the SNOB
Friday, March 07, 2008
Fat, Faith, and Reason
It has been about a hundred years since anyone in the US died of consumption, at least as the dreaded malady was known to our 19th-century forebears. Unfortunately, we owe this startling change of fortune not to the interventions of some heroic-but-forgotten Jonas Salk, but to the correction of our previous ignorance. People still die, but we now the cause now as cancer, heart disease, or one of a thousand other maladies that cause the body to shed weight.
I thought of this while reading this article in BusinessWeek about the race to develop effective obesity medications and was hit face-first by this line:
It has been about a hundred years since anyone in the US died of consumption, at least as the dreaded malady was known to our 19th-century forebears. Unfortunately, we owe this startling change of fortune not to the interventions of some heroic-but-forgotten Jonas Salk, but to the correction of our previous ignorance. People still die, but we now the cause now as cancer, heart disease, or one of a thousand other maladies that cause the body to shed weight.
I thought of this while reading this article in BusinessWeek about the race to develop effective obesity medications and was hit face-first by this line:
The latest obesity research is centering on an increasingly popular scientific premise: The human mind is all but hard-wired to hold the body at a certain weight.
Any time someone (especially a fat person) suggests that more than a few percent of obesity cases are caused by factors other than sloth or gluttony, all hell breaks loose. I find this tendency particularly (though not exclusively) pronounced on the part of liberals, who latch onto it as yet another avenue to bash America's culture and economy--conservatives are hardly the only ones to pick and choose when they use the seven deadly sins to justify their argument.
Do diet and exercise help? Of course. But a century of experience can also show us that they are about as effective as telling someone with bipolar disorder to just calm the f--k down.
¶ 7:38 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Dip, Dip, Barf
The answer is, "yes."
The question? "Is there anything with Jessica Alba in it that you wouldn't watch?"
If Obama needed to win the support of the Back Bay, Upper East Side, Adams Morgan, South Beach, and the Mission District, this video would be perfect. But the next election will be decided in Pennsylavania, which is about as far from the Elysian fields of fame and beauty whence this video came. This is the wrong message, and the wrong messengers, at the wrong time.
Hillary will win Pennsylvania. Like Ohio, it's a matter of simple math. The Democratic campaign has never been about ideas or policy differences, but about sentiments and grievances. None of those are likely to change in the next six weeks; they haven't in the past six years. Hillary is simply on the right side of the right fences for the next round, and probably will remain there for whatever sort of a clusterfuck they stage in Florida and Michigan. The former will be one for the ages--Florida can't get an election right with four years of warning, so God only knows what they will do with four weeks. I only wish Hunter S. Thompson were here to cover it.
The question is, what then? Assuming the math and trends hold, the campaign will end with Obama holding roughly the lead he does now. This is a worst-case scenario because it gives Clinton just enough of a narrative to keep up the fight (with some credibility, I might add, in terms of electability), while leaving Obama more than enough ammunition to fight it out.
Meanwhile, I am starting to wonder whether my sense two months ago that Hillary was a shoo-in to lose in November was grossly mistaken. More now than ever, Obama is looking like a slightly more charismatic, clever, and well-organized version of Howard Dean, while Hillary is looking like a less limp-wristed version of John Kerry. ¶ 6:30 PM 0 Comments
The answer is, "yes."
The question? "Is there anything with Jessica Alba in it that you wouldn't watch?"
If Obama needed to win the support of the Back Bay, Upper East Side, Adams Morgan, South Beach, and the Mission District, this video would be perfect. But the next election will be decided in Pennsylavania, which is about as far from the Elysian fields of fame and beauty whence this video came. This is the wrong message, and the wrong messengers, at the wrong time.
Hillary will win Pennsylvania. Like Ohio, it's a matter of simple math. The Democratic campaign has never been about ideas or policy differences, but about sentiments and grievances. None of those are likely to change in the next six weeks; they haven't in the past six years. Hillary is simply on the right side of the right fences for the next round, and probably will remain there for whatever sort of a clusterfuck they stage in Florida and Michigan. The former will be one for the ages--Florida can't get an election right with four years of warning, so God only knows what they will do with four weeks. I only wish Hunter S. Thompson were here to cover it.
The question is, what then? Assuming the math and trends hold, the campaign will end with Obama holding roughly the lead he does now. This is a worst-case scenario because it gives Clinton just enough of a narrative to keep up the fight (with some credibility, I might add, in terms of electability), while leaving Obama more than enough ammunition to fight it out.
Meanwhile, I am starting to wonder whether my sense two months ago that Hillary was a shoo-in to lose in November was grossly mistaken. More now than ever, Obama is looking like a slightly more charismatic, clever, and well-organized version of Howard Dean, while Hillary is looking like a less limp-wristed version of John Kerry. ¶ 6:30 PM 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Nomentum
What if the whole country voted in one giant Super Tuesday primary? Would the results have been any different than what we've seen so far in the Democratic primary? The numbers suggest not.
Ohio and Texas, much as New York and California before them, voted according to their demographic composition. If the past month of debates, spinning, and ad buys had any effect on voters, it's not really that obvious from the returns. It's a fair rule in business that anything you can't measure does not for all practical purposes exist. "Momentum" is something that pundits and consultants can conjure all they want, but it gets back to the old saying that when the map and the territory don't agree, trust the territory.
Except that in the case of the Democratic primary, "momentum" does in a sense get to vote, at least insofar as it now appears likely that the final nomination will be decided by pregnant chads, er---superdelegates--whose votes may be driven by whatever catches their fancy. And with HRC almost certainly set for another big win in Pennsylvania, the odds of hounding her out of the race early are declining rapidly towards zero. Her case--that if Obama can't beat her in swing states now, he won't beat John McCain in the fall either--gains strength with each unexpected victory.
Right now it is hard to see how this can end amicably. I couldn't be more delighted. ¶ 9:07 PM 0 Comments
What if the whole country voted in one giant Super Tuesday primary? Would the results have been any different than what we've seen so far in the Democratic primary? The numbers suggest not.
Ohio and Texas, much as New York and California before them, voted according to their demographic composition. If the past month of debates, spinning, and ad buys had any effect on voters, it's not really that obvious from the returns. It's a fair rule in business that anything you can't measure does not for all practical purposes exist. "Momentum" is something that pundits and consultants can conjure all they want, but it gets back to the old saying that when the map and the territory don't agree, trust the territory.
Except that in the case of the Democratic primary, "momentum" does in a sense get to vote, at least insofar as it now appears likely that the final nomination will be decided by pregnant chads, er---superdelegates--whose votes may be driven by whatever catches their fancy. And with HRC almost certainly set for another big win in Pennsylvania, the odds of hounding her out of the race early are declining rapidly towards zero. Her case--that if Obama can't beat her in swing states now, he won't beat John McCain in the fall either--gains strength with each unexpected victory.
Right now it is hard to see how this can end amicably. I couldn't be more delighted. ¶ 9:07 PM 0 Comments
Taxi and Spend Politics
Let's start with a simple fact: late this past Friday evening, I waited about an hour for a cab for a ride home from the South End. The reason for this is simple: I was dumb enough to tell the dispatcher I was going to Eastie.
Imagine that you're a taxi driver and you have a fare that will pay you about $15. Good, but you'll probably have to drive empty back to downtown, so that's worth $7.50. Now imagine that between tolls and the notorious Massport Fee (which cabs pay when transiting the tunnels even if they never enter Logan), you add on $6.50 in tolls, of which by law you are only allowed to charge the passenger $2.25, leaving you a happy $3.25 in fare for ~30 minutes of work. Oh, and that's before you pay for your medallion, gas, Basic brand smokes, etc.
See, by law, cabs pay Massport about $3 for the privilege of being on the same side of the Harbor as Logan. If the passenger goes to Logan, they can charge that to the passenger along with the tolls. But, if the passenger is going to Eastie, they're not allowed to charge them the Massport fee--but the taxi driver still has to pay it!
This setup is exemplary of government thinking at its finest:
1. We want to fleece the out-of-towners, so we'll charge taxis outrageous tolls
2. It's too hard to actually assess the fees on cars entering the airport, so we'll just hit them when they cross the tunnel
3. Since the locals would go bullshit if they had to pay those tolls, we'll say they don't have to
The problem of course is that taxis are free to go to great lengths to avoid taking fares to Eastie, and given the math, who can blame them. What happens in the end is that most of us end up asking the driver what the real cost is and tipping that on the top. ¶ 6:09 AM 0 Comments
Let's start with a simple fact: late this past Friday evening, I waited about an hour for a cab for a ride home from the South End. The reason for this is simple: I was dumb enough to tell the dispatcher I was going to Eastie.
Imagine that you're a taxi driver and you have a fare that will pay you about $15. Good, but you'll probably have to drive empty back to downtown, so that's worth $7.50. Now imagine that between tolls and the notorious Massport Fee (which cabs pay when transiting the tunnels even if they never enter Logan), you add on $6.50 in tolls, of which by law you are only allowed to charge the passenger $2.25, leaving you a happy $3.25 in fare for ~30 minutes of work. Oh, and that's before you pay for your medallion, gas, Basic brand smokes, etc.
See, by law, cabs pay Massport about $3 for the privilege of being on the same side of the Harbor as Logan. If the passenger goes to Logan, they can charge that to the passenger along with the tolls. But, if the passenger is going to Eastie, they're not allowed to charge them the Massport fee--but the taxi driver still has to pay it!
This setup is exemplary of government thinking at its finest:
1. We want to fleece the out-of-towners, so we'll charge taxis outrageous tolls
2. It's too hard to actually assess the fees on cars entering the airport, so we'll just hit them when they cross the tunnel
3. Since the locals would go bullshit if they had to pay those tolls, we'll say they don't have to
The problem of course is that taxis are free to go to great lengths to avoid taking fares to Eastie, and given the math, who can blame them. What happens in the end is that most of us end up asking the driver what the real cost is and tipping that on the top. ¶ 6:09 AM 0 Comments
