Pragerblog

In addition to my Nobel tossing, I had other sensations while at the obesity conference at Bainbridge Island last weekend that I was participating in a world-changing event. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if people point back to this even as a turning point, even 20 years on.

Part of my wonderment owes to my being within the circle for the first time, but it’s true that many of those who attended in Washington also attended the Brownell/Gold-hosted obesity meeting in New Haven in 2007, so perhaps it wasn’t as thrilling to them.

But often, of course, what is actually world-changing isn’t visible on the front end, and doesn’t arise from a scheduled event, no matter how special it is. That was clarified for me even before I stepped onto the plane on the way back, when I saw smatterings of face masks in Seattle, and still in Minneapolis, where I changed planes. The swine flu outbreak continues to widen, and who knows whether it will be world-changing, but it may be.

In that case, of course, the conference will end up being a footnote to what really broke that dark weekend, oh those many years ago.

This is just so wrong.

The Massachusetts treasurer, Tim Cahill, yesterday awarded a Keno license to a Cohasset restaurant, even though the town has been fighting the license for 7 years because it just doesn’t want Keno in its town.

“It’s obvious that the town doesn’t want Keno, but it’s unfair,” Cahill said.

Unfair it is, but to whom? Presumably, he’s speaking of the restaurant owner, and perhaps he’s thinking about all those poor, disenfranchised Keno gamblers who have to drive a little farther to circle their numbers and pray for fortune. But what about fairness to all the people who live in Cohasset? Except when it doesn’t suit the politics of the Supreme Court (see Bush v. Gore), local standards carry a lot of weight. My town, Arlington, doesn’t allow liquor stores, for example. Can you imagine a state official awarding a license anyway?

“It’s obvious that the town doesn’t want to allow liquor sales, but it’s unfair,” Joe Bureaucrat said.

Granted, I’m opposed to state-sponsored gambling of any kind, and I think that Keno is a fairly low type of a fairly low pursuit (no skill involved), and both color my reaction.

But why is it “fair” for a state official to order a town to host any sort of business, but especially a lowlife-attracting, soul-crushing, regressive-tax-imitating business like Keno?

I haven’t found anything, but I looked around for a place I might experience the inauguration on Tuesday with others. I think it is momentous — I think the new guy could actually be great in his own right, not just in comparison to the ugliness we’re leaving behind.

But here’s the thing: Eight years ago, an awful lot of people were thinking the same way. We’d emerged from the stain of that philanderer Clinton, and the Texan looked like he had conviction to guide us in far better directions.

Clearly, they were wrong. In epic degree. The worst president in history. You could take away one thread or another from his utter failure, and he’d still rank with the worst. What still niggles at me is that people voted for him twice! Despite my friend Ron’s continuing disdain for saying so, I maintain that those who did were ignorant, and should at least admit it.

But if they could be that wrong, clearly, so could I, as I thankfully enter this new phase with considerable hope. I truly hope not, of course. Especially from the wounded starting position, I strongly doubt we could stay eminent in the world, never mind pre-eminent, if this guy is anything like the last one.

I hope that if Obama does screw up on anything like the same scale, I won’t be like the idiots last night on C-Span who praised Bush on his way out the door, absurdly clinging to the belief that things turned out the way they hoped they would, even though they clearly didn’t.

In their places, I think I would be doubly disappointed because I believed in him, and I don’t at all understand why these fools aren’t as well.

I missed Bush’s final State of the Union, but I heard some of the reaction afterwards on C-Span. Then this morning, I caught a little bit of Fred Barnes talking more broadly about Bush’s legacy. Combined, they show me how far the convinced will go to hang onto their positions.

Barnes’s denial is epic. People don’t remember a president’s performance on the economy, he said, so Bush, despite having fumbled his way to the worst economic mess in three generations, will get a pass from history on it. Fred, every heard of Herbert Hoover?

Then he said the Iraq war is a success! By what measure? At best, removing all the more evil scenarios, he attacked a nation based on faulty intelligence. So it was a mistake — at best.

WMDs, meanwhile, are not reason enough to attack other countries, so why were they enough to attack this one?

And what has the cost been of this “success”? Deep, deep losses in American wealth, security (all the soldiers lost, all the materiel expended), prestige, credibility, pride.

Yes, war is hell, which is precisely why we should have incontrovertible justification — vital need — before entering into it. We didn’t spend all those costs, we squandered them. And for what? Can even the bozo Barnes think that what we’ve “gained” is worth what we are bearing? At best, we will get out of Iraq without a complete and total loss. Yes, as an American, I hope that we do.

But absent a deep-seated need to see advantage no matter what’s there, who could possibly call this, or practically anything in Bush’s sorry reign, a success?

… and I’m openly white.

My point is that the phrase “openly gay,” as it is used in newspaper articles, is passe, at a minimum.

In the story in question, on the front page of today’s Boston Globe, Gene Robinson’s sexual identity is central to the point. Robinson, the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, says his inclusion in pre-Inaugural activities is proof of “the big umbrella” Obama is intending to make of his administration, with room for him and for Rick Warren, an influential anti-gay minister from California.

The first paragraph of the story calls him “openly gay,” and it sticks out as a relic, at best. The phrase was devised, I’m sure, to make clear to readers that the person being called gay had come out, and wasn’t being used to besmirch the individual, the way some other cretin might use “fag,” perhaps. But the time for such a phrase is well past.

One way to test the validity of word choice is to look at its opposite, and that’s when you see the folly of this one. Even if the point of a story was whether someone was out or not, “secretly gay” might be used as in, “His associates say he was secretly gay,” but it would never be used as in “the secretly gay fullback had chosen not to disclose…”

To say someone is gay is describe one part of him or her, and needs no modification. To use a modifier like this is to say differently.

Of course talk radio is dominated by boneheads, but a guy I heard WEEI sports talk last week — by no means a troglodyte and almost eloquent in a townie kind of way— is still holding space in my head.

His topic was Question 3 on the Mass. ballot, which would (will) ban dog racing in the state. My position is, there is no intellectually or morally justified position in support of that moldering business, and I regret I can cast only one vote to put it out of the dogs’ misery.

“Let’s get this straight,” he said, with as much certainty as I have on the opposite side. “There’s humans, and there’s everything else. They’re here for us to do with as we wish. Period.” (Note: I was driving, so the quotes are accurate only in their sense, but not word for word.)

This is, to coin a phrase, why there are horse races. And dog races. And dog fighting. Just like people who voted for George Bush a second time, I just don’t get it. Not just that I don’t agree; I cannot fathom how someone has come to that conclusion.

I’m not a member of PETA, and I don’t aspire to be. I’m still eating animals, and will kill mosquitoes when they’re bothering me. But in my continuing exploration of biomimicry, one point I’ve been convinced of is that we are not “apart” from nature, we are “a part” of it. Yeah, we got the language skills, but we also got this overwhelming hubris, and I’m not sure it was an even exchange.

If we’re so freakin’ smart, how come we’re despoiling the environment in a way that no other species does? The rule in the rest of the animal kingdom is maintain habitat, because that’s how to survive. Why do those “lower” species know what we haven’t figured out yet?

I don’t think we have been granted dominion, but if we have, I have no doubt we should exercise it benevolently — I don’t know how anyone who’s ever been under the despotic thumb of a boss or parent could conclude otherwise. Even if I could ask the caller that question, I doubt I’d understand his reply.

Yesterday, it was the clergy, asking their brethren to sermonize on the evils of marijuana, and the need to defeat the ballot proposal that would decriminalize small amounts of marijuana.

Today, it’s the law enforcement lobby.

So, I just wanna add: I’m voting for it, and I think you should too. The prohibition (word chosen very purposefully) against marijuana is absurd in the extreme, no more justifiable — or successful — than the prohibition in the ’20s and ’30s against alcohol. Criminalization of a fairly benign substance puts more people in prison while raising our taxes, not only for prison upkeep but throughout the law enforcement universe.

Remember, I don’t like taxes, but I do respect them. There are legitimate communal aims that communal pooling and spending of our money will solve. But marijuana prohibition is not a legitimate communal aim. Jailing potheads does not cure any societal ill, and it doesn’t make us any safer. I have no doubt that, if pot were put on the exact legal footing of alcohol, far more downsides (drunken driving deaths, drunken brawls, domestic violence) would result from drink.

For the record, I don’t smoke pot. I used to, habitually, for 17 years, until I was led to see that it was not a positive force in my life. I wouldn’t approve of anyone who used it like I did. I wouldn’t like it if my children became pot smokers. I am not promoting pot smoking.

But there is a big difference between being against a behavior as a matter of personal code and being for its criminalization. I don’t think people should drive at 80 mph, for example, but I don’t think we should jail drivers who do. (If their actions lead to public mayhem of any sort, that’s a different story, and obviously, we do criminalize that. Same for people who drink: We control alcohol, but don’t sanction overboard drinkers until their actions lead to public mayhem. Same could be done for pot smokers.)

I would ask any voter: How do you benefit from current pot laws? Are you, personally, better off? Is society better off? Have we, collectively, stamped out pot use? Or have we merely driven underground a practice that some portion of the populace wants to engage in, even if it makes them into criminals? That’s what happened during Prohibition. And that’s why Prohibition was repealed — it didn’t achieve its aims.

Let’s stop paying to house, feed, and clothe not-really-criminals, let’s stop paying to chase them down, stop paying to bring them before judges. We are not getting value for that portion of our tax dollars.

Seventeen years ago today, I entered South Oaks Hospital on Long Island for what turned out to be a 9-week stay in the eating disorders unit. It was a such an important event in my life that I think of it as special as my “other” birthday.

Many of you know that I’ve written a book detailing my journey from very obese, very unhappy person to someone much closer to his God-given purpose in life, and rehab was a primary experience along the way. (I’m through two complete drafts and still have some work do to. And, in the meantime, I’m seeking representation, and considering self-publishing. Feedback or leads welcome.)

In the book, rehab gets a whole chapter, totally fitting for the experience’s importance to me. (BTW, I’ll be reading an excerpt from that chapter on Friday night, at a regional gathering of overeaters that I’m attending. I’d say, “c’mon down,” but it’s a closed event.) There will be excerpts of the book, including a rehab section, on the new website, which is “a couple of weeks away.” (The quotes are to signify that progress has been wicked slow, and I’m not countin’ on nothin.)

Anyway, rather than well-wishing — which I’ll happily accept at any time, of course — please “celebrate” with me by taking into your consciousness that many obese people are food addicts — I am a food addict, in recovery —  and if people like me had access to insurance coverage for rehab, as I did then, a lot of people could move into the light of happiness, as I have.

Too many people scoff at the idea of food addiction, but if I’m sure of anything on this earth, food addiction is real, and food addicts can greatly improve the conditions of their lives if they can get treatment. Not all fat people are addicts, and not all food addicts are fat — this greatly complicates diagnosis, especially in the unbelieving context of our society. But epidemiological statistics suggest there are millions — literally — of fat people are addicts.

If that’s hard for you to believe, then — and I say this as sweetly and earnestly as I can — you are part of the problem. As a gift to me on my 17th rebirthday, I wonder if, as a first step, you could just imagine that I might be correct on this point. How might your attitudes change if I was?

Thanks for considering it.

… and I decide to buy a soda. I see an Au Bon Pain and grab a bottle of Diet Pepsi.

“Probably be, like, $1.69 or something,” I think to myself. “Frickin’ robbers.”

But no. It was $2.30. Nothing gold-plated about it that I could tell. Just a bottle o’ pop.

If I thought $1.69 was greedy, I sure wasn’t going to pay 36 percent more. For a frickin’ bottle of bubble-infused chemical water!

As I left in a huff of miff, I spied a Coke machine 10 steps away.

Buck and a quarter.

Yeah, it was still just bubble-infused chemical water, but at least I wasn’t getting it for a more expected price — and I was getting over on the usurious faux Frenchies.

Serves ‘em right.

From ThinkProgress, a recap of a discussion between Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Beck, just being ugly as all get out.

They have a right to say it, and I have a right — obligation! — to be repulsed by it. It is just wrong, objectively and demonstrably.

I used to have a boss who said, “Time wounds all heels.” For these guys, what is time waiting for?

I rarely delve into sports here, another indication to my wife that I’m not as sports-interested as she thinks I am, or used to be. Anyway…

When cruising Boston.com, I see that the Bruins intend to attempt another season soon. And my reaction is, “wow, I still don’t care.”

I was a huge hockey fan, as a kid and then again when I lived in Hartford Whalers territory. I went to 15-20 games a year then, and thought for sure I would hook back up with my childhood faves, the Bruins, when I moved back to Boston in the early ’90s. But rarely have I met a more callous, fan-unfriendly outfit, and I can barely bring myself now to watch the Stanley Cup finals, let alone a Bruins game.

Please understand, I used to love hockey. In 1994, I flew to Vancouver — another frickin’ country, on the other side of the continent —for three days to attend a Stanley Cup game between the Canucks and the Rangers. Not even a Boston team! I’ve been to two All-Star games in my life, in any sport, and both were NHL games. I attended the World Juniors when they came to Boston in ‘96(?).

But the Bruins’s endless disinterest in putting a good team on the ice, as long as the rink’s full enough and everyone’s eating a lot at the concession stands, has not only killed the hockey fan within me, but left a smoldering ash of resentment in its place.

Generally speaking, I try to plumb my resentments for what I can learn about myself, and then to put them to rest. I am generally charitable, and forgive those who trespass against me. But so far, I haven’t brought those attitudes and actions to bear on the Bruins. Mostly, I want them to suffer for their cold disregard for fandom.

As I said in the headline, it’s a completely uncharitable position, but for today, there it is anyway.

Note: Action item at the end.

Yet another post that doesn’t directly address a green topic, although as yesterday’s post makes clear, lobbying expenses for the gas, oil, and electric-utility industries exceed any one industry: More than $120 million so far this year.

Yesterday, I finished listening to a podcast of Prof. Lawrence Lessig’s hourlong appearance before the Commonwealth Club of California last week, in which he talked about his crusade against influence peddling.

It was excellent in all respects, but the comment that stuck with me was (this is a paraphrase): The reasons so many industries are spending dozens of millions of dollars on lobbying is because they expect to get more out of that expenditure than they would spending it in R&D, or in new machinery, or on salaries.

It’s so true: Corporations — which have been ruled as citizens by the Supreme Court, at least for the purpose of having the right of free speech — are different in at least one crucial way: One cannot expect a corporation to act morally or decently, as we might at least hope of a human being. Their “moral compass” is the bottom line, and if they can make a greater profit by dumping waste, or by manipulating the rules against their undue influence, they do it. Their leaders are, in fact, fiduciarily responsible to win the best return for investors.

Yes, they also must obey the laws, but we can expect them to do their best to get around them, and in the present discussion, to spend lavishly to condition the laws to their liking. That’s fine, that’s what they do.

That’s why the people’s representatives have to make strong, enforceable laws for the public good, and to be protected from corrupting influences.

Any thinking being need only look at the dozens of millions that industries are spending to know that there’s way too much value being offered in Washington, by a body that is already being paid by you and me. Except for those directly enriched by Washington’s booty, I can’t imagine why any breathing citizen wouldn’t see how badly we need to change the rules of the game.

Lessig and Joe Trippi, a longtime political operative who most famously deployed Internet technology to foster the growth of Gov. Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, have created change-congress.org to enlist candidates who will support any or all of four propositions:

You and I can also take the pledge(s). They have established a map that shows where the support resides nationwide, in part to show candidates what people think, in their districts and nationwide. Check it out.

Though my position arises from original thought — as in, I didn’t hear it from someone else — I’m quite certain I’m not even among the first thousand or ten thousand to come to my conclusion:

Our country would best be served by a universal public service requirement.

Though I concede I started musing toward this point as a reaction to how understaffed our military has become through our imperialistic invasion of Iraq, it ain’t about warmongering.

In fact, it surprised me to realize that if military service were broad-based, we would have been far less likely to have gone into Iraq, because the issue would have been personal to millions more than it was. Whether to shed the blood of our soldiers becomes a different question when it’s our sons and daughters who will be shedding it. How many people actually know someone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan, never mind have a family member who has?

By no means do I say that everyone would have to serve in the military, although even in the military, there are myriad jobs that don’t include shouldering a firearm. The military has outsourced many of them to private contractors. People opposed to aiding the military in any way could work as laborers fixing bridges, or do administrative work in social services, or whatever — certainly, there is no shortage of public-benefit work that would be speeded by more staffing.

Applying the service requirement universally would mean no one would be put at a disadvantage by having to take a year away from personal pursuits to serve the common good.

I believe most individuals would benefit, too, from the pride that comes with service, and the pride of ownership that arises with personal investment.

There are plenty of potential problems — what if people cheat their way out of it? or wouldn’t it be a nightmare to administer? or how would we pay for it? I respond that, sure, there would be, but I can’t imagine any that would dissuade me from the point. If millions of people are working annually for the good of America, we’re going to come out ahead, no matter the logistics that support it.

I am not an America-love-it-or-leave-it kind of guy, and it’s fair to say I don’t relate to or understand those who are. But from my foggy, suppositional perch, it seems obvious that they would be the first cohort to endorse a year’s stint of selfless service to the common good.

Please tell me what you think in the comments section.

Top and center of Page 1 today, the Boston Globe’s Jenn Abelson writes about the people who have decided to sell their Rams and MDXs and Hummers and 4-Runners because they can no longer bear the $80 fill-ups that have resulted from gas-price increases.

I am really trying not to gleefully celebrate this development, because, truly, real people are hurting, and I hope that when I’m suffering financially for my stupid choices, others won’t celebrate my struggles. But the best I can do, so far, is to add that wiener-ish disclaimer before saying: “that’s what you get for insisting on having overly huge, piggishly wasteful vehicles when you could have done just fine with less.”

Schadenfreude aside — and yes, I guess I’m courting my own — the far more important point to take from this is the solid evidence that prices pretty quickly lead people to drastic action — these SUV owners aren’t selling for profit; they’re just hoping the sale price will cover their leftover payments — where rational thought and/or rectitude never will, at least to the necessary degree.

And that, of course, is the thinking behind cap-and-trade schemes and carbon taxes: Put a price on carbon emissions, and people will change how they use it.

Conservatives would argue that government-imposed solutions differ from what’s happening with SUVs, but that’s just incomplete thought: Private enterprise has always sought to fob costs onto the public. Factory owners dumped waste in the river instead of paying for it to be disposed otherwise. People downstream lost water quality or could not longer eat the fish, and eventually taxpayer money had to be used to clean up the groundwater, or PCB-laced river sediment, or whatever. The term for these is “external costs.”

That was the failure of the market: The factory’s prices were artificially low, because they didn’t include all the expenses of production. So now, rather than government meddling, it’s really a case of the people assigning a price to expenses that industry has heretofore avoided. Only the militantly close-minded still maintain that burning fossil fuels doesn’t incur public costs.

It’s good to note, I think, that it will be you and me, not industry, who will be paying the fees created by cap-and-trade systems or carbon taxes — just as it has been you and me who historically haven’t been asked to pay the external costs. Yes, it was the factory owner who decided to foul the river, but it was you and me who got to pay less for the product, and who wouldn’t rather pay less?

But if the costs exist, someone’s gotta pay them, no? Isn’t that what the market teaches? Right now, of course, it’s teaching SUV owners that they should have bought the Camry instead.

As you know, Georgie and I bought a Prius last spring, just ahead of my cross-country trip, and we still are very, very happy with our purchase. As a car, it is very effective:
* Better than 40 mph even in winter (when, apparently, the batteries aren’t as effective)
* A fabulous turning radius that is easily its most unsung attribute; excellent electronics integration, both for charging multiple handhelds and for channeling both iPod and phone through the car’s speakers.
* GPS, which of course isn’t limited to Priuses but we do tend to think of it that way, since it’s our first exposure to it.
* And the quiet satisfaction of knowing that we made a fairly responsible, pretty successful large expenditure.

But on a couple of fronts unrelated to utility — and God knows, people buy cars for reasons well beyond mere transportation — I see a couple of threats to its luster:

One: There sure are a shitload of them out there. I long ago decided that seeing another one on the road  was no big deal; now, my ever-revving brain automatically looks for a third before it registers an unusual event. But the other day in Cambridge — and I understand that location probably had an influence, FIVE other Priuses were within view, either with me in traffic or parked.

Anyone who bought to be ahead of the curve is now bumming, because that thrill is gone.

Two: Concomittantly, I noted a not-insignificant backlash of the Prius phenomenon from speakers at the just-concluded Building Energy ‘08. One derided the people coming up to him to report that they’d bought a Prius, as if they were expected a gold star for it. Another, while talking about trying to sell conservation to the public, said that only Priuses and solar panels have broken through public consciousness, and that’s because many other measures are invisible, and people are into the cred, more than the conservation.

Notice I said the “Prius phenomenon,” not the Prius, because they sure weren’t dogging the car; surely, 95 percent of the attendees would be happy if everyone drove one, because — oh yeah! — they burn less gas than so many other vehicles.

I was offended at the sniff-ish attitude, because even though, yes, I am as shallow as the next American — ooh, I forgot to mention: four (!) cup holders! — I didn’t buy it to impress. After considering a number of options for cross-country transport, we decided the Prius was the best choice on all the factors.

Impressing the neighbors was on the list, but well down it. And even then, behind that line item isn’t vanity, it’s making a statement to others that energy efficiency is worth paying for, even in a hardly zippy, kinda geeky package.

I bet you thought this was yet another of those green posts with a semi-clever headline. But no.

I just read on Scientific American’s blog that Ben Stein has just won an award from Biola University, apparently a bastion of creationist philosophy, for his film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” is which he says that “big science in this area of biology has lost its way.”

First, it’s worth noting that Ben Stein is one interesting dude; to me, he brings to mind Ted Turner, Richard Branson, and others who make strong impressions in a variety of fields. Stein is perhaps a step down from those two, but still, how many game show host/economist/character actor/creationist filmmakers do you know?

But the point I want to make here is that, to me, creationism vs. Darwinism is one dumb argument. So far as I understand it, there isn’t any element of Darwinism that precludes the presence of God, so the arguments aren’t mutually exclusive.

Gravity, which hardly anyone argues over, is an auto-pilot force that just exists, right? Did God create it, or did it develop from the ether? What difference does it make? If it’s the latter, who/what created the ether, or the building blocks of the ether, or the building blocks of the building blocks?

An awful lot of what surrounds us seems to work in concert, in equilibrium, so I can’t see what’s wrong with calling it an intelligent design. That seems completely descriptive. Aren’t the evolutions of the species pretty freakin’ impressive?

To me, it seems no great leap of faith whatsoever to say that God designed what Darwin identified. In fact, to me, it is a far greater leap to suggest that such an intricate, balanced system developed out of nothingness.

I do part company with those who claim that the Bible is a literal description of how the world was created and developed. There’s too much that swings both ways in the Bible to take it as a consistent, earthly guide to the cosmos. But to say that a greater power designed all that we see? It’s the most logical explanation to me.

This is the most e-mailed health story on the New York Times this morning.

It surveys a community of blogs that is prospering with the message of “fat acceptance.”

I’ve encountered this movement before, most frontally a few years ago when I reviewed the book “Eat Fat,” whose thesis was that the problem with fat wasn’t the fat, but with people’s attitudes about fat.

I was and remain appalled by the notion, not so much out of moralism, but out of my experience. (All my readers know, but in case someone else stumbles in here: I was over 300 for at least 15 years, with minor time-outs brought by dieting. I was 365 when I went into rehab in 1991, and have been in a normal-sized body, roughly, since. I add this only to establish my bonafides as someone who has lived both sides.)

There is no doubt that normal-sized is better. No frickin’ doubt. Unequivocally. Period.

Many of those interviewed in the story say that the only alternatives are dieting-and-failing, or not dieting. That’s a false comparison, because there are other paths, such as the one I took. I am completely convinced that anything I have experienced in this realm is available to anyone who wants it. (Because this is a public forum, I can’t be completely specific, but it involves support groups, in addition to the rehab. If you want more details, you can ask me personally by e-mailing marbs (at) fisherblue (dot) com.)

I concede that just because I like normal-sized better, doesn’t mean everyone else has to. People absolutely can choose for themselves. But let’s be clear that we’re not talking about strictly lifestyle issues.

* Fat people die earlier. Official opinion on the best way to eat seems to change every five minutes, but no one challenges the established thinking on the link between obesity and earlier mortality. That makes obesity a form of slow suicide.

* There are health issues that come to bear long before death. When you talk about fat acceptance, you’re talking about accepting a handicap. Fat people struggle on stairs. They can’t run for the train (or, if they try, they’re less likely to make it than others, and more likely to be in distress afterward). Fat people are far more likely to experience sleep apnea, which deprives the body of oxygen while sleeping. Extreme obesity brings constant joint pain.

* Fat people require more hospitalization, medication, and medical attention. No one disputes that health care costs are advancing well faster than inflation, and that that condition has societal costs. That means fat accepters’ choices have implications for more than just themselves, which undercuts the “just leave me alone” stance some. There are plenty of questionable activities of individuals that society has proclaimed a stake in, such as, say, drunk driving. People can do what they want, but if their actions could harm others, then society weighs in. (No, I’m not saying fat should be against the law.)

Meanwhile, a story on the front page of the Times today says that a study of diabetes patients who had gastric banding done were far more likely to go into remission than people who got intensive counseling on diet and exercise and, in some cases, diabetes drugs. That’s interesting, but still poses a false comparison.

My experience is that I’m an addict, and that my drug of no choice is food. Thank God I never had to resort to invasive surgery to address my obesity, but I can say that the intensive counseling that I exposed myself to over the years, while valuable, was not enough to change my behavior.

How about a study that compares surgical patients to people who do more than counseling to try to change their attitudes and actions around food? Not only has my life been transformed, but I know thousands of people who have experienced the same relief, and most of them didn’t come with the cudgel of diabetes hanging over their heads.

Oh yeah, diabetes! Now there’s a clear and present threat to obese people for you. Debilitating. Life-threatening. To my view, those adjectives apply to all forms of obesity, only on a slower time line. But that just means that sufferers can be debilitated more agonizingly, and their probably earlier end can weigh on their thoughts for agonizingly longer.

Sorry, but to me, that’s unacceptable.

OK. It probably doesn’t, but based on the coffeemaker we bought, it’s a defensible inference.

Every time one of us pours a cup of coffee from its carafe, a little bit of it dribbles onto the counter or floor, or into the sink, as it progressively trains us how to avoid these little messes.

Absolutely, among coffee-maker attributes, you might place “makes good coffee” first. “Heats water well” would be another one.

But I would rank “doesn’t dribble” fairly high, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you think that coffee-maker designers would envision that after the coffee was made, coffee-maker owners would want to decant said beverage?

Obviously, I’m not running for office, ever.

And, I assure you, I’m as money-focused as my fellow Americans. I would like to earn more, while doing less, and even nothing if I can get that gig. I would like to win the lottery. Get a huge inheritance from some surprising source. Have an even nicer computer. Build a wicked cool off-the-grid-but-still-
warm-and-comfortable house, with a nice view. Further hybridize our Prius to make it even more efficient. Or get one of them Teslas!

So, I like buying stuff, just like everyone else, OK? I just think that taxes are the best way to buy some of the things I want. Like…

* Energy efficiency. Like the blower-door tests and other tools to ensure more efficient housing stock, I’m willing to pay more — I’m willing for everyone to be required to pay a little more, whatever amount would be added to the bottom line of each house for the additional test, or the additional materials needed to pass the test — to accomplish this goal I think we all should have. No, Ron Paul, the free market will not provide it.

The same would apply to, say, solar panels, and wind-power generation: The market is going way too slowly, in part because of subsidies such as those for oil exploration that are already welded into place by practice and lobbyists.

How ’bout we stop subsidizing the oil business, which ties us to parts of civilization that “hate us for our freedom” (or something like that) and start subsidizing technologies that would free us from foreign oil and spur investment in resources we already have access to, like wind, and sun, and geothermal, and wave energy? It’s a no-frickin’-brainer, even leaving aside the obvious environmental health advantages.

* Public financing of elections: We’d each have to pay $6 more, according to just6dollars.org, which I wrote about previously. The problem is, we’re paying far more now, except the payments are not visible to us. Well-heeled people buy access to the government by contributing large sums, and then pass the costs onto us.

For example: The profits of Archer Daniels Midland, a titan in food production, are heavily dependent on agriculture policy, so they have a huge stake in how Congress votes and how the executive branch enforces. Naturally, they have a huge public-relations machine that includes not only the commercials they air, but the public policy influencing they do. And naturally, just like seed or pesticides, these costs go into their bottom line, and help determine the prices they charge. Take away that part of their expense, and they can charge less! Great deal for us, no? Remove a taint from governing, and pay less at the checkout counter!

Undeniably, elections cost money, and someone’s gotta pay it. With public financing, we just pay for the elections, without paying the middlemen’s costs of lobbying, administration, and profit percentage.

* Reinstate public-service broadcasting requirements. Formerly, corporations that had use of the public airways were required to set aside some of their broadcast time to serve the public. Typically, it led to 6 a.m. religious services shows, or other marginalia. But how ’bout if we required them to give a certain amount of prime time to political candidates? That would remove a huge burden on running — the cost of air time to reach the electorate — which would open up the process to we whose best hope for wealth might be, say, an inheritance from an unexpected source.

I read somewhere that Obama has a couple of million in net worth, but that ranks him, like, 7th, among candidates running. And that’s before Mike Bloomberg gets in. The CW says that if he does, he’s prepared to spend a billion of his own money. He’s not “just” a billionaire. He could spend a billion to get elected. Do we want to exclude 99.4 percent of Americas (non-millionaires, according to wikipedia) from being able to run for the presidency, by making the race so much about money and access to it?

Yes, this would cut broadcasters’ profits, but I say, screw ‘em! They only earn any profits because they have been granted exclusive use of airwaves that belong to everyone. Yes, they paid for the right, but deals come with conditions all the time; this would just be one of the conditions, and any of them that don’t like the new conditions could just sell their interests and invest somewhere else. I bet that none of them would do so; they’d merely end up with slightly less shiny golden eggs. And, since the regulations would apply to all, there would be no competitive disadvantage to them. Just a cost of doing business.

If we remove the lobbying costs, maybe they’d even break even, even.

My point with all this is that we have common aims, many of which can be accomplished only collectively. Sometimes, that might mean paying more, collectively. What’s so wrong with that?

OK. Of course what’s wrong is that not everyone agrees on what we should spend collectively on, and previous uses of public funds rankled enough NASCAR dads and soccer moms to make any taxes bad taxes. (Well, unless they’re used to subjugate foreign governments who have oil and don’t behave.)

I would consider it progress if we just started moving beyond the “no new taxes” mantra and began talking about what’s best for us collectively.

Who could argue against energy efficiency, for example? Even those troglodytes (see? never running, ever.) who don’t accept the urgency brought by global warming would have to favor a systemic reduction in the amount of oil we need to purchase from overseas, or the environmental despoliation of ripping up the earth so we can burn more coal.

OK. So we’re set on this, right?

My sister wrote from Israel, asking if I was enjoying having such successful teams to root for, and yes! I am!

I hear tales that the Sox are becoming the new Yankees in the eyes of the nation, the ever-dominant  team that everyone comes to dislike for its winning ways. That doesn’t make me happy, but I can live with the dis-ease it brings.

The Patriots are awesome. They’ve won the Super Bowl three times this decade, and the current amalgamation seems so much better than any of those other winners. Exponentially better. To compare them to their previous versions isn’t enough, in fact. They seem as dominant as any team in the history of the game.

Yes, perhaps on the eve of their game with the reigning champions of the league, who also haven’t lost a game this year, who beat the Patriots during their run to the title last year, I am poking fate in the side. If they do lose Sunday, it sure will be hard to maintain my position that they are a team for the ages. Certainly, countless others through the ages have recorded their belief in some flavor of invincibility, only to be shown up as fools in the next moment.

That could happen again on Sunday. The fact that I don’t think it will, that I will be shocked if it does, will just add to the egg on my face if it does. But I cannot fathom it. Absent a catastrophic injury to their quarterback, plus two or three other serious injuries to key players as well, I can’t imagine they won’t be champions again. They are preternaturally good. Impossibly good for the salary-cap era.
As with the Sox, no, the repetition of winning is not boring. They can win every year, as far as I’m concerned, and I will keep on enjoying it.

Meanwhile, I don’t believe that BC is good enough to be No. 2 in the nation, and don’t expect to see them there at year’s end. Still, I’m paying attention to their fate, and hope they do run the table.

I’m at least reading the Celtics notes columns in the Globe, which is more interest than has arisen in me for pro basketball in quite some time. They seem staffed to be a lot better. I’m mildly happy about that, and could even go to a game this year. You know, if I get invited, maybe.

The Bruins? I used to be a huge hockey fan, from childhood into my 30s, but they have killed me. Too many years of callous disregard, through high ticket prices while not really trying to put a winner on the ice. (Last championship: 1972.) I cannot be bothered.