imbibing of large soft drinks harms the onlooker, unless it offends his/her esthetic sense, which is hardly the same..
“Concerto Barocco” is one of George Balanchine’s greatest—and oldest—ballets, and one of my very favorites.
This first video gives you a general idea of the piece. Note that the dancer says, “Everything feels right and I couldn’t imagine more perfect steps for the music.” I think that’s an excellent description. The music is very very beautiful, and the dance is a seemingly-perfect expression of it. Back in my dancing days I once learned a small portion of the choreography, just a tiny bit, and I can attest to the extraordinary feeling it gives to dance it—just as she describes.
Here’s some historic background which is kind of interesting:
And here are two wonderful dancers of the 40s and 50s. One of them, Tanaquil le Clerc, became Balanchine’s wife. In the mid-50s, when she was still very young, Le Clerc contracted polio and became wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life.
Very very sad. But this is a great old film:
And this clip is absolutely wonderful, too, although just a tiny snippet. Suzanne Farrell the sublime:
The New England Journal of Medicine has published an article that sounds both interesting and brave, about obesity’s myths vs. what we actually know.
I write “sounds” because the article itself is behind a firewall, and I’ve only read this NY Times piece describing it. But it’s a rare thing for a medical article to try to explode the common “wisdoms” about obesity that are not based on much of anything except some correlations.
Here’s the gist of the article:
MYTHS
Small things make a big difference. Walking a mile a day can lead to a loss of more than 50 pounds in five years.
Set a realistic goal to lose a modest amount.
People who are too ambitious will get frustrated and give up.
You have to be mentally ready to diet or you will never succeed.
Slow and steady is the way to lose. If you lose weight too fast you will lose less in the long run.
Ideas not yet proven TRUE OR FALSE
Diet and exercise habits in childhood set the stage for the rest of life.
Add lots of fruits and vegetables to your diet to lose weight or not gain as much.
Yo-yo diets lead to increased death rates.
People who snack gain weight and get fat.
If you add bike paths, jogging trails, sidewalks and parks, people will not be as fat.
FACTS ”” GOOD EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT
Heredity is important but is not destiny.
Exercise helps with weight maintenance.
Weight loss is greater with programs that provide meals.
Some prescription drugs help with weight loss and maintenance.
Weight-loss surgery in appropriate patients can lead to long-term weight loss, less diabetes and a lower death rate.
Personally, I’ve long been impressed by how much garbage is out there about weight loss. My own observations?
(1) There’s a difference between overweight and obesity, and it’s not even clear that the first has negative health consequences.
(2) The path to overweight and/or obesity is different for different people, and there is no universal remedy.
(3) In fact, remedies are very difficult to come by, and it’s not because of some moral weakness or lack of willpower in overweight people. Losing weight and keeping it off is very, very hard for most overweight or obese people.
(4) Nevertheless, it’s easier for men than for women, and for young people than for the middle-aged. This is for physiological, not psychological, reasons.
(5) Many people who are overweight do not eat more than many thin people, or exercise less.