Calling for Lil Wayne's freedom, six charged with spray-painting graffiti in the French Quarter | New Orleans Metro Real Time News - - NOLA.com

 

Calling for Lil Wayne's freedom, six charged with spray-painting graffiti in the French Quarter | New Orleans Metro Real Time News - - NOLA.com

 

WTF? That is hilarious. It is just a matter of time until these judicial vigilantes affect the change they are after. Or end up in jail themselves, it’s a toss up at this point.

BBC Talks to a Few Afghanis and What They Said Was Interesting.

 

BBC News - Mixed feelings on extra troops in Afghanistan

Interesting look at a few man in the street POV’s. This small group seems to want American troops there, at least until their country can better police itself.  The important part is in the first post, when Fawad Habib points out that our troops are popular in the cities, but less so in the rural areas. This obvious and simple statement points out the difficulty we are having over there. I would venture that we are popular in cities because we can effectively protect the cities. As our protection wanes, so does our support.

 

With all the uproar and political gamesmanship sure to come out of the planned withdrawal, it is worth considering what our best options actually are.  We can continue until we have made the country completely safe and democratic. I’m positive we would be there forever if this was our goal. We could pull out now. Or we could make a slow withdrawal as the President indicated. Pros and Cons later.

Is Obesity Really a Disability?

In my previous post, I blogged about an overweight man who missed his uncle's funeral because there were no empty extra seats for him to buy. This led to the question of whether or not obesity really is a disability or not.

It may very well be that overweight people should be considered disabled. It is more than probable that factors other than will power and discipline play a role in weight gain; and I should know. At my largest I was 440 lbs. While I weigh much less now, I only lost it after bariatric surgery. At the same time, I know that the path I took to that weight was not an instantaneous one. If I had been motivated enough to become active at any point before it got out of hand, I'm certain it never would have gotten as bad as it did. My love of food and laziness ensured I would balloon out. Of course it was only once it was out of hand that I tried to change things. At that point, it was like trying to reverse the sun's course.

Because of my experience, I hesitate to just slap the disabled tag on the obese. I'm sure that there are plenty of glandular problems, plenty of addiction problems, and plenty of emotional problems that some people have no control over. These could very well lead to obesity, and if so, these people would be disabled. At the same time, there are plenty of people who will huddle under the disability umbrella, who were like me. Lazy, unmotivated, and eating everything they shouldn't. I was lucky. I was able to get the surgery. Plenty though, cannot. And once they reach a certain point, they are, for all intents and purposes, disabled.

Which is why this issue is so problematic. When does personal responsibility kick in? How do we as a society decide whether a person's weight is unavoidable, or if the individual is to blame? Should society even make that distinction?

We might not like it, but we will be forced to, especially as more and more overweight people decide that their weight is not their fault. I suspect the end result will be that all overweight people, no matter the cause, will end up on the disabled list. Trying to figure out the root cause of a person's obesity, if it is even possible, would be too time consuming, as well as a logistical nightmare. Easier to just paint them all with the disabled brush and be done with it. The shame is that so many will opt to play the victim.

Is This Weight Discrimination?

When Okamoni Fa tried to book a flight to make his uncle's funeral, he was told he would need to book an extra seat. Unfortunately for him, the flight was full and there were no extra seats to be had. Mr. Fa never got his flight and as a result missed the funeral. (Full story here.)

The article makes no mention of Fa actually claiming discrimination, though he is understandably upset about the outcome. This is by no means an isolated incident however. Airlines have been imposing these types of regulations for awhile now. Just this past April, United Airlines instituted a new policy, that mandates the same thing. Our neighbor to the north took exception to these trends recently, ruling that obesity is a disability and therefore the airlines have to give the overweight an extra seat for free.

Is this really discrimination? Or is it a reality that people need to face? From what little I know about planes, it makes sense from a profit stand point. After all, a plane can only carry so much weight. If one person, buying one ticket, weighs as much as two, then the airline is out a ticket price. Making them buy that extra ticket ensures the airline makes the money it would otherwise. Assuming that the plane was full of course. On the other hand, if obesity really is a disability, don't the airlines have an obligation to make them accessible to everyone without added cost?

The thorn is, as always, deciding whether obesity really is a disability or not. I'll dive into this in the next post.

Hi, I'm an American

I just wanted to take some time to get a few things off of my chest.

America is a television culture. It is full of people whose only goal is to think up something interesting enough to say, so that other people, who aren't on television but wish they were, will watch them. Lately, this has gotten harder. The result is that the people whose job it is to think up interesting things have been saying things that are more crazy than interesting. We believe them of course, because it is what we do. Nothing is too far fetched that someone, somewhere, won't hear it and say, "Damn, I was thinking that this morning!"  Balloon Boy? 12 people thought of putting their kid in a balloon before lunch that day. New World Order? half the voting populace daydreams about it on a regular basis. Rectal polyps? Don't ask. If these common folk could learn to scream, not just louder, but at the right people, they too could be on tv.

America is also a culture of egos. We are right. Even when we are wrong we are right. Apologies are for Europeans, not us. Think we may be wrong about something? Wrong! Have we changed our minds about something? We always thought like that. You must have misunderstood. We like to throw our weight around, and so far, the world has let us. Hell, we know they secretly love us telling them what to do. We told them they did.

We are smart. Super, scary smart. Basically, we are all a nation of geniuses. Any one of us is more than qualified to handle any problem, to figure out any dilemma. We're so smart, we thought up Intelligent Design, and now we want to spread it. Once its in all our class rooms, we'll export it, don't worry. We're so smart, we don't even need to emphasize education anymore. We have such a huge storehouse of brains, that we can coast on what our predecessors stored away. We're so smart, we discovered how to look into alternate dimensions. I know OUR Iraq didn't have WMD's, but the one in the 12th dimension did. We just took care  of it in ours. I guess we're not just the world's police force anymore. We're also the multiverse's.

So that's it. I'm an American. I am the bull in the world's china shop. I am right no matter what you say. I have God, and I have guns, and what should scare you right now is that some Americans will get hard reading this sentence. They're my neighbors, and we try not to make eye contact.  Anyway, for all the accomplishments, all the wars, all the interventions, I just want to say to the world, you're welcome! No, you don't have to thank us. We know how much we are appreciated by everyone. The TV tells us so.

Mediocrity Continued

In America, a vocal minority has declared that rule by clowns and half-wits is infinitely preferable to rule by those with an education. For some reason, and with no sense of embarrassment, these people have decided that only the stupid know what people want. It has spread so far that I have people that ARE intelligent, people that I know for a fact blow standardized tests out the water and send the Test Companies back to their desks crying like little girls, spout the exact same platitudes. How is this possible? You would think that these champions of common sense would use some. So it goes, huh?

Most people don't give their doctors an I.Q. test before making an appointment. Regardless, I am perfectly comfortable, with no polling to back me up, that most people would rather have a doctor who was the smartest they could get. These champions of the middle ground would flee if given a choice from a doctor known as mediocre, much less plain dumb. The same can be applied to anything we have a vested interest in. Give me the absolute best person, as often as possible. Except for our government, and any area that politicians have managed to make an impression on. Need someone to figure out how to fix the economy? Why enlist someone who has spent all their lives studying and working in the top of their field when you can get someone with common sense? Never mind that a national economy runs on different principals than your checking account, you want a common man in charge! Got a question about global warming? Why ask a scientist who has studied this one subject all his life? Nah, he lives in an Ivory Tower.Ask Beck, he'll know, he's a common man/multi-millionaire.  They always know what's best for us!

Again, I want to stress what an absolute shame this is. A country built on greatness and potential has been hijacked by a group of people who think OK is just fine. Who have a deep distrust of intelligence, for no apparent reason. This country better get it together soon. Our money and influence can only protect us for so long. Eventually, we will have to deal with a world that is smarter and better prepared than us in every way. God help us.

America's Love Affair with the Mediocre is Killing Us

Quick, how do you feel about the stimulus package? Does what the administration did make sense to you? Do you wish the government would use more common sense and less expert opinion to make decisions? If the answer is no to the first two and yes to the last, then you're probably part of a group in America that desperately wants to be considered a majority; you believe that "experts" with a big emphasis on the air quotes, are really out to get us.


America has always had a love-hate relationship with our intelligentsia. We are more than happy to use their smarts to acquire new technology, learn new ways to get things done, and overall, use them to make our lives better. When asked though, many Americans will insist that the smartest people are out of touch, that they don't know what the people want, and, most famously, that they lack common sense. A large part of America will admit to not wanting the smartest people in charge.

How does this make any sense at all? When did we as a people get so paranoid that we would rather the "C" student make policy as opposed to the "A"? Any business on earth is going to promote their best and brightest as quickly as possible, and they make money doing it. Lots of money.  One of the American myths was that you could work hard, get an education, and make it to the top. Now? Now you can't have gone to any University other than a state one, without being called an elitist. Its disgusting. 

Americans have no one to blame but ourselves. Our stubborn pride in our ignorance has doomed us to play catch up with countries like China who actually value and use all their resources.Our utter disdain for anyone who has the slightest bit of intelligence will be our downfall. There is no way a society can consistently try for mediocrity before we become just plain dumb.