Comments Posted By Eddie
Displaying 21 To 30 Of 46 Comments
NOW THEY'RE COMING FOR THE FAT PEOPLE
I agree the gov't should not be getting ever more into our lives by restricting/taxing/banning certain fatty foods.
I agree w/ Michael that the private insurers don't take kindly to obesity out of an ideological knee-jerk reaction to not being slim. There are obvious and true health concerns with being seriously obese or "fat".
I agree BMI is essentially useless but refuse to concede being fat is "healthy" as Campos has claimed repeatedly in his book and in the interview.
There are good reasons for why most obese individuals are the way they are. It mostly boils down less to what they eat but how much of it they eat (they gorge). Why eat half the bag of chips quickly when you can eat a quarter of it gradually?
As a PRT coordinator on my last ship I had to escort overweight sailors around during meal hours in order to keep them from gorging themselves as they were wanton to do. I didn't do this for their health so much as so they could keep their weight down to an acceptable level of progress for the Navy's slightly overzealous weight standards. To a man these people had seriously flawed eating habits, eating way too much way too fast, then going back for more or eating a snack because they were still hungry. No wonder they were 15-25 pounds out of standards!
It doesn't help that some of the popular foods we have had in the past few decades were chock full of chemicals and additives that have been shown to be less than helpful to a healthy lifestyle. It also boils down to people living very sedentary lifestyles. We're not asking for everyone to join a health club but if more Americans would simply walk around their neighborhood, in a park or do other forms of easy, enjoyable exercise, they would be healthier and less obese.
Thin and fat are both not healthy. Spreading myths like Campos and the anti-fat police do are not helpful.
Comment Posted By Eddie On 30.07.2009 @ 13:36
IT'S PAST TIME TO INOCULATE CONSERVATISM AGAINST THE BIRTHERS
#33.
Comment Posted By Eddie On 22.07.2009 @ 17:49
Thanks for a good laugh in a darkly depressing conversation. It really ties in well with Rick's point about how absurd this "evidence" of his illicit birth is getting.
I have little doubt Obama and his team realize the negative impact this obsession will have on the GOP, especially as popular mainstream conservative figures take up the banner. They'll hold on to the birth certificate for a few more months and then release it after the majority of the damage has been done.
This is some sort of false hope some conservatives have that somehow Obama can just be put away with one great (grander than Chicago politrix) scandal. Its similar to the liberals believing they were one big scandal away from impeaching Bush.
They would perhaps be better served going after Geithner & Paulson for high crimes, or widening the rift btwn President Pelosi and Obama to the extent he has to try to dump her in a power play. That would probably be more possible than him being punted out of office for being born in Kenya.
Comment Posted By Eddie On 22.07.2009 @ 14:50
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON APOLLO 11 AND MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS
"The moon landing was an expression of that hunger to know, to understand, to seek out knowledge for the sheer joy of knowing."
Will the eventual Mars mission by us or someone else (or most of us in the developed world, as its perhaps better to share the cost burdens) end up having the same Johnny Appleseed effect WW observes? We can only hope, though it may be much farther off than we once assumed unless there is greater success with the X-Prize-type private-public space partnerships than currently apparent.
Rick, this piece is exquisite. Thank you for sharing these personal reflections and memories in such a fashion.
Comment Posted By Eddie On 20.07.2009 @ 14:02
SOME NEW BLOOD FOR INTELLECTUAL CONSERVATISM
We need to hear more about Reagan's pragmatism in the coming years, if only because that is the most applicable aspect of his legacy to our modern and future political functions.
I had not heard about Wilcox before reading this. When I consider the troubled attitudes and outlooks of many of the eighteen and nineteen year olds that were my responsibility as a supervisor in the Navy, the issue with the single-parent families and broken homes really comes to light and makes more sense. I think there is a place for Wilcox's ideas in a conservative agenda that can "win again".
Comment Posted By Eddie On 13.07.2009 @ 12:16
PUT NEGOTIATIONS WITH IRAN ON HOLD
The US can work, as David Brooks described last week, to discredit and slowly dismantle the Iranian regime as it once did w/ the Soviets in the 80's.
Talk of a US war w/ Iran is silly because it would likely mean a crashed world economy, given that the Iranians will not go quietly in the night like Saddam did. They will shoot many, many missiles at Saudi and other Gulf oil sites, destroying vital petrol infrastructure in the process that would takes months or even years to bring back online. No amount of offshore drilling in the near term will replace that lost production, and oil prices would shoot through the roof to the tune of $7-9 dollars a gallon. Would the US economy survive that for very long?
China and Russia will gladly pay for the oil infrastructure Rick mentions is needed for the Iranians to succeed in the 21st Century. The last time I checked, we had little leverage with either country and in fact, the Chinese seem to own our debt and essentially have a check on our foreign policy, though neither Republicans or Democrats want to admit it.
Iran can get by on not joining the WTO or IMF because of that Russian and (especially) Chinese support. If Obama were somehow able to string together a coalition of Arab states, the EU and even India to oppose the Iranian regime with staunch sanctions, it would still mean little in the face of sustained Chinese and Russian support.
Comment Posted By Eddie On 25.06.2009 @ 07:10
I would imagine anyone not a die hard regime supporter in Iran would know Americans (and others in the world who enjoy far better governments and opportunities) wish them the best in their effort to pressure reforms or even gain a new government. People are not as dumb as some politicians and journalists would make them out to be.
Not to mention that when this horrible regime slaughters its own children in the streets as it is threatening to do, the Iranian people (even some of the die hard regime supporters) will know that they died for their desired agenda for a better country, not the agenda of America or that of anyone else.
And you will have a terrible regime ruling ever more illegitimately over its seething populace. This is a point David Brooks makes in a column that compares pressuring Iran now and in the future on human rights to pressuring the Soviet Union in the 80's.
Comment Posted By Eddie On 19.06.2009 @ 13:12
DID AHMADINEJAD ACTUALLY WIN THE ELECTION?
More skepticism of the "Ahmadinejad win":
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/iran-does-have-some-fishy-numbers.html
The totals just do not add up to historical patterns or even turnout histories from recent elections. If turnout had been 40-50% and he won, I could almost believe that this "Fraud" call was a fraud itself. Instead, turnout was massive (80-85% by most estimates) in a country of youthful people (70% under 30 right?) who have always voted in the past 10-15 years overwhelmingly for reformers and reform elements within the Clerical centers of power.
Another interesting wrinkle is how quick this was compiled in a country where legally there is a 3 day wait on certification of results and whose voting mechanisms are not nearly as developed as our own, let alone a more advanced (in a voting technology and process sense) Western country. That itself screams "fishy".
Comment Posted By Eddie On 15.06.2009 @ 10:23
Great post!
I was explaining this to my wife (a newcomer to America via Hong Kong) Friday night as we drove by a storage building site with a tattered flag and she wondered why I was pissed.Throughout my childhood and even now, whenever I saw the flag, I thought of everything the country I was blessed to be born in has overcome and accomplished, feats few other countries have even wholeheartedly attempted and fewer succeeded in. Whatever our faults, we have had a glorious history and truly made an impact for the better in the history of mankind. It is an instantaneous beacon of pride, hope and strength.
Comment Posted By Eddie On 14.06.2009 @ 06:33
Noted Iran expert and fmr NSC official Gary Sick joins you and others in calling it a probable military coup of sorts:
http://garysick.tumblr.com/post/123070238/irans-political-coup
Its amazing that they are essentially laying down the gauntlet daring an Israeli attack at some point. Had they let Mousavi win, policies would not have changed much but Obama would feel was dealing with a more amenable figure than Ahmadinejhad and this would have slowed any timetable down for an Israeli attack.
Where the pieces will fall in a few days is anyone's guess, but it seems they have really chosen to become a hard authoritarian country with no pretenses at rights or freedoms.
Comment Posted By Eddie On 13.06.2009 @ 18:51
