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Forty-four years later

Posted by Ron Coleman on January 11, 2008

On this day in 1964,

In a landmark report, U.S. Surgeon General Luther Leonidas Terry issued the warning that smoking may be hazardous for one’s health, concluding that it has a causative role in lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and other illnesses.

We card

That’s how long it’s been since there’s been no excuse. (From Wikipedia.)

It’s bad enough that people do this to themselves — smoke cigarettes — despite what everybody has known in those 44 years. What is also remarkable is the hypocrisy of everyone else in the murder-suicide chain — but most of all, the state, which profits massively from tobacco taxes excised from addicts and from corporate and business taxes on the manufacture and sale of cigarettes, which doles out billion-dollar legal fees to politically-connected law firms that represent the “victims,” runs the judicial system that let that dirty deal go down, and pretends in the most preposterously transparent manner to actually care about who smokes.

Our country and our economy are addicted to assisted suicide by tobacco, and almost all of us are, one way or another, in on the game.

Posted in Americana | 3 Comments »

MLK Federal Courthouse, Newark – interior

Posted by Ron Coleman on January 7, 2008

The law only appears to be mazelike. This morning in Newark, at least, it was simple.

Posted in Americana, Lex scripta, Metropolis | Leave a Comment »

Nice ox you got there

Posted by Ron Coleman on January 3, 2008

Are conservatives and libertarians now in favor of enhanced penalties for “hate crimes”? Instapundit updates this story, which has gotten a ton of play on the blogs:

JAY GRODNER UPDATE: The story of the lawyer charged with having “keyed” a Marine’s car just before the Marine left for Iraq has now made the Chicago Tribune.

Yes, the guy who seems to have done this seems to be an utter creep. Yes, he deserves, morally, for bad things to happen to him. I’d fire him if he worked for me, discharge him if he were my lawyer, and block his IP from my blog comments.

But he keyed a guy’s car. As tempting as it is to imagine what you’d do if you were the judge, how you’d throw the book at him for being such a self-hating American, how is this different from applying sentence enhancements to people convicted of assault when they are found to have committed their crimes due to politically incorrect animus such as racial or religious prejudice, which conservatives and libertarians generally oppose (as I do).

It’s a complex issue — but let’s both recognize that it’s implicated here, and that, for a change, many of us are getting a taste of how it feels in your gut when someone lashes out at you for what you are or what you believe, and they’ve been stupid enough to do it in a way that puts them in a position of being punished by the state.

UPDATE:  Am I a prophet, or what?  Same link:

UPDATE: Reader David Emerson emails:

Glenn- FYI. Since placing a American flag decal (perhaps 3″x5″) on the rear window of my SUV, it’s been keyed twice and has had its windows gratuitously smashed several times too. I’m here the city which so prides itself on tolerance….San Francisco….it could be the antiwar crowd or the anti-SUV crowd simply becoming more hostile. Wonder if others have experienced the same thing.

I’m no fan of hate crime legislation…but next time this happens may report it as one and see what happens.

Posted in Americana, Lex scripta, Oppression | 19 Comments »

Just too fat

Posted by Ron Coleman on January 1, 2008

Glenn Reynolds links to this article about the latest “key” to obesity. It says that “a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is critical in mediating satiety in adult mice,” so, naturally, it’s only a matter of time till someone finds a way to put the stuff in a brightly-colored pill, and then once again we’ll all be able to fit into those molded plastic seats on the subway, right?

Of course not. It’s a little more complicated than that. On the way home from afternoon shul that I heard this on NPR. Bear with me — it’s a little long, but really very interesting, and it hits all the notes:

Cox: This is Donny Wong. He’s a London-based pharmaceutical analyst who specialises in the obesity field. He says drug companies are throwing huge portions of their R and D budgets at obesity-related research.

Wong: “There are over 400 compounds that are listed in databases that are in some point of development.”

Cox: Pfizer and Merck are working on their own versions of cannabinoid receptor antagonists. Other companies are trying to improve on a drug that prevents fat absorption. There’s also research into a gut hormone that may control appetite.

But all these drugs come with concerns about side effects. In fact, Acomplia is not available in the United States because the FDA is concerned that the drug may cause psychiatric problems. In clinical tests, a handful of people on Acomplia developed depression or suicidal thoughts. Wong says those kinds of outcomes are a real risk for drugs that tinker with the brain.

Wong: “The centrally acting drugs oftentimes have centrally acting side effects, and that’s really a huge area of concern for physicians. “

Cox: Some day there may be a drug that that produces significant weight loss with no serious side effects. But Barry Popkin thinks that’s still many years off. Popkin heads a global obesity center at the University of North Carolina. He says a person’s metabolism depends on so many internal and external factors; pharmaceuticals will never be able to address them all.

Popkin: “These drugs, if we find them, are going to be very expensive and have to be targeted in very complex ways, possibly related to your genetic makeup and affecting small populations at a time. And the world can’t afford that. “

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Americana, O Mores!, Scientificus | 6 Comments »

And who exactly did invent spaghetti, anyway?

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 27, 2007

Lynn B:

Last week (or was it the week before?) presidential candidate Mike Huckabee published his much maligned foreign policy statement in Foreign Affairs magazine. In it, he attributed this quote to the 4th century Chinese military strategist, Sun-Tsu: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

Embarrassingly, SeeDubya at Junkyard Blog pointed out that the quote, while sometimes erroneously attributed to Sun-Tsu, actually appears to have originated (rather more recently) with Michael Corleone.

Yeah, but who among us doesn’t mix those two guys up all the time?!

Posted in Americana, Jocularity | 2 Comments »

Aspirations

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 27, 2007

img00136.jpgThings are looking up!  Climbing the ramp and appreciating the majestic verticality at at Grand Central Station.

Posted in Americana, Metropolis | Leave a Comment »

America’s most admired

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 26, 2007

Gallup reports — utterly nearly buried in an article about how Hillary Clinton is America’s most admired woman (not the subject of this post) — that none other than President George W. Bush is America’s most admired man. (Via Instapundit.)

That is the same George W. Bush who lives on Pennsylvania Avenue. Not his father, the mythical super-president invoked by Bill Clinton and others, who used to live there. No; it is that fellow who is such a poor extemporaneous speaker; who is so inclined to cronysim; who has done such a poor job of marketing to the American public his one historic and courageous policy, the Iraq War — that same one.

How can this be? It is taken as a given in both the mainstream press and in any forum in which the elite express their opinions that President Bush is in fact the most contemptible person on the planet, or at least the stupidest. Nothing to admire about the stupid.

Who are these “Americans” who come to such conclusions? Where are they? Is the Gallup Organization some Cheney thing?

It’s easy to write this item, and you may well blame me for plucking the low-hanging fruit. But in truth, you really do have to sit down and ask yourself just how many alternative universes we are all inhabiting. There is no way on earth that I — who admire George W. Bush quite a bit, despite my considerable disappointment in him from time to time — would ever imagine that he was the most admired man in America. I could not fathom that the constant barrage of snark, contempt and calumny directed at this man could not work its way so thoroughly through the populace, even in flyover country, that this could be the result of such a poll.

So yes, it is an irresistible story to comment on, because it is impossible to understate how out of touch the elites that dominate nearly every segment of American life are to what the vast majority of Americans really think and feel. And I mean that in a good way.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Posted in Americana, Medialites, Politics and Poker | 45 Comments »

The rest of us tonight

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 24, 2007

I was driving home from the City, choking as it was with cheap-dollar tourists from around the globe (I’d never seen Midtown so jammed on Christmas Eve), through the empty streets of Polish- Catholic Clifton, New Jersey. Somewhat emotionally distraught (not because of the tourists!) I concluded that ice cream would be a fine spiritual salve, so I pulled into the local Carvel, whose bright fluorescent light, I was surprised to see, was still burning bright.

I was only surprised because I figured that the help would not want to work tonight, just as this reason was enough to close the Latino-staffed kosher pizza shop I’d walked to on the way to the bus terminal in Manhattan (yeah, that distraught!). But in fact the Chinese proprietor himself was behind the counter, scooping out the ice cream — and who were his customers?

Well, there was me, from the Jewish part of town, of course, with my black velvet yarmulke and white shirt and dark suit. And four others, all together — four young Arabs, another feature of our part of New Jersey, a young man and three women. Two of the girls (they could not have been much older than teenagers) were wearing hijabs on top of modern-looking high school clothes; one in jeans and one in Clifton High Mustangs sweatpants. Another one looked completely Americanized, no hijab, but because of her lack of covering her semitic looks and ebony hair were all the more obvious. And there was the brother, a tall curly-haired boy ordering a “classic sundae” with vanilla ice cream and hot caramel. The Chinese Carvel franchisee served the four of them in turn while someone else emerged from the back to help me with my order.

“Here we are!” I said. “The only customers for ice cream in Clifton!” They all smiled at me and chuckled. One of the girls, the uncovered one, said, “Of course, what else are we going to do tonight? We don’t celebrate Christmas!” I assured them I understood, and waited for my cup, and we all smiled and wished each other an American good night as they climbed into a waiting SUV and I stepped out onto the abandoned street aglow from the light of green and red colored lights hung from the lampposts.

Cross-posted on Dean’s World.

Posted in Americana, Suburbia | 1 Comment »

Haveil Havalim #146

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 24, 2007

A carnival of Jewish blogging — what’s not to love?

Posted in Americana, Blogophilia | Leave a Comment »

“Plain talk on Obama”

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 24, 2007

More “best of.”

Last spring I called out Obama and asked everyone to open their eyes and acknowledge what he was:

All right, I’ll admit it.

Look, Obama’s playing on being a minority group member. Well, let’s face it; he is. And let’s look at that minority, shall we?

We know what they’re all about, and so do they. Very well. Their culture openly, unabashedly celebrates who they really are. Substance abuse? Check. Violence? Infamous. Hostility to Anglo-Saxon values? Not a little — a lot. Just ask any one of ’em and stay the hell clear.

Sure, they’ve developed their own language, put English to their own unique rhythm — but so subversively! They claim to commemorate their cultural heritage but they do it all over our streets. These folks are not going back, and they’re not really assimilating.

Yes, damn it, I will admit it. I say to hell with another Irish president!

Posted in Americana, Jocularity, Politics and Poker | 2 Comments »

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