Month: September 2004

The Twinkie Defense Gets Thinner

Remember a number of years ago when a man on trial for a criminal offense offered what has since been termed “the twinkie defense”–i.e., that he was driving to commit his crime by eating sugar-laden twinkies?

Well, twinkies not only may not be a good defense in court, they also may not be a good defense for being overweight as a teenager.

A recent Harvard study finds lack of correlation between snack food consumption and obesity in teens.

This flies in the face of traditional diet “wisdom” that snack foods are uniformly bad for you and are to be avoided in preference for other sugar/starch/carbohydrate-laden “healthy” foods like fruit, bread, and pasta.

The study has some sharp limitations, which make it difficult to draw significant dieting advice from it (i.e., it wasn’t fine-grained enough to identify specific eating habits that produced desirable weights among teens vs. specific eating habits that produced undesirable ones), but it did appear to show two things that cohere quite well with the diet strategy I am personally convinced of:

1) Except in one particular group (see next point), eating so-called “snack foods” or “junk foods” do not appear to cause more obesity than eating allegedly “healthy” foods (i.e., foods judged healthy by the United States Department of Agriculture‘s give-your-children-diabetes-while-helping-us-sell-more-grain-based-products food pyramid).

2) In one particular group–those who had overweight parents–consumption of “snack foods” was correlated with obesity, suggesting that obesity may be in significant measure a product of genetics. This could be in part due to eating habits passed on from parents to kids in the home environment, so separated twin studies would need to be done to show how much of it is due to genetics, but any time you have a physical trait (like obesity) running in a family, there is a good chance that it is in part genetic.

Welcome Back KotterSteve Greydanus!

I’m going to have to be in blog-lite mode for a little bit, so I’ve asked Steven Greydanus if he’d care to help out by pitching in some extra posts, and he generously agreed. Don’t know how much his schedule will permit him to add, but I’m sure whatever he can do will be ex—-celent as Monty Burns would say.

I’ll still be around (at least one post a day), but it’ll be a couple of weeks before I’m back to full-strength blogging. In the meantime, enjoy what Steve has to add!

Welcome Back KotterSteve Greydanus!

I’m going to have to be in blog-lite mode for a little bit, so I’ve asked Steven Greydanus if he’d care to help out by pitching in some extra posts, and he generously agreed. Don’t know how much his schedule will permit him to add, but I’m sure whatever he can do will be ex—-celent as Monty Burns would say.

I’ll still be around (at least one post a day), but it’ll be a couple of weeks before I’m back to full-strength blogging. In the meantime, enjoy what Steve has to add!

Three Cheers For SPAM!

No, not that stuff that shows up in your e-mail box. That OTHER stuff. Y’know, that shows up on the dinner table. Sometimes. Maybe.

Actually, let me revise: Three cheers for the Hormel corporation, makers of SPAM!

Why?

Well, they’ve adopted a pretty easy-going stance regarding the use of the term “spam” for unsolicited commercial e-mail. They’ve recognized (a) that they really can’t stop the language from evolving new uses of a term they originated and (b) that the new use doesn’t conflict with their trademark term SPAM. So they’ve published a statement saying that they don’t mind people calling unsolicited commercial e-mail “spam” as long as they leave it in lower-case letters to distinguish it from their trademark term “SPAM” (all caps).

This contrasts with the behavior of other corporations who have gotten really uptight when people started using their terms in new ways. Some (*cough* Lucas, *cough* Disney, *cough* Xerox) have become distinctly prickly and sometimes even sued or threatened lawsuits when people wanted to do things like . . . oh . . . apply the term “Star Wars” to the Strategic Defense Initiative or the term “Mickey Mouse” to inferior or poorly-thought-out things and ideas or “Xerox” to photocopying done on something other than a machine made by the Xerox corporation.

So three cheers for Hormel and their being such great guys about the new use of “spam.”

Makes me want to go out and buy a can of SPAM.

(Which, incidentally, works great on the Atkins Diet.)

READ THE STATEMENT.

Why Doesn't Anyone Remember Brimbaw, Texas?

Brimbaw

The Weekly World News is carrying a disturbing story. Excerpts:

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are looking high and low for Brimbaw, Texas, a once-booming financial center of 1.2 million people that investigators say vanished from the face of the earth on June 17, leaving behind just one man who remembers it.

“This is like something out of the Twilight Zone — and the more I think about it, the weirder it gets,” says an FBI agent working the strange case from a field office in Dallas.

“When it comes to hard evidence, there’s precious little — but what we do have is intriguing: A brick that apparently is all that’s left of the 67-story bank building that anchored Brimbaw’s skyline. We’ve also got a phone book with residential listings for ‘Greater Brimbaw’ — including smaller towns that are missing, too, places like Zuckert, Flinne, Morely and Billy Graham City.

“Now that’s bizarre.” The Department of Homeland Security is helping to investigate the case because the disappearance of a city, in the words of an insider, “has national security implications, especially if terrorists had anything to do with it. “But we’re looking at alternative explanations, too.

GET THE STORY.

Why Doesn’t Anyone Remember Brimbaw, Texas?

Brimbaw
The Weekly World News is carrying a disturbing story. Excerpts:

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are looking high and low for Brimbaw, Texas, a once-booming financial center of 1.2 million people that investigators say vanished from the face of the earth on June 17, leaving behind just one man who remembers it.

“This is like something out of the Twilight Zone — and the more I think about it, the weirder it gets,” says an FBI agent working the strange case from a field office in Dallas.

“When it comes to hard evidence, there’s precious little — but what we do have is intriguing: A brick that apparently is all that’s left of the 67-story bank building that anchored Brimbaw’s skyline. We’ve also got a phone book with residential listings for ‘Greater Brimbaw’ — including smaller towns that are missing, too, places like Zuckert, Flinne, Morely and Billy Graham City.

“Now that’s bizarre.” The Department of Homeland Security is helping to investigate the case because the disappearance of a city, in the words of an insider, “has national security implications, especially if terrorists had anything to do with it. “But we’re looking at alternative explanations, too.

GET THE STORY.

How Much Is Too Much?

A reader writes:

How much is “too much” to spend on a cat? One of mine was diagnosed with diabetes. Just today I learned that human insulin isn’t working so I’m going to try cow insulin, which is $78 per bottle. I don’t feel like I should just let K’Ehleyr wither away and die. I think an organ transplant or chemotherapy would be crossing the line for a pet. But daily medecine? At what point is the cost too high? I’d really like some advice.

First, K’Ehleyr is a way cool name for a cat.

Second, here is the passage of the Catechism that is most relevant to the issue at hand:

2415 The seventh commandment enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity. Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Man’s dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation.

2416 Animals are God’s creatures. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory. Thus men owe them kindness. We should recall the gentleness with which saints like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Philip Neri treated animals.

2417 God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image. Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing. They may be domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Medical and scientific experimentation on animals, if it remains within reasonable limits, is a morally acceptable practice since it contributes to caring for or saving human lives.

2418 It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly. It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons.

The above passage gestures toward the principle articulated elsewhere among Catholic theologians that animals are not the subject of “rights,” as humans are. As a result, they do not have a right to life or a right to medical care or other, similar rights. We should treat them with kindness, but the reasons for doing so have to do with respecting God’s handiwork and nurturing our own sense of compassion rather than respecting the rights of an animal.

There isn’t a hard-and-fast amount that is “too much” to spend on a cat or any other kind of pet. The amount that is appropriate depends on your means and the amount of benefit the cat brings to you and/or your family. If your means are very small then only a small amount of money would count as too much. If your means are large then a much larger amount of money would be needed before it was too much. Similarly, if the pet brings very little enjoyment to you and your family (e.g., a pet cricket the kids barely remember to feed) then less money would count as too much, while if it brings a great deal of enjoyment to you and your family (e.g., a playful puppy or kitten) then more money would be needed to count as too much.

When facing a situation where medical treatment will not cure an animal, several additional questions need to be asked:

1) Is the amount of care I/we have to give the animal on an ongoing basis (e.g., giving it a regular diabetes shot, if that is what they do with cats) going to take time away from other things of importance? Will it diminish the enjoyment we get from the pet? Will it pain and confuse the pet on a regular basis? How will it affect our relationship with the pet?

2) How much will this treatment really relieve the suffering of the pet? Will it only prolong the animal’s suffering or will it allow it to live in relative comfort?

3) Given the facts of the situation, which would be more compassionate to the animal and to the family: Allowing a period of protracted illness or putting the animal to sleep and getting it over quickly?

Ultimately, the determination of what should be done in a given situation is up to those who know the situation best, but I hope these considerations are of help in thinking it through.

None Dare Call It "Terrorism"?

Daniel Pipes on the persistent refusal of major media sources to label terrorists as “terrorists.” Excerpt:

The reluctance to call terrorists by their rightful name can reach absurd lengths of inaccuracy and apologetics. For example, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition announced on April 1, 2004, that “Israeli troops have arrested 12 men they say were wanted militants.” But CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, pointed out the inaccuracy here and NPR issued an on-air correction on April 26: “Israeli military officials were quoted as saying they had arrested 12 men who were ‘wanted militants.’ But the actual phrase used by the Israeli military was ‘wanted terrorists.'”

(At least NPR corrected itself. When the Los Angeles Times made the same error, writing that “Israel staged a series of raids in the West Bank that the army described as hunts for wanted Palestinian militants,” its editors refused CAMERA’s request for a correction on the grounds that its change in terminology did not occur in a direct quotation.)

One more reason the MSM has *major* problems.

GET THE STORY.

None Dare Call It “Terrorism”?

Daniel Pipes on the persistent refusal of major media sources to label terrorists as “terrorists.” Excerpt:

The reluctance to call terrorists by their rightful name can reach absurd lengths of inaccuracy and apologetics. For example, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition announced on April 1, 2004, that “Israeli troops have arrested 12 men they say were wanted militants.” But CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, pointed out the inaccuracy here and NPR issued an on-air correction on April 26: “Israeli military officials were quoted as saying they had arrested 12 men who were ‘wanted militants.’ But the actual phrase used by the Israeli military was ‘wanted terrorists.'”

(At least NPR corrected itself. When the Los Angeles Times made the same error, writing that “Israel staged a series of raids in the West Bank that the army described as hunts for wanted Palestinian militants,” its editors refused CAMERA’s request for a correction on the grounds that its change in terminology did not occur in a direct quotation.)

One more reason the MSM has *major* problems.

GET THE STORY.