"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels...!" With that comment this week, British supermodel Kate Moss helped upstaged universal superguy Santa Claus. While the jolly old fat fella enjoys his meals, Moss is being accused of promoting thin over healthy. As one critic roared, "She's helping young girls go anorexic."
Meanwhile back here in the States, we have the stunning example of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania refusing to graduate 25 of its seniors for being too fat. The school contends there is a 4-year-old Fitness for Life program in which students are required to participate, and these students refused.
Then just when you think you've heard all the fat-stories there are, there's a study by the University of Leeds in England which has actually documented "what percentage of revealed female skin attracts the most males." Their conclusion is exactly 40%. "Any more than that," reports head researcher Dr. Colin Hendrie, "and the signal to the male changes from 'allure' to 'infidelity.'"
But wait -- there's more!
Right in time for the eating-holidays, another university has marshaled one of its scientific teams to really get to the bottom of this perennial battle of the bulging hips. All the way down to the intestines themselves, where they have discovered two main types of bacteria that will be helping us digest all that turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie. Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. Turns out that Firmicutes is the heavy in this caloric plot, because too much of it means converting too much of our food into calories which the body then absorbs as fat.
So there it is, more data from more sources about more fat then I really want to know as I giddily prepare for a festive season of celebration. Look, I've already had to reconcile my Mother's good love with all her bad decisions about eggs, cream, red meat and her fabulous cheesecake. It's taken too much out of me. I'm simply not yet prepared to reconcile every meal I'm about to eat either with the smugness of Kate Moss or the science of university research.
Bottom line....the scale gets stored till January!
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
WHY WARS...? WELL, JUST BECAUSE...!
The crusty old author-warrior Norman Mailer put it best: "Fighting a war to fix something works about as good as going to a whorehouse to get rid of the clap...!"
Tuesday night, President Obama will announce his decision on the war in Afghanistan. I'll venture a guess, guessing it's 99% correct. His decision will satisfy no one. Which won't make it wrong; it will simply make it clear, once again, that wars solve nothing and breed everything.
Obama surely knows this. After all he has the tragic lesson of Lyndon Johnson who also had a vast social agenda at home, only to be suckered into a mistake overseas called Vietnam. So Tuesday night's speech will not be an easy one for the President. Nor is it one he wants to make. But he's the President, and the critics and pundits can Monday-Morning quarterback him to their hearts and pocketbooks content -- because they don't have to pass from the pocket.
The assumption in the West Wing is that our national security has no other good choice. Hopefully, though, it won't be a crazy Haily Mary pass like the last administration threw in Iraq. Time and the Taliban will tell. As will the courage of those GI's whose bodies and blood are smearing those wretched mountainsides. If you look closely on Tuesday night's closeups, it's likely you'll detect some of the very same pain that etched Lincoln"s and FDR's face every time they ordered young lives into combat.
As for those critics who are currently piling on the President, history reports the same thing always happens. Every wartime quarterback from Jackson to Bush has been piled on and sacked by his opponents. However, history also reports that its final judgment is not written until the last whistle blows. So maybe television's talking-faces after Tuesday's night speech might hold back some of their pomposity until closer to the 4th quarter. When they have something more concrete about which to be pompous.
To switch metaphors from quarterbacks to dancers, here's something Fred Astaire said to his critics: "The higher up you go, the more mistakes you're allowed. Then, right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style..."
Tuesday night, President Obama will announce his decision on the war in Afghanistan. I'll venture a guess, guessing it's 99% correct. His decision will satisfy no one. Which won't make it wrong; it will simply make it clear, once again, that wars solve nothing and breed everything.
Obama surely knows this. After all he has the tragic lesson of Lyndon Johnson who also had a vast social agenda at home, only to be suckered into a mistake overseas called Vietnam. So Tuesday night's speech will not be an easy one for the President. Nor is it one he wants to make. But he's the President, and the critics and pundits can Monday-Morning quarterback him to their hearts and pocketbooks content -- because they don't have to pass from the pocket.
The assumption in the West Wing is that our national security has no other good choice. Hopefully, though, it won't be a crazy Haily Mary pass like the last administration threw in Iraq. Time and the Taliban will tell. As will the courage of those GI's whose bodies and blood are smearing those wretched mountainsides. If you look closely on Tuesday night's closeups, it's likely you'll detect some of the very same pain that etched Lincoln"s and FDR's face every time they ordered young lives into combat.
As for those critics who are currently piling on the President, history reports the same thing always happens. Every wartime quarterback from Jackson to Bush has been piled on and sacked by his opponents. However, history also reports that its final judgment is not written until the last whistle blows. So maybe television's talking-faces after Tuesday's night speech might hold back some of their pomposity until closer to the 4th quarter. When they have something more concrete about which to be pompous.
To switch metaphors from quarterbacks to dancers, here's something Fred Astaire said to his critics: "The higher up you go, the more mistakes you're allowed. Then, right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style..."
Saturday, November 28, 2009
IF THERE ARE ETs WHAT HAPPENS TO BETHLEHEM?
There are 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in our universe, and we're adding new ones every year. If you passed your algebra courses, which I barely did, you gotta calculate there are a lot of E.T.s out there, even more remarkable than Steven Spielberg would have us imagine. However, what would their arrival do to the Bethlehem tale we are about to re-tell? Here are my 5 favorite guesses...!
1. Atheists will say something like, "We told you so! Bethlehem is a sweet story to comfort the ignorant. Your idea of one god coming down to one planet for one species has been egotistically absurd from the start." [My question would be, so what do you do this season of the year -- sit under those stars algebraically contemplating how your DNA evolved from and will return to them?]
2. Agnostics might not say anything, reflexively shrugging with, "Good sense, and now good numbers, just prove there is nothing you can prove!" [I used to be impressed by such stoic silence, but lately I'm guessing agnostics are really just afraid to guess anything!]
3. Theologians actually love, more than fear, such challenges as E.T.s. I mean without our recurring doubts about a God, they'd really have nothing to do. [Frankly, theologians speculating in their ivory towers have always impressed me more than technologists poring over new plans to digitalize those old towers!]
4. The Vatican messed up their encounters with science starting with Galileo and Copernicus. They don't want to repeat those mistakes. And so the Vatican Pontifical Academy of Sciences is convening this year to see if there is some Starship Enterprise which might help discover the answers. [The one thing we can be sure is the Vatican won't be coming to any conclusions in warp speed!]
5. The kids of Christmas can be expected to simply laugh and giggle at the prospect of E.T.s. Not because of their religious implications, but all the fun they can mean. [Really, now, isn't a spirit of holy fun the best way to meet and greet any E.T.?]
1. Atheists will say something like, "We told you so! Bethlehem is a sweet story to comfort the ignorant. Your idea of one god coming down to one planet for one species has been egotistically absurd from the start." [My question would be, so what do you do this season of the year -- sit under those stars algebraically contemplating how your DNA evolved from and will return to them?]
2. Agnostics might not say anything, reflexively shrugging with, "Good sense, and now good numbers, just prove there is nothing you can prove!" [I used to be impressed by such stoic silence, but lately I'm guessing agnostics are really just afraid to guess anything!]
3. Theologians actually love, more than fear, such challenges as E.T.s. I mean without our recurring doubts about a God, they'd really have nothing to do. [Frankly, theologians speculating in their ivory towers have always impressed me more than technologists poring over new plans to digitalize those old towers!]
4. The Vatican messed up their encounters with science starting with Galileo and Copernicus. They don't want to repeat those mistakes. And so the Vatican Pontifical Academy of Sciences is convening this year to see if there is some Starship Enterprise which might help discover the answers. [The one thing we can be sure is the Vatican won't be coming to any conclusions in warp speed!]
5. The kids of Christmas can be expected to simply laugh and giggle at the prospect of E.T.s. Not because of their religious implications, but all the fun they can mean. [Really, now, isn't a spirit of holy fun the best way to meet and greet any E.T.?]
Friday, November 27, 2009
IF I WERE KING; BETTER YET IF I WERE GOD!
We are now into the God-season of the year. Even if you don't believe in him, you have to admit he's got center stage for the next 30 days. Makes some of us think about what we'd do if we were God. Just for a day. I don't know about you, but I've given this 4-star scenario some serious consideration. My first trick would be a big one -- no more snow after Christmas Day....!
OK, OK, I realize that might upset the delicate balance of nature, but I figure if I'm God, I could manage that little problem. You see, my contention is that after the charm of Christmas Eve and the celebration of Christmas Day, there is simply no rational reason for anymore of the slushy, freezy white stuff.
Don't get me wrong. The stunning spectacle of a soft snowfall trimming the trees and coating the lawns is a thing of beauty. Especially just before our species has been out there tramping and shoveling and in general messing up this winter work of art. But you see, I (you too?) have lost the magic of my youth. Children, in their wide-eyed, no-car-to-drive innocence, harbor this delicious capacity to see snow as a gift not a grind. To see in a blizzard all sorts of snow forts, snow men, and snowball fights. Oh I remember....! So do you....!
But here's the thing about adulthood that I hate (well, along with taxes, mortgages and arthritis), and that's the dreadful reality that now winters are no longer simple seasons for happy imaginations. From now on, they are grueling times of snowed-in cars, snow-jammed traffic, and snow-hampered treks between any point A and any point B. If you live in places like Chicago and you're older than 13 -- winter is hard to love!
I am reminded that many adults still love the winter-time, but as I calculate it, this is only when they're skating and skiing, not when they're struggling to get to work.
So there's my fantasy. To be God for a day and make Chicago winter go away the morning after Christmas. What would replace it...? There would have to be some sort of a new season between December 26 and March 21. I'm still working on that. But I assure you it would be a season much warmer, greener and gentler than the one we're about to face. Oh I know -- I could call it Santa Barbara...!
Thursday, November 26, 2009
I COMPUTE, THEREFORE I AM. OH YEAH...?
When Rene Descartes penned his celebrated, "I think therefore I am" in the 17th C, it was another tipping point in our understanding of our existence. It helped 20th C existentialists argue that existence precedes essence, or in effect, it is our individual existence on this planet not some supreme being that determines our essence. Loosely translated: "Hey, man, If I can dream it I can do it!"
In the 21st, a legion of neuro-biologists have picked up the baton from there, carrying it to an exciting though arguable conclusion. In their research, many of these scientists have found a galaxy of genes and brain lobes which shape -- if not largely determine -- what we do and who we are. For instance, we have been brilliantly introduced to the workings of our god gene...our flight gene...our love gene...our comfort gene. Just recently researchers at the University of California, Irvine have concluded that (1) there is a bad-driving gene which hampers our brain's ability to communicate what we are learning on the road (2) up to 30% of Americans carry this faulty gene.
Here's where the argument comes in.
As science excavates -- like long hidden Egyptian tombs -- the amazing workings of these genes and lobes, we learn more and more about ourselves. But at what price? The danger here is almost mathematical in nature, for the greater the number of ID-ed genes and lobes, the greater the likelihood we may reasonably conclude we are the sum of our neuro-bioloical parts.
However, that argument must first dethrone an earlier one -- that we are the whole greater than the sum of our parts...! But while this wholeness is comfortably embraced by theologians, poets and artists of all kinds. It is not so easily accepted by the scientific empiricists who seem to say: If you can't see it or smell or test it, it ain't likely there!
Sir Francis Bacon -- a scientific thinker of no small proportions in history -- liked to say: "Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't...and a sense of humor to console him for what he is." Using our best imagination, it is fiercely likely that we will read the results of these gifted researchers with eagerness. Yet at the some time with skepticism that their many individually researched trees can honestly fathom the grand forest that each individual human being is.
The next time you stroll a forest and find a tagged tree, remember the tagger (ranger, ecologist, whatever) surely cannot judge this forest from this tree. You can only do that by standing at the great distance from which the forest-maker first made this forest. Now that, Mr Descartes, is the real question...!
In the 21st, a legion of neuro-biologists have picked up the baton from there, carrying it to an exciting though arguable conclusion. In their research, many of these scientists have found a galaxy of genes and brain lobes which shape -- if not largely determine -- what we do and who we are. For instance, we have been brilliantly introduced to the workings of our god gene...our flight gene...our love gene...our comfort gene. Just recently researchers at the University of California, Irvine have concluded that (1) there is a bad-driving gene which hampers our brain's ability to communicate what we are learning on the road (2) up to 30% of Americans carry this faulty gene.
Here's where the argument comes in.
As science excavates -- like long hidden Egyptian tombs -- the amazing workings of these genes and lobes, we learn more and more about ourselves. But at what price? The danger here is almost mathematical in nature, for the greater the number of ID-ed genes and lobes, the greater the likelihood we may reasonably conclude we are the sum of our neuro-bioloical parts.
However, that argument must first dethrone an earlier one -- that we are the whole greater than the sum of our parts...! But while this wholeness is comfortably embraced by theologians, poets and artists of all kinds. It is not so easily accepted by the scientific empiricists who seem to say: If you can't see it or smell or test it, it ain't likely there!
Sir Francis Bacon -- a scientific thinker of no small proportions in history -- liked to say: "Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't...and a sense of humor to console him for what he is." Using our best imagination, it is fiercely likely that we will read the results of these gifted researchers with eagerness. Yet at the some time with skepticism that their many individually researched trees can honestly fathom the grand forest that each individual human being is.
The next time you stroll a forest and find a tagged tree, remember the tagger (ranger, ecologist, whatever) surely cannot judge this forest from this tree. You can only do that by standing at the great distance from which the forest-maker first made this forest. Now that, Mr Descartes, is the real question...!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
BEING THANKFUL, BUT TO WHOM?
We call Thanksgiving our most American holiday, and that it is. But here's a question between turkey breast and pumpkin pie. To whom are we so thankful? It's not the Puritan's good friend Massasoit, for that relationship soured...it's not Mother Nature, for she takes as well as gives...and it's certainly not the turkey who takes serious umbrage at being sliced up for your table. So who then...?
Well now -- might it be the God those Puritans so honored for their safe landing, safe crops, and safe harvest? With all due respect to today's atheists and constitutionalists, the Big Guy In The Sky was indeed the one to whom our early fathers gave thanks that autumn of 1621. Now nearly 400 years later our collective memories seem to have slipped off that powerful point.
Ahh, but wait, I can hear the rebuttal now. We have grown since then. Unlike those primitive Puritans we are far too enlightened to be lifting our cranberries in deference to something we can neither see nor hear nor test! And so it is that Thanksgivings -- even like Christmas and Easter -- have been neutered of their denominational religiosity.
The rejection of the denominational I can understand; the rejection of the religiosity, I have some trouble with. I'm reminded of the Dennis The Menace comic strip in which Dennis is saying to little Joey, "I can explain this to you, Joey, but the understanding part is up to you!"
Is it possible that America's relentless fascination with vampires, witches, ETs, and other supernatural creatures betrays a hint and a hunger for our lost religiosity...? As larger and larger swatches of the population place themselves in the none-of-the-above categories for Religion, do they sometimes sense that "none" is an empty place to live in...? To grow in....?
Today's sophisticated secular scientists and atheists and even agnostics can find some serious intellectual satisfaction in freeing themselves of old Medieval ghosts and ghouls. As an enlightened people, we also tend to look down on the rabid masses of Middle Eastern zealots willing to blow themselves up for their God. Granted, it's been a long maturing time since believers stood willingly in dens of Roman lions. On the other hand, it's been a long meandering time since even believers here felt any passion to "die for their God."
My head tells me this is perfectly reasonable and sensible. But my heart sometimes whispers a nagging question: If there is nothing so great as to die for, does this make my life somehow less to live for...? I can't help myself. I'll be thinking that as I enjoy another lovely -- but often aimless -- holiday.
Well now -- might it be the God those Puritans so honored for their safe landing, safe crops, and safe harvest? With all due respect to today's atheists and constitutionalists, the Big Guy In The Sky was indeed the one to whom our early fathers gave thanks that autumn of 1621. Now nearly 400 years later our collective memories seem to have slipped off that powerful point.
Ahh, but wait, I can hear the rebuttal now. We have grown since then. Unlike those primitive Puritans we are far too enlightened to be lifting our cranberries in deference to something we can neither see nor hear nor test! And so it is that Thanksgivings -- even like Christmas and Easter -- have been neutered of their denominational religiosity.
The rejection of the denominational I can understand; the rejection of the religiosity, I have some trouble with. I'm reminded of the Dennis The Menace comic strip in which Dennis is saying to little Joey, "I can explain this to you, Joey, but the understanding part is up to you!"
Is it possible that America's relentless fascination with vampires, witches, ETs, and other supernatural creatures betrays a hint and a hunger for our lost religiosity...? As larger and larger swatches of the population place themselves in the none-of-the-above categories for Religion, do they sometimes sense that "none" is an empty place to live in...? To grow in....?
Today's sophisticated secular scientists and atheists and even agnostics can find some serious intellectual satisfaction in freeing themselves of old Medieval ghosts and ghouls. As an enlightened people, we also tend to look down on the rabid masses of Middle Eastern zealots willing to blow themselves up for their God. Granted, it's been a long maturing time since believers stood willingly in dens of Roman lions. On the other hand, it's been a long meandering time since even believers here felt any passion to "die for their God."
My head tells me this is perfectly reasonable and sensible. But my heart sometimes whispers a nagging question: If there is nothing so great as to die for, does this make my life somehow less to live for...? I can't help myself. I'll be thinking that as I enjoy another lovely -- but often aimless -- holiday.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
HITLER'S BEEN HIDING THERE ALL ALONG
Theories about Hitler's escape from his 1945 Berlin Bunker just won't go away. Evil genius always mesmerizes us. From Nero to Rasputin, from John Wilkes Booth to Charles Manson, from the witches of Macbeth to Cinderella's stepmother, we can't seem to let go of them. Why....?
Perhaps for the same reason Eve was seduced by the serpent, Stephen King writes horror stories, and as children we are forever fascinated by fire. It's this compulsion to touch without being burned. To wrestle with the Devil, but at the last minute escape his clutches.
So the question still lingers -- did Adolf Hitler get away?
To those who believe he did, their hideaway of choice has always been Argentina. Others have simply been satisfied to say he "lives on" in night-time cable television, for there is rarely a night when you can't find another black&white documentary on Hitler, Hitler's SS, Hitler's concentration camps, Hitler's lovers, and of course Hitler's mother (for ever since Freud, everyone knows everything wrong with the world begins with some insensitive mother).
I have a more practical theory. Adolf Hitler did indeed kill himself on that April night, but the spirit of his evil instantly left his burned corpse to infiltrate every paranoid, vengeful, disordered personality in the world. From Berlin to Budapest to Brooklyn; from then to now; from here to eternity. Because, you see, Hitler was less a disease, and more a symptom. A living, infectious symptom of what has plagued mankind from the beginning...
....his fears of inadequacy, his frustration with failure, his certainty that others are to blame, his rage for revenge, and his taste for tyranny.
When Martin Scorsese makes a film about the mafioso, these are his lead characters! When the media covers serial killers and campus shooters, these are their subjects! When little men and women dream twisted dreams at night of getting back at the world, these are Hitler's children! When street gangs kill...when Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck rage with unsupported fury about "them," they are unwittingly spreading the Gospel of Adolf....when the boys at the corner saloon and the big boys in the Wall Street bars wink at the "weak idealism" of Obama's agenda, they are the storm troopers keeping alive the capitalistic cabal that whispers survival-of-the-fittest-and-screw-the-stupid.
Want some evidence...? Some statistical data to prove my theory...? Well, no, they don't usually ask this in surveys or report this in the Wall Street Journal. But history offers us a pretty loud hint that evil in the world -- like some of the mists and fogs in a Gothic novel -- hover over the world, finding rest in whatever angry hearts they can find.
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