Everyone might want to look like Don Draper, but I just did the Madmen Yourself makeover and this is what came back:
Spitting image.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Mad Man
Thank you, Weight Watchers
The Talented Videographer and I often talk about our health--she's trying to drop a few pounds for the wedding, and I'm just trying to stay in shape. One point of contention is the set of criterion for obesity and being overweight. I'm 6', but weigh from 205-215 pounds, with a BMI around 26. At the same time, I lift weights and get in around four hours of strenuous cardiovascular exercise a week. I don't think I'm fat, but I'm at least 20 lbs. overweight by almost any chart-based standard (even for those with "big frames." Which made this nugget (in an article by Ben Domenich critiquing the illustrious McArdle) big "f" Fascinating:
As a side note: If you want to understand why in 1998 the medical community suddenly decided that you were overweight at a body mass index of 25 instead of 27.8, taking the WHO view (based on the BMIs of Africa and other developing nations as opposed to the long-held U.S. definition) and suddenly making 30 million Americans “fat,” just look at the makeup of the advisory panel — Pharma pushed this decision through, which had the effect of instantly adding millions of customers. But again, it’s nothing personal, just business.
Oh, I don't know. Seems pretty personal to me. Read more of "Thank you, Weight Watchers"
Call me McLovin
Another gem from McArdle (at the top of a lengthy, fact-unfilled post about obesity):
But of course, as I pointed out elsewhere, while being rural is correlated with being fatter, it's also correlated with being healthier (though that advantage may be eroding). It's impossible to tease out the countervailing effects, so which should we do?
Ooga booga, so do nothing? If only someone could develop a mathematical study of such issues, (let's call it, statistics), and then develop a form of this study that works to discriminate between various contributing factors (let's call it, multiple regression analysis), and then apply this technique to producing an actual study (e.g., "Dietary intake, exercise, obesity, and noncommunicable disease in rural and urban populations of three Pacific Island communities," or "Obesity and Health Status in Rural, Urban, and Suburban Southern Women"). I'm such a dreamer. Read more of "Call me McLovin"
McArdle vs. Klein: Who will remain standing?
In 1,600 words, she doesn't muster a single link to a study or argument, nor a single number that she didn't make up (what numbers do exist come in the form of thought experiments and assumptions). Megan's argument against national health insurance boils down to a visceral hatred of the government. Which is fine. Megan is a libertarian. That's, like, her journey, man.
The entire article is worth reading in full, in that it systematically dismantles some of the breezy free market logic that is central to conservative criticism of national healthcare. But what I *really* loved was the response of one of Ezra's McArdle McLoving commenters:
You're basically just a control freak with really stupid ideas about how to help people.
You should actually read The Fountainhead. If nothing else it could help you out with making logical arguments. You could always try to model yourself off of Elsworth Toohey. There could be some profit in that for you.
A second topic of conversation last night allowed me to shoehorn in my pet theory about Ayn Rand: her works are like the chicken pox; it's important to succumb and recover early enough in life that you can go on to lead a healthy and productive adulthood. If you're exposed too late, however, there's a nasty tendency for the disease to stick, ravage the mental faculties, and return in chronic waves. Sometimes, The Talented Videographer chides me for this quasi-elitist dismissiveness of a writer who remains so well-liked by so many. To which I respond: READ THE ABOVE. Read more of "McArdle vs. Klein: Who will remain standing?"
The Beer Summit
Like nearly everyone else at the bar last night, a pitcher of Shiner Smokehouse led our table into a long discussion of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and the officer who arrested him. The Talented Videographer had the most charitable take toward the cop -- she sees what they have to deal with everyday and recognizes how very dangerous and stressful that job is.
My 1 1/2 cents, for what it's worth, is that this was definitely about racism, but did not involve racists. Racism is what Gates was worried about when he exploded up front, and it's what the cop was angry about being accused of. Both decided to wear their heart on their sleeve exclusively because of racism, if for different reasons, and that is true even if neither, in my opinion, were doing anything worse than overreacting and showing bad judgment.
More importantly, the things that brought this event to our attention are the things that make it a shame it was brought to our attention. Gates is a very well known, and powerful, black intellectual, and he has an enormous network of the most-connected of the black community behind him. It was for this reason that Obama knew him, and probably felt enormous pressure, both externally and internally, to say something. At the same time, Gates' position makes this whole thing kind of a farce. Much worse happens to black men on a daily basis, but because they're not Skip Gates, the president does not comment.
Moreover, it was, INMHO, Gates' acute sensitivity to his position that made him so angry. It strikes me that he feels he's transcended the plight of the average black man, and was just plain furious to be pulled down into it, even if glancingly and with some complicity. (Hence the color-transcending odiousness of his tirade: "Do you know who I AM!?!") I do not know Gates personally, but I know a some folks who do, and the consensus is that he's a bit pompous. Sure, he's earned it (no one could top Harold Bloom, of course), but at the same time, it was this personality trait that launched him into this situation, as well as making him such a poor spokesperson for a cause he has had (cough) little to do with as participant or advocate over the last couple of decades.
To emphasize, I respect Gates as a scholar (I have great admiration for the work he did to bring Gwendolyn Brooks into the scholarly canon, for instance), but as a spokesman for civil rights, he's a wiffle ball. It's too bad the President felt compelled to take a swing.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
It has recently come to my attention...
In as much as Rep. Bill Posney has found scattered support for HR 1503, a bill to require presidential candidates to submit their birth certificate before running, and I have held presidential ambitions myself, I thought I'd dig through my files and double-check the old B.C. from Albuquerque Presbyterian.
As I blew the dust from the parchment, I noticed something odd -- a slight bit of off-white discoloration around my name. A rasp with my penknife easily chipped away the artfully-applied White Out. It turns out the true holder of my SS# is one Ephraim Schmelman, son of Lazarus and Sandy Schmelman, of the four-points region.
Of course, I immediately confronted my parents, who explained that I was not, as I've been told, conceived on a honeymoon trip to Mexico, but in fact, purchased from a Mexican orphanage for abandoned black Irish babies (a connection, I'm told, cultivated during the Troubles, when Irish Catholic fear of the Protestant conversion of orphan children ran high). When my folks returned to Albuquerque, their good friends the Schmelmans, who had recently lost their young Ephraim (a freak Etch-A-Sketch accident), suggested the DIY naturalization.
It goes without saying that I am stunned by this news -- it raises a whole battery of questions and concerns. Who were my real parents? How can I find them? And most importantly, what can I do to prevent HR 1503 from passing and dashing my hopes of Oval Office employment?
(And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for Bill Posney and his meddling Birthers...)
Any chance Palin could write for National Lampoon?
Via Yglesias, here's William Shatner reading an excerpt from Sarah Palin's farewell speech:
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