Good enough is good enough

I’m enjoying my newly and consciously chosen path: things don’t need to be perfect. Not that I ever really was a perfectionist. But especially when it comes to consumer purchases, I’m much less a perfectionist than I ever was. Here are a couple cases in point. The rear (electric) window of our ten year old car no longer goes up and down. My immediate thought was to have it fixed. I got an estimate: $270. Gad. My wife and I decided that we can do without that window going up and down (even though my daughters (who sit in the back) would prefer that it work. $270 is a lot of allowance money. I asked the repair guy how much it would cost to make the window permanently stay up (because it kept sliding down). He said that he could do it for $100. I turned down that offer, went home and glued it shut. Far from perfect, though quite satisfactory. A friend visited today. The lock on her car’s passenger-side door was broken. She said: “Passengers can get into the car on the other side.” She added that not fixing minor things is a big time saver. Why make appointments and burn hours fixing something that isn’t really a priority? These car stories won’t resonate for may people. I’ve known dozens of people who freak out if there is even a single little scratch on their car. Nor would they ever try to fix it themselves. They will run it to the dealer, especially if someone else was at fault. A man accidentally collided with our other car 6 months ago. I suggested that I find a body shop that could bang it into shape, but said that I didn’t want it to be “like new.” After all, the car is 8 years old. I found a shop that straightened out the bends and sprayed over the scrapes for $400, instead of getting a “like new” job that would have cost $1,500. It’s good enough for me. There are days when I intend to get x number of things done. I’ve found that my life goes much more smoothly if I let some of those things drop off the list, unaccomplished.

Continue ReadingGood enough is good enough

Why are we getting so fat?

Why are we getting so fat? Elizabeth Kolbert answers that question in many ways in her article, "XXXL" in the New Yorker. Her answers come from the several new books on obesity that she reviews in her article. Here are some of her observations: - We have evolved a "taste for foods that are high in calories and easy to digest; just as it is natural for gorillas to love leaves, it is natural for people to love funnel cakes." Image by Willie Lunchmeat at Flickr (creative commons) -The only place pre-modern humans had to store energy "was on themselves. Body fat is energy-rich and at the same time lightweight" and "a person with a genetic knack for storing fat would have had a competitive advantage." It is too easy to eat high calorie food in the modern U.S. “We evolved on the savannahs of Africa,” Power and Schulkin write. “We now live in Candyland.” Or, consider David Kessler's approach, that are the victims of "eatertainment":

In “The End of Overeating” (Rodale; $25.95), David A. Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, takes a somewhat darker view of the situation. It’s not that sweet and oily foods have become less expensive; it’s that they’ve been reëngineered.

-There's bigger problems. We eat too much because we are oblivious to how much we are eating:

Brian Wansink’s “Mindless Eating” (2006). They have no idea how much they want to eat or, once they have eaten, how much they’ve consumed. Instead, they rely on external cues, like portion size, to tell them when to stop. The result is that as French-fry bags get bigger, so, too, do French-fry eaters.

-Kolbert points out that bagels have grown by 210 calories over the past couple of decades:

For someone who is in the habit of eating a bagel a day, these extra calories translate into a weight gain of more than a pound a month.

Who is gaining the most weight? "Those living just above the poverty level." What are the documented medical risks for being obese?

Type 2 diabetes, coronary disease, hypertension, various kinds of cancers—including colorectal and endometrial—gallstones, and osteoarthritis are just some of the conditions that have been linked to excess weight.

Kolbert's article is an excellent review of much recent research focusing on the causes of obesity and potential solutions.

Continue ReadingWhy are we getting so fat?

Guest sums it up colorfully and the new anchors apologize

Firedoglake's Marcy Wheeler, urging that we should investigate secret operations of the CIA, describes the situation the same way that smart people on the street would describe it. Then, the anchors fall all over themselves allegedly apologizing for Wheeler and allegedly apologizing for themselves. This is pathetically sanctimonious.

Continue ReadingGuest sums it up colorfully and the new anchors apologize

Fixing health care under the table

At Common Dreams, Bill Moyers and Michael Winslip explain that you won't see the way the health care debate is being resolved if you only spent time on Capitol Hill. No, it's much slimier than that:

Katharine Weymouth, the publisher of The Washington Post -- one of the most powerful people in DC -- invited top officials from the White House, the Cabinet and Congress to her home for an intimate, off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform with some of her reporters and editors covering the story.

But CEO's and lobbyists from the health care industry were invited, too, provided they forked over $25,000 a head -- or up to a quarter of a million if they want to sponsor a whole series of these cozy get-togethers. And what is the inducement offered? Nothing less, the invitation read, than "an exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will get it done."

If you are not one of the highly-monied invitees or the "select few," forget about the debate because, politically speaking, you amount to nothing at all. That's the process. Go tell that to all the grade school students who are being taught lies in their civics classes. They are being taught that this is a democracy, and that our government is ultimately responsible to all of those people who were not invited to that fancy dinner. As the authors, explain, this particular dinner was canceled only after a copy of the invite was leaked to the web site Politico.com. It was, after all, a big misunderstanding. This peak at how important bills are passed is not an isolated case. It reminds you that when Congress passed the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, "the select few made sure it no longer contained the cramdown provision that would have allowed judges to readjust mortgages." Here's another example:

Everyone knows the credit ratings agencies were co-conspirators with Wall Street in the shameful wilding that brought on the financial meltdown. But when the Obama administration came up with new reforms to prevent another crisis, the credit ratings agencies were given a pass. They'd been excused by "the select few who actually get it done."

Shame on us. Shame on our leaders for following big business instead of leading.

Continue ReadingFixing health care under the table