A rare confluence: Jonathan Chait and I…

The New Neo Posted on by

…agree about fat guy Chris Christie, and those who criticize him for being endowed with excess adipose.

In Chait’s article he refers the reader to this book, The Obesity Myth. I haven’t read it, but I’m familiar with the genre. Most of the studies I’ve read about obesity have convinced me that we know a lot less than we think we know about it, that being fat is not necessarily as bad for one’s health as is commonly supposed, that losing weight is really hard for the majority of fat people (and not because they’re lazy or lack discipline, either), and that weight loss does not necessarily confer the desired health benefits.

What’s more, as a 49-year-old man (he would be 50 in 2012), even if Christie runs a risk of dying that is many times the average for his age, his absolute risk would still be very low. Plus, a slightly increased statistical risk is only important in terms of large numbers of people. It has virtually no predictive value for the health of a single individual. When evaluating candidates, we can only pay attention to their actual health.

I well remember that in 2000, when Cheney was elected VP, I thought for sure he’d never survive four years let alone eight, and certainly not if the years were especially stressful. And yet I was completely wrong about that. And I was not evaluating him on actuarial risk, but his own terrible health history which gave him a pretty poor prognosis. But he defied the prognosis.

Churchill, as many have pointed out, had a number of supposed risk factors but lived to be 90, and was PM for the last time at the age of 80. I think this tut-tutting at the fat is one of the vestiges of Puritanism in our society, which has always had that tendency. Sir Winston would not approve:

[ADDENDUM: It’s not just Chait—Ezra Klein and I agree on the topic, too. Will wonders never cease? And I’m even going to quote Klein approvingly:

Ken Thorpe, a professor at the Rollins School of Publish Health at Emory University, was similarly unimpressed. “Excess weight probably shaves between zero years and a year-and-a-half from life expectancy,” he says. Compare that to smoking, which rips 13 to 14 years off a person’s life expectancy. “The problem with obesity is morbidity, not mortality. You have a higher rate of diabetes, bad cholesterol, back pain, that kind of thing. But if you’re taking your blood sugar medications and the right statins and so on, you can control a lot of that.”

So without more information, there’s no real reason to think that Christie isn’t up to the job of being president, or that he’s at a particularly high risk of keeling over should he take office.

Which reminds me: does Obama still smoke? If so, is he not then at higher risk than Christie (depending on whether Professor Thorpe’s figures are correct; some research indicates the risks from smoking and obesity are about equal)? But even if he is still a smoker, my arguments hold up for Obama as well as for Christie: his absolute risk would remain small, as long as his general health appears good, which it does.

Now it’s time to have a doughnut. I wish.]

[ADDENDUM II: Looking back, I see I wrote something similar about McCain’s candidacy, when he was criticized for being too old to run.]

Unhappy anniversary: Munich

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been 73 years to the day that the Munich Pact was signed (on September 30, although it was post-dated September 29), ceding the Sudetenland to Hitler and giving appeasement a bad name.

No, I don’t have the date memorized; I noticed it because of the subject matter of the top four articles at RealClearHistory. They are well worth reading as an object lesson not just in the perils of giving in to tyrants, but on just how gullible many people are about the nature of evil.

I learned some details I hadn’t known before. For example, in March of 1939, a few months after Munich, when Hitler had caused the Czech government to cease to exist and invaded the country, here’s how Chamberlain finally reacted:

Chamberlain responded to Hitler’s aggression by claiming the British were not bound to protect Czechoslovakia since the country in effect no longer existed after Slovakia had voted for independence on March 14th. And Hitler’s actions had occurred the next day, March 15th.

The Prime Minister’s willy-nilly statement caused an uproar in the British press and in the House of Commons…

Interestingly, while traveling on a train from London to Birmingham on Friday, March 17, Chamberlain underwent a complete change of heart. He had in his hand a prepared speech discussing routine domestic matters that he was supposed to give in Birmingham. But upon deep reflection, he decided to junk the speech and outlined a brand new one concerning Hitler…

“The Fé¼hrer,” Chamberlain asserted, “has taken the law into his own hands.”…

“Is this the last attack upon a small state or is it to be followed by others? Is this, in effect, a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force?”

If so, Chamberlain declared: “No greater mistake could be made than to suppose that because it believes war to be a senseless and cruel thing, this nation has so lost its fiber that it will not take part to the utmost of its power in resisting such a challenge if it ever were made.”

Chamberlain finally had gotten the nature of the man he’d been negotiating with, supposedly in good faith. Too little, too late; but better late than never. And soon Chamberlain would be replaced by the man who had understood the nature of the enemy all along: Churchill.

[NOTE: Here’s an attempt to defend Chamberlain—a little bit, anyway.]

Right on schedule…

The New Neo Posted on by

…here come the “Christie’s too fat to be president” articles (here and here).

From the latter:

Unfortunately, the symbolism of Christie’s weight problem goes way past the issue of obesity itself. It is just a too-perfect symbol of our country at the moment, with appetites out of control and discipline near zilch.

There’s just a wee bit of trouble with that metaphor—actually, it’s Christie who’s trying to rein in the appetites of the public sector and unions in New Jersey, and to install fiscal discipline.

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar had a different way to look at it:

CAESAR

Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

ANTONY

Fear him not, Caesar; he’s not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman and well given.

CAESAR

Would he were fatter! But I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock’d himself and scorn’d his spirit
That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Such men as he be never at heart’s ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.

Another al Qaeda terrorist…

The New Neo Posted on by

…killed.

And by the same unit that got Bin Laden.

This time it was the American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. He apparently was the power behind the Christmas bomber (otherwise known as the underwear bomber), and “inspired” the 2010 Times Square bombing and the murders committed by army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, as well “having a hand” in various and sundry mail bombs.

It is surprising that the left ordinarily seems less perturbed by the killing of terrorists without a trial than by the far less dreadful things that used to happen to a very small number of them while in US custody. But apparently some groups are more consistent in their criticisms, even though it’s no longer the nefarious Bushitler who’s in charge:

Al-Awlaki is a U.S. citizen, born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, who had not been charged with any crime. Civil liberties groups have questioned the government’s authority to kill an American without trial.

Oh, and they almost got al-Awlaki on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

Rating the bad fast food restaurants

The New Neo Posted on by

This guy says Subway’s is the worst.

And I’m glad to see my new personal favorite for best, Jack in the Box, doesn’t make the bad restaurant cut. Plus I have to say that I’ve never eaten at most of the restaurants on the list, and of the two I have eaten at (Wendy’s and KFC), it was probably at least twenty years ago.

My personal most-disliked fast food restaurant is the king of them all, McDonald’s. But I’d probably hate the others just as much if I ever went there.

I would love to end this post with a YouTube video of Greg Brown singing “Slow Food.” But there is no YouTube video of Greg Brown singing “Slow Food.” So we’ll have to settle for the lyrics, and you’ll just have to imagine the rest:

People want that slow food
Two minutes and they grouch
But give me ham baked all day long
And help me to the couch
Help me to the sofa
Put the quiet music on
I will lie and think about that ham
Long after it is gone.

I want some slo-o-o-o-ow food.
I don’t want no food with cute names
No neon on a sign
A man can’t live on advertising slogans and conceptual design
Let somebody else go surf and turf
Someone else go carry out Me,
I want my food to know itself
Before it knows my mouth.

I want some slo-o-o-o-ow food
With all the love cooked in.

Why don’t we start it in the mornin’
Leave us plenty of time for lovin’
Weekend homemade hot fresh bread
Make the whole house smell like an oven
And let it all just simmer
Cook in the good juices and the greases
Then we’ll sit down at the table, baby
And slowly tear it into pieces.

I want some slo-o-o-o-ow food
What’s the big rush?….
Don’t want no hard-hearted Hardee’s, no Muck-muck-muck-muck-donald’s….I want a chef, not a clown, to make my food…/it can even be tofu with the right kinda sauce…./blahblahblah—

I want some slo-o-o-o-ow food
With all the love cooked in.

Romney’s the guy for 2012…

The New Neo Posted on by

…says David Frum.

The question is: does anyone care what David Frum thinks at this point?

[ADDENDUM: And the WSJ’s Daniel Henninger asks why not start taking Herman Cain’s candidacy seriously? He’s got private sector experience up the wazoo, and what’s more:

When Mr. Cain talked to the Journal’s editors, the most startling thing he said, and which he’s been repeating lately, was that he could win one-third of the black vote. Seeing Herman Cain make his case to black audiences would be interesting, period. Years ago, describing his chauffeur father’s influence on him in Atlanta, Mr. Cain said: “My father gave me a sense of pride. He was the best damn chauffeur. He knew it, and everybody else knew it.” Here’s guessing he’d get more of this vote than past GOP candidates.

Does a résumé like Herman Cain’s add up to an American presidency? I used to think not. But after watching the American Idol system we’ve fallen into for discovering a president””with opinion polls, tongue slips and media caprice deciding front-runners and even presidents””I’m rewriting my presidential-selection software.

I dunno. There’s something sort of loose-cannon-y about Cain. And besides, as I’ve noticed in many articles (including Henninger’s), when you read the words “Mr. Cain” quickly, they look suspiciously like “McCain”—and we’ve got PTSD for McCain’s candidacy.

And yet, and yet…]

Life in the Maine fast lane

The New Neo Posted on by

The state of Maine has raised its top speed limit to 75, but the new figure only applies to a 110-mile stretch of highway way up north (or downeast, whichever you prefer). That means it will probably affect about three drivers a week, because there are parts of Maine—huge parts of Maine, actually, which is a surprisingly large state—that are as empty as much of Alaska.

And now I’ve learned how we can all get the speed limits raised: just drive faster! Yes, that’s apparently how it works:

Transportation Department spokesman Mark Latti said the department bases its limits on the speed at which 85 percent of motorists travel, and highway surveys showed that percentage were going 74-75 mph along the northern I-95 stretch.

Traffic studies show that people travel the speed they feel most comfortable going, no matter what the posted limit is, Willette noted.

And now I think I’ll present one of my favorite driving/highway songs—not that it has all that much to do with this post, but because I just feel like it:

And in case that wasn’t deep enough for you, listen to Waits live, singing the same song about 25 years later. It’s been a rough 25 (and how does this man continue to have a voice at all, considering the abuse his takes?):

And this description of Waits’s voice, by critic Daniel Durchholz, is pretty funny, if somewhat understated:

[Waits’s voice sounds] like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.

I’d say it actually sounds like it was left hanging in the smokehouse for a decade, and run over by a Mack truck. But that’s just me.

Twins under the skin

The New Neo Posted on by

James and Daniel Kelly are fraternal twins, two handsome young men who live in England. Unlike identical twins, fraternal twins are genetically no more similar than any two siblings of the same parents; they just happen to be the result of the release of two eggs in one ovulation cycle, both of which manage to win the conception sweepstakes and be fertilized and then born.

James and Daniel Kelly, however, look a bit more different than most fraternal twins of the same sex, because one of the characteristics on which they vary is a trait into which we usually put of lot of meaning, that of skin color:

James and Daniel are different in other ways, as fraternal twins often are. James (the darker twin) is gay, outgoing, and an excellent student. Daniel is heterosexual, shy, and more inclined to non-academic pursuits. Strangely enough, it’s Daniel who’s received more of the racial taunts throughout his school life, mostly from confused fellow-students who learn of his ancestry (white mother, black Jamaican father) and see his brother and get angry at Daniel for trying to “pass.”

But how is it that this could happen, biologically speaking? As the article makes clear, a Jamaican would be very likely to have quite a few genes for white or light skin color, and these could end up being expressed in some of that person’s children. It usually doesn’t happen in as dramatic a way as with the Kelly twins. But it can certainly happen with siblings, and does with a certain amount of regularity.

One of the little-known facts about race and fraternal twins is that there’s another way to get a birth in which one twin appears black and one white: if a woman has sex with two men, one black and one white, in fairly close temporal proximity to each other, and she happens to be releasing more than one egg. In a case such as that, if both eggs are fertilized during the same cycle but there are two different fathers, you can get a situation like this.

This was not the case with the Kellys, where the twins have only one father—nor with the Hodgsons, a couple in which both mother and father are of mixed-race parentage, and who had these adorable female fraternal twins:

And this one may just blow your mind—the Durrant-Spooners.

Yes, you saw that right: two sets of fraternal twins with different racial characteristics. Isn’t nature amazing?

More from the left on why the right should dislike Christie

The New Neo Posted on by

The Atlantic jumps on the same bandwagon as New York magazine. It almost makes me wonder whether there really is some chance that Christie might run, so eager is the opposition to be ever-so-helpful in pointing out to the right why his stances are heresies.

Heresies is an interesting word, is it not? It encapsulates so much: the idea of politics as religion, for example. The left likes to assert it’s the right that thinks that way, and that it’s the left that’s really the fact-based, reality-based community. But it doesn’t take much study of the left to observe its quasi-religious nature, and how it deals with apostates (as I’ve learned from bitter experience as the latter).

Oh, and what are Christie’s heresies anyway, as expressed in last night’s speech at the Reagan library (the mother church, as it were), according to the article’s author Conor Friedersdorf? These four:

(1) Compromise is core to politics, a necessary characteristic of good leadership, and the only way to solve problems…

(2) American exceptionalism isn’t a natural state of being or an inheritance — it is something to which we aspire, and we’re presently falling short…

(3) Americans should care what foreigners think of us…

(4) Americans cannot remake the world in our image through force.

To further eludicate Christie’s “heresies,” Friedersdorf fleshes them out from Christie’s speech in ways that make it clear that they’re mostly well within the mainstream of conservative thought. For example, for number 4, he quotes Christie as saying, “We need to limit ourselves overseas to what is in our national interest so that we can rebuild the foundations of American power here at home – foundations that need to be rebuilt in part so that we can sustain a leadership role in the world for decades to come.” When I last checked, that would be an excellent example of a conservative foreign policy principle, one to which even neocons would heartily subscribe. It just depends on what the definition of “in our national interest” is.

As for American exceptionalism, all you need do is to check out the text of Christie’s speech and you’ll find nothing about exceptionalism that should rile a conservative. Christie makes it clear that American exceptionalism is many things—a tradition and a vision that must continually be demonstrated by deeds. His point is that we can’t rest on our exceptionalist laurels:

That is American exceptionalism. Not a punch line in a political speech, but a vision followed by a set of principled actions that made us the envy of the world. Not a re-election strategy, but an American revitalization strategy.

How very controversial.

It’s all moot, anyway, because IMHO Christie’s not running in 2012.

The sound of the 9/11 memorial

The New Neo Posted on by

Around the time of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 I wrote a post about the new 9/11 Memorial at the site. From the photos and the descriptions of the installation, it looked like a moving and profound tribute.

Now I read about an additional quality of the memorial that I hadn’t heard mentioned before—its sound:

As one nears the pools across the light-gray granite paving stones installed by Walker, the murmur of rushing water rises from the cascades that pour Niagara-like down all four sides of the sunken fountains. The sound becomes louder and louder, until it reaches such a steady crescendo that the noise of the surrounding city, even from the construction going on very close by, is drowned out completely…

The propulsive aural and visual excitement of the three-story-deep waterfall and its mysterious disappearance captures and holds your attention in a way most unusual for the static medium of conventional architecture. That distraction makes one’s next perception all the more shocking, as you focus on the names of the victims, incised into the continuous tilted rim of bronze tablets that surround each pool.

The initial perspective provided by the cascades mimics a technique employed in classical Japanese gardens, through which one’s gaze is briefly diverted by a change in paving, screening, or some other element to dramatize a coming transition. Here, after you take in the diaphanous waterfalls, you discover spread out before you at waist level the names, the names, the names. Nearly three thousand victims””not only those lost at the World Trade Center, but also those who died at the Pentagon and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania””are memorialized with their names inscribed in Hermann Zapf’s classic Optima typeface of 1952”“1955 (an elegant, slightly flaring sans-serif font), with the letters cut through the bronze so they can be backlit after dark. This is a typographic tour de force.

I am very much looking forward to seeing (and hearing) this and judging for myself.