Fat City

It’s a bit of a downer on a Friday evening, but this article about the obesity epidemic in the world is an exceptional read.  Written by an Australian doctor, it is a stunning, deeply disturbing description of how the modern world is encouraging people to eat themselves to death.  It’s long, but you should read every word . . . because the world’s weight problem deserves our attention.

It’s quite extraordinary, when you think about it:  a world that produces processed “food” that provides little nutritional value but lots of caloric content, marketing campaigns that encourage people to believe that consuming a hamburger is one of the greatest  achievements a human could aspire to, and lonely people who are willing to eat, and eat, and eat to the point where they can’t move without assistance or be transported without special vehicles and need special medical treatment for their weight-related afflictions.   What has happened to our culture that so many people have consumed to the point that they are at such a state, and can’t help themselves even when they know their appetites are the cause of their problems?

To be sure, those are just the truly excessive cases . . . yet I seem to see more and more kids who seem to be morbidly obese, and inactive.  Is this our future?  Is the hot personal care product of the near future some kind of skin cream that prevents chafing between those rolls of flab, or a special mirror apparatus that allows you to make sure that you don’t have those pesky open sores on your feet?

Why are people doing this to themselves?  It is a question that we really need to answer.

The Timeless Chef-O-Nette

If you’ve lived in Upper Arlington, Ohio at any time since 1955, you’ve probably been to the Chef-O-Nette.  It’s one of those ageless, unchanging places that make you hope that maybe you haven’t changed much, either.

I first went to the Chef-O-Nette in the early ’70s, right after our family first moved to Upper Arlington.  It looked pretty much the same as it does now, with the ’50s lighting fixtures and the bolted down, rotating stools and the sunburst clock.  I’m guessing that the look of the place in the early ’70s was pretty much the same as it looked when it first opened in 1955, and established itself as the anchor at one end of the Tremont Shopping Center.  It hasn’t changed, and no one really wants it to change.

The menu hasn’t changed much, either, in the 40 years since I first visited the Chef-O-Nette.  That’s a good thing, too.  There are still the same burgers and diner food and milkshakes and french fries and hangover sandwich.  For all I know, it also may have the same ageless waitresses who first served me when I was a student at Upper Arlington High School, 40 years ago.

The Chef-O-Nette is one of those places that make a suburb into a community.  You see the same people there, and that’s a comfortable feeling.  It’s a good place to meet a friend for a cup of coffee or to have some hot chocolate after sledding at the OSU golf course.  When Richard and Kish and I went there for lunch yesterday, it was like slipping on an old slipper that fits like a glove.

Hollywood Love-Hate On The Cuyahoga

I’m up in Cleveland for meetings today, as I look out my window I see what looks like the scene of a terrible traffic accident, with a car flipped on its roof and onlookers gathered around.

Fortunately, it’s not an accident scene, it’s just on-location shooting for Captain America:  The Winter Soldier, which is filming in Cleveland this week.  That film is the latest action thriller to be shot along the shores of Lake Erie, where some of the street scenes for The Avengers were filmed.

I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but I’m guessing that someone in Captain America is going to get into a car accident at some point during the movie.

As a visitor to the city, it’s interesting for me to watch the careful prep work for the scene.  You begin to dimly understand the jobs of the key grips, second unit directors, and other curious titles that scroll by in the credits at the end of films.  First the overturned car gets placed, then some kind of light barrier is put into position, then cameras are adjusted and moved, then electrical cables are strung out.  There are dozens of people involved in the exercise.

For Clevelanders, however, this filming is a love-hate thing.  They like the abstract notion of big-budget movies being shot in Cleveland.  It’s cool, and it makes their city seem cool, and they know that it brings jobs and publicity and money to their fair city, all of which are good things.

But Clevelanders are, at bottom, practical Midwesterners.  Once filming begins the novelty wears off and the reality of closing major freeways and thoroughfares sinks in.  This traffic accident scene is being shot in front of the Cleveland Public Library on blocked-off Superior Avenue — which would otherwise be bustling with cars and buses full of people going to work.  Today, they’ve had to make alternative arrangements.

Another Hazardous Intrumentality

Today I saw an alarming warning sign.  It appeared, of all places, on the metal lid of one of those rolling cloth towels you find in some older restrooms, and I saw it as I was drying my hands.

What were the warnings?  First:  “Use only to dry hands and face.”  Ewww!  I never considered it could be used for other drying purposes, or washing purposes.  I must admit that that warning made me eye the visible cloth toweling suspiciously and wish that I had dried my hands with toilet paper.

Second:  “Do not hang from towel.”  Check.  Say, is that warning really necessary?  In the history of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, has there ever been an incident of a tort claim caused by failure to warn not to hang from a cloth towel dispenser?

And third:  “Intentional misuse can be harmful or fatal.”  Harmful, okay.  Fool around with the towel, slip on a wet floor, dislocate something.  But fatal?  How?  Hanging?  Choking?

The sign didn’t say, and left all my questions unanswered.

The Ethics Of Killer Robots

The United Nations Human Rights Council is considering the topic of killer robots — preprogrammed killing machines that operate autonomously on the battlefield.

Although no such devices have been deployed to date, they reportedly are in development.  The UN Council is expected to call for a moratorium on their development so that the ethics of their use can be debated.  (Good luck with that one!  If dictators or “rebels” fighting for control of a country could get their hands on such a weapon, does anyone think for a moment that a moratorium imposed by some powerless UN Council in Geneva would stop them?  But, I digress.)  The argument is that killer robots raise “serious moral questions about how we wage war” and blur the line in the “traditional approach” of a “warrior” and a “weapon.”

This kind of abstract, clinical analysis of where war-making technology has taken us makes me scratch my head.  Romantic notions of a “warrior” and a “weapon” locked in some kind of single-combat situation don’t seem to have a lot to do with modern warfare.  Technological advances not only have made fighting more lethal — David and his slingshot wouldn’t stand much of a chance against a guy with a flamethrower — but also have increasingly divorced the immediacy of death and its consequences from the decision-maker.  Whether it is missiles, or drones, or roadside bombs that kill indiscriminately, we’ve already moved far from the warrior/weapon model.

Killer robots are just the inevitable next step.  All we can hope for is that their developers and deployers have seen enough science fiction to worry about Skynet and giving birth to the Matrix, and know that they better be sure that the soulless robot killers they unleash aren’t capable of turning on their creators.

Curse Of The Corn Dog

Conservative favorite Michele Bachmann, a Representative from Minnesota, has announced that she won’t seek reelection.

How quickly the wheel can turn!  In the space of two years, Bachmann goes from running for President, to being an also-ran for President, to being investigated for campaign spending issues, and now to deciding that she won’t seek another term in Congress.  She says her decision not to run again has nothing to do with such issues, and that she will continue to be a leading voice for conservative causes.

We can take her decision to not seek reelection at face value, and concede that it has nothing to do with any of the issues surrounding her campaign.  However, we also can recognize that everything took a turn for the worse once Bachmann was photographed eating a corn dog at some summer political event.  She blindly ignored arguably the best political advice ever offered:  never be photographed eating a corn dog.  And once she did it, it all went to hell.

The Curse of the Corn Dog strikes again!

The Penny Chronicles

My name is Penny.

I hurt my paw.  I don’t know how it happened, but it hurts.  Not too much, though.  I can handle it.

I walk a little funny, but I don’t think anyone knows there is something wrong with my paw.  That’s good!  I don’t want anyone to think I can’t still do my duty as part of the pack.

I can still guard the Leader and keep her company.  I can still keep an eye on what’s going on outside.  And I can still eat, too.  If I couldn’t eat, it would be a real problem!

I’m happy this morning because I got a special treat.  I got to walk with the Leader around our place, but Kasey had to take a long boring walk with the Old Boring Guy.  Sorry about that, Kasey!  Today must be my lucky day!

Twilight Flowers At Goodale Park

Tonight Kish and Richard and I had dinner at The Pearl, made a visit to Whit’s Frozen Custard, and then took a jaunt around the Short North.  When I returned to my car at the corner of Park and West Russell Street, across from Goodale Park, I was treated to a spread of red flowers, glowing crimson and looking deep and velvety in the approaching twilight.  It’s just one of many beautiful garden areas you find all around Goodale Park.

The Family Silver

Back in the ’60s, many suburban homes had a silver set proudly displayed in the dining room.  Our mothers had them and our grandmothers had them; they were in our friends’ houses and glimpsed in the dining room scenes on TV sitcoms.

The family silver sets were a tangible sign of success and a mark of class.  In an era when people might be invited over, in coats and ties and cocktail dresses, for a fancy sit-down dinner, silver place settings and coffee pots might be used occasionally.  And you always got the sense that your mother and grandmothers wanted to be ready in case the Queen of England unexpectedly dropped by for tea.

Over the years, our mothers inherited the family silver from our grandmothers, and now our mothers have no use for them any longer.  So, our generation stores these ornate, scrolled, increasingly tarnished objects, but nobody uses them.  I’ve never been served from a silver teapot or dish, or eaten with a silver spoon.  No surprise there — silver is a pain to keep polished and probably gives food and drink a slight metallic tang, besides.  I can’t imagine any of our friends serving high tea or inviting us for a formal meal with fine china and silver utensils.

So, what to do with this stuff?  Kish did some did some digging and found that these once-treasured objects are not really worth much.  No one is buying silver tea sets, so there is no resale market.  If it’s sterling silver, it can be sold and melted down.  And if it’s silver plate?  Well, one woman Kish talked to said if there were little girls in the family they could use it to make their tea time play more realistic.

Imagine . . . from a prominently displayed source of family pride to little more than a kid’s plaything, in the course of one generation.  What does that tell you about putting too much stock in material items?

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands, we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

In Flanders Fields was written by a Canadian battle surgeon, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, M.D., during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915.  It was one of the most terrible, bloody, senseless battles in a terrible, bloody, senseless war, as poison gas drifted across the trench lines and tens of thousands of soldiers were killed or wounded during days of fighting.  The poem McCrae wrote captures the physical and emotional exhaustion he felt — yet still McCrae wanted others to fight to ensure that the dead did not die in vain.  McCrae ultimately died, of pneumonia, during the early days of 1918 as World War I dragged on with no apparent end in sight.

McCrae’s poem, and its duality, is worth remembering on this Memorial Day.  We cannot drop the torch, but we need to make sure that the torch is carried forward into battle only when our national security truly requires it.  We cannot afford to senselessly bury young men and women beneath Flanders Fields.

Will You Binge On Arrested Development?

I never watched Arrested Development when it was on network TV.  Richard recommended it highly, and said it was one of the greatest sitcoms ever, but for whatever reason I never found time to watch it.

Now, seven years have gone by, and long-deprived Arrested Development fans are overjoyed.  Netflix is offering the resurrected series, and has posted all 15 new episodes at once.  It’s how Netflix — which is trying to break the stranglehold of broadcast TV, and get Americans to think differently about how their home entertainment should be delivered — does things.  And the release of a block of 15 new episodes raises a crucial question for the dedicated fan:  do you consume, in gluttonous fashion, all 15 new episodes in one gorging, eating-Cheetos-and-guzzling-caffeinated-beverages-sitting, or do you, in refined fashion, carefully limit yourself to one episode per day, or per week, to string out the pleasure of becoming reacquainted with a show and its characters that have become like an old friend?

Call me hopelessly undisciplined, but I’d be tempted to watch as many episodes as I could in the shortest period of time.  If someone told me that there was an entirely new season of Deadwood or The Sopranos with their original casts I’d plop myself down in front of the tube and have at it for as long as I could bear.

So if you know someone who loved Arrested Development, don’t be troubled if you can’t get ahold of them this weekend.  They may just be indulging their gluttonous side, and we shouldn’t get in the way of their pleasure.

In Thrall To The Administrative State

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who appears frequently on cable TV news shows, has an thought-provoking article in the Washington Post that captures some of my concerns about the incessant growth of the administrative agencies of the federal government and what it means for American citizens.  It’s an important issue that is well worth pondering.

In my view, there are two key points that should be part of our thinking about this issue.  One is laziness, and the other is accountability.

Part of the reason why the administrative agencies have grown so vast is that the President and the Congress have been, and continue to be, lazy.  (And, just so no one thinks this is an attack on the current President and Congress, let me be clear — this is something that has occurred, without significant interruption, since the 1960s, under Presidents of both parties and Congresses controlled by both parties.)  Presidents and members of Congress don’t want to roll up their sleeves and grapple with the details of how a particular federal law should be implemented or applied, so they write legislation in broad strokes and then yield huge amounts of discretionary authority to the administrative agency that is charged with writing the specific rules and then supervising enforcement of the law.

The justification for that approach is that administrative agencies are “subject matter experts” that can make finely honed decisions about how the law should be applied, what forms should be submitted, what fees should be charged, and what punishments should be imposed in the event of non-compliance.  That justification sounds good — but what makes us believe that the agencies really have such expertise, or that they exercise it in a dispassionate, apolitical way?  And, even more fundamentally, why shouldn’t we demand that Congress develop such subject-matter expertise?  Before Congress writes a law that may have an enormous impact on a particular segment of the economy, is it so unreasonable to expect that the members of Congress on the committee that writes the legislation actually have some reasonably detailed understanding of what they are doing?  I would be happy to see members of Congress spend less time on fundraising and cable TV appearances and more time on actually mastering the details.

The accountability issue is equally important.  Well-educated, reasonably attentive Americans know the names of the President, the leaders of Congress, their Representatives and Senators, and the major members of the Cabinet.  But who, at any given point in time, can name the head of the IRS or the FDA or the FTC?  When an issue arises with an agency like the IRS and not only the President, but also the leadership of the IRS, take the position that they had no idea what was being done, we have reached a critical point of non-accountability.  That kind of shrug of responsibility is not acceptable, because in a representative government our elected officials must know, and be accountable for, the actions of the agencies they are charged with supervising.  If they don’t, we must demand that they develop some mechanism to keep track of, and direct, the regulatory actions.  Part of that mechanism has to involve shrinking the bureaucracies and removing some of their power and discretion — because obviously it is easier to supervise and direct a smaller agency with rigidly defined authority than a sprawling entity that is given broad, poorly defined authority.

If we don’t get the growth of the regulatory state under control, we may move into a truly Orwellian scenario, where citizens can be trapped in a bureaucratic maze with no hope and no recourse.  If the President and members of Congress are viewed as powerless to do anything about it, we may see still further erosion in the number of Americans who care enough to vote in elections.  I don’t think you have to be a Constitutionalist — or for that matter a Democrat or Republican — to conclude that we don’t want, and cannot tolerate, that kind of government.

Amber Waves Of Grass

It is cold (again!) but bright this morning.  As we walked along, the sun was low on the horizon.  It cast its rays across a field of grass that has grown long and gone to seed, leaving the grass sun-dappled and golden in the chill morning air.

A beautiful morning — but cold! 

Hello, Ball!

I haven’t had a chance to play much golf this year, so I’m bound to be rusty the next time I hit the links.  Fortunately, if I want to refresh myself on the nuances of the golf swing, golf attire, and golf etiquette, I can always watch Art Carney giving Jackie Gleason some tips on a classic episode of The Honeymooners.

“Hello, ball!”

The Biggest Tree In The ‘Hood

When we moved to New Albany in 1996, we planted a small pine tree in our back yard.  At that time, our neighborhood was basically a bare expanse with some houses here and there, and the little conifer was part of an effort to add some texture and definition to our neck of North of Woods.

Every year since then, without fail, the little pine tree has grown a few feet.  Now it is a little tree no longer.  I’m not sure exactly how tall it has grown — 40 feet?  50 feet? — but it is the tallest tree in the ‘hood, and towers over our back yard.  It’s hard to believe it once was little, but time has a way of having that kind of effect on things.

It works with birthdays, too — you remember the little sapling, and the next thing you know it is fully developed, mature, and holding its own in the forest of life.