Not a Potted Plant

A seven hour visit to a new city cannot possibly give you a complete and fully accurate idea of what it would be like to live there. But it can make a good impression.

Work took me to Portland, Oregon today. The get-up-and-go and same-day travel part was grueling, and the work itself was only so much fun. But having lunch with a fellow Leaguester (thanks for taking me to Urban Farmer, Tod!) was a great pleasure and from the fleeting taste of the city I got, I felt like I’d seen a glimpse of a better kind of urban life than I’ve been used to in Los Angeles.

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There has been a lot of text spilled involve New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s soda ban in New York City. A lot of the commentary, seems to miss what I consider to be the central points.

The central dilemma is, or should be, one of Freedom vs. Health.

Supporters of the ban have argued that health is at stake. They tout the smoking ban as an example of something that made an impact. And compared to the benefits, the sacrifice in freedom is worth it. And critics of the ban argue that it is not worth it.

My two questions about the ban are:

1. Will this have any measurable impact in lowering obesity rates and increasing the public health?
2. If there is no discernable impact, what further measures might be required to achieve the desired ends?

I’m not saying that the soda ban is a failure if obesity rates are cut but remain higher than we would like. I believe the smoking bans, for all of their faults, did have an impact. As the bans have proliferated, smoking rates have decreased. Correlation is not causation, but as a smoker I can tell you that convenience and inconvenience do play a role, and that I know people who have cited inconvenience as a reason for quitting or finally being able to.

I can also say that if freedom were not at stake, I would shrug off the lack of impact. I still have no objection to calorie counts on menus. That is some freedom lost (by restaurants) but freedom gained by others and comes out basically a wash.

But soft drinks are not to obesity what smoking is to… well… smoking. It is my experience that cutting soft drinks out of a diet leads to calories gained elsewhere, while cutting smoking in public places does not actually lead to more smoking elsewhere. (Okay, pushing them out of bars does lead to smoking on sidewalks, but still less smoking in the overall. Trust me on this.)

If I’m wrong, though, then this ban should have some sort of measurable impact of some sort, some where. If it doesn’t, and if it’s not expected to, that poses a problem for me. The dilemma is no longer Freedom vs. Health, but Freedom vs. Something Else.

I would nominate: Freedom vs. Symbolism. The socially acceptable disdain for this guy. The unpleasentness of having to sit next to the fat guy on the plain that you are just sure drinks this crap (though, if they drink Diet Coke, that’s a punchline). Exasperation on the part of health-conscious Americans towards their fellow countrymen. The loss of freedom involved being not just a biproduct of the attempted aims, but rather the goal at hand. You can’t make them aesthetically pleasant, but you can damn sure take that Big Gulp out of their hands.

To be honest, I am not impervious to this. I’ve struggled with my weight, but even I have to watch myself at the Golden Corral, looking at these people who obviously eat way too much eating way too much. I would not lament the Golden Corral closing and their having to eat elsewhere.

The upside to this, if it passes, is if it changes the dynamic of food portions. One area where I do agree with the major is that everything is out of whack, as far as that goes. Larger portions are more profitable and so there is the incentive to offer much more for a little more price. Nowhere is this more evident with soft drinks, the syrup for which is dirt cheap and that are good profit items, but it applies to other things as well due to the high fixed costs and lower marginal ones. And so if this leads the vanguard towards tilting portions back to sanity, and thus there is some sort of measurable impact, then I will revise my opinion.

But soda alone won’t do it. And I do want to know what’s next.

It takes a lot longer to make an omelette than it does to eat one. The imbalance resolves, at least in part, by slowing down to enjoy the meal. I associate this bit of wisdom with my experiences as a tourist in Europe and in particular visiting family in Italy and France. Meals both in homes and in restaurants are high points, even focal points, of the day in these countries. This should be an everyday sort of ethic. Good food means a good life.

Italy and France are the culinary champions of a continent full of all sorts of good food, and not coincidentally they are also the places where the “Slow Food” movement enjoys the most visible support. I love the ethic behind the movement even if I do not always live up to it. Below the fold, I have some not-all-that formally organized thoughts about implementing it here in the USA. I will suggest that in the comments you all share your own ideas for getting more devoting more time to increasing the pleasure of life based on what goes on your table. Continue Reading →

John Edwards will never be president. He will never get a cabinet appointment. He is no longer a defendant. What is going on in his life is no longer any of our business. Meanwhile, he has a new child to raise. He has a new family. Edwards and Hunter chose the spotlight, but the little one didn’t. Nor did Edwards’s other children with his deceased wife.

Of course, the counterargument is that John Edwards does not want to be left alone. You know what? That’s all the more reason to leave him alone.

My trip down to Vegas took me through Utah. There were some things that jumped out at me as worthy of note:

They’re combating Fatigued Driving in a constructive way. This is an issue that’s important to me because back when I was a full-time college student and had a full-time job and was writing at one paper and editing another, I got into two of these. I have also long worried about the hours my wife has worked and works and the toll it takes on her alertness. Anyhow, they have designated turn-off spots for fatigued drivers. This is good because if you are tired and pull over, you never know if you’re going to get ticketed (especially in a place that craves order like Utah). Letting you know it’s okay to do so, and where, is immensely helpful.

A good public/private partnership. In addition to public rest areas, they have also apparently worked things out with some way stations wherein they double as public rest areas. I guess the state pays these places some money and in return the restrooms are public, well-kept, and you won’t get hassled for loitering. This is an all-around win and I prefer these places to the actual rest areas and regular gas stations because if I want to buy something, I can (more than at a public rest stop), but I feel under no obligation to (as I do at a gas station).

Petting zoos. How family-friendly is Utah? Family-friendly enough that one of the gas stations had a petting zoo attached. With zebras.

Utah has 80mph speed limits. The signs all let us know that it’s experimental. They’re also heavily enforced. I’m not sure if that’s because of concern that drivers will take that as a license to go over 100 or because drivers already have. The end result is that on the way back, when the speed limit was 75 I drove 80 and when the speed limit was 80 I drove 80. Still, it’s a start.

Clancy is scrambling to get through all of her charts so that she can fly back home for her cousin’s wedding. It has, to this point, involved parking herself at a coffee shop* before heading to the office, where she will be until she finishes. It sucks being away from her, but it’s more important that she get everything done. As a just-in-case measure, I have volunteered to drive her to the airport (a five-hour trip, each way) so that she can work in the car, if it’s necessary**.

Anyhow, she wrote me to ask how late I would stay up. To which I responded, “As late as you want me to. Well, as late as I can. Assuming I’m not driving you to the airport, which it’s looking like I won’t have to. But if that changes, then I need to go to bed early so that I can. But if I don’t need to, and if I don’t crash, I can be awake whenever you get home.”

Concise and definitive answers are not my strong-suit.

* – Clancy can’t drink coffee in her present state, or rather it unfathomably tastes awful. But being home where there’s a bed and she is underrested is a potential hazard. Being at work during business hours is ripe for distractions. She can go to work after hours and can actually take a nap on the floor without fear of wanting to sleep for more than a nap. She took today off as a vacation day to address the charts, though she still had to appear at a meeting this morning.

** – A pretty big sacrifice on my part, given that I’ve been in the car for over 25 hours in the past week. There isn’t much I would rather not do. But taxi service is in my current job description.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling in the companion cases of Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Massachusetts v. Department of Health and Human Services this morning. To the surprise of absolutely no one, a unanimous panel found section 3 of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

More interesting is the strong Tenth Amendment reasoning relied upon by the First Circuit. Based on the reasoning placing heavy emphasis on the “historic role of the states in defining marriage,” it appears that states that have enacted SSM bans into their statutory laws or constitutions are free to continue doing so. As yet unlitigated (at this level) are cross-boundary validity cases.

Enforcement of the order is stayed pending denial of certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court. (I hasten to add, just after publishing — I doubt certiorari will be denied, so that means enforcement will be stayed until and unless SCOTUS affirms.)

Doug Mataconis and Steven Taylor go back and forth on whether the Constitution is too hard to amend. This is an area where my instincts are to agree with Mataconis, but where I actually agree with Taylor rather strongly.

One of the arguments that drives me batty is, with regard to a plethora of proposed amendments, “For people who claim to love the Constitution, conservatives sure want to change it a lot.” To me, there is absolutely nothing contradictory in loving the Constitution and supporting changes that are expressly authorized in said constitution. There is more textual support for changing the Constitution by way of amendment than by way of judicial review, which was something we inferred. Now, whether the right actually believes in this distinction is another matter. But it’s a valid distinction whether they are using it cynically or genuinely.

The problem is that the amendment system is broken. The bar is set so high that the only way to deal with the changes of time with regard to the Constitution is by way of judicial decree. Now, I don’t support making constitutional changes really easy, either. I originally come from a state where it is such, and that opens up a host of other problems. I also, unlike the University of Texas professor who got this conversation started, don’t think that we should be looking at state constitutions anyway as I don’t believe their comparable. Looking internationally, as Taylor does in a second post, is not necessarily a bad idea, so long as we remain cognizant of the fact that what works there may not work here.

The point that it’s more possible – at least in theory – to change the constitution by way of another convention is an interesting one. And almost terrifying. That would open the door towards all manner of change and I don’t have the highest confidence in what we would come up with. I think that sense is universal, which is one of the major reasons why one has never been called. That and the small states banding together to Save Our Senate (which would almost certainly get a look-over if this Pandora’s Box were opened). If it weren’t for the valve-release of judicial review, we might have had to call one by now just to sort out the whole “Interstate Commerce” thing. Not that I think the courts have it right, but it may well be (and I think is) the lesser of evils.

I’m not sure exactly what the correct threshold is. I’d rather err on the side of “too hard” than “too easy,” but I think there is a strong argument that we err too far in that direction.