What Happened To Personal Responsibility?

Harvard Medical School has just given people another excuse to avoid responsibility. According to a recent study, your friends and family can make you fat. That's right, now aside from blaming fast food restaurants, soft drink companies, and bakeries, you can blame the people you hang out with.

While the study is so lacking in scientific data that even the people who conducted it are saying they won't be able to replicate it, the biggest flaw is that it assumes people cannot resist peer pressure. People have no free will apparently, because they can't say no to their friends and they can't resist a commercials.

Enough.

It's not your friends fault that you pig out when they come over. It's not McDonald's fault that you scarfed down a Big Mac for lunch instead of something healthy. It's not the bakers fault because there was trans-fat in the muffin you bought this morning. It's your fault. It's time we, as a country, took responsibility for our actions. We are overweight because we like to eat and we don't like to exercise. That's all there is to it. Obesity is not an epidemic, it's not contagious, it is, except for specific medical conditions, a choice.

I wonder if someone would give me a grant to do a study to prove that.

New Haven Welcomes Terrorists

Never mind sending us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free. New Haven, Connecticut raised the stakes yesterday by starting its municipal identification program. The program, which provides identification cards to resident of the city, has been promoted as allowing illegal immigrants to finally avail themselves of all of the city's services. While that may be enough to inflame those who believe that no illegal behavior, including immigrating, should be tolerated, there's another more deadly reason to be concerned.

Terrorists can get this identification card.

If any illegal immigrant can get a card, that means terrorists can get them too. It means that New Haven has just made it easier for terrorists to create new identities. After all, if you can't get identification because you're here illegally, how can you prove you are who this new card says you are.

This is why you have to monitor the borders. Because the person who is sneaking in to try to make a better life could be blown up by the guy sneaking in behind him.

Much Ado About Nothing

Last night was the much-publicized CNN/You Tube debate. Why is this debate different from all other debates? Because the people get to ask the questions, albeit in prerecorded video. Did it make a difference. Not really.

The problem with political debates has never been with the people asking the questions. The problem is with the lack of answers. Candidates have talking points that they continually fall back on. These talking points are meant to sound impressive while saying nothing.

Want to fix the debate? Let me suggest some changes.

1) Start by making each answer a two-part question, with the first part being yes or no. Go through every candidate, with each one getting to say yes or no and nothing more. Then go back and have them explain why they answered that way.

2) Give the candidates scores that are shown on their podiums, like a game show. They get 3 point for a direct answer, 1 point for a rambling answer that ultimately gets to the point and they lose 5 points for going off-topic or skirting the issue.

3) Alternatively, don't air the debate live. Force the candidates to keep talking until they answer the question, then edit out everything but the one sentence that answers the question for broadcast.

4) Finally, after the election, rerun all of the comments by the winner, alongside video of their campaign promises immediately before the inauguration. Rerun this package every three months while the person is in office and have them explain why they haven't lived up to what they said.

Harry Potter Has No Clothes

This weekend a record breaking 8.5 million Harry Potter books were sold. I'm torn about the Harry Potter books in general and this one in particular. I've heard others say they're torn and go on to say how much they've looked forward to the conclusion and yet they're sad to see it go. That's not what I'm torn about. I'm torn because on the one hand, I'm a big supporter of ANYTHING that gets kids to read, and Harry Potter certainly did. On the other hand, I really wish the kids would be exposed to reading by someone who can write. There I said it.

While other reviews have glossed over the book's numerous shortcomings, I think that is doing a disservice to all who read it. One reviewer said the book gave tribute to other sources. It didn't "give tribute", it ripped them off. There is one scene in the book where you can clearly see Ben Kenobi saying "These are not the droids you're looking for."

There are numerous places in the book where you completely understand why Voldermort is so powerful. It isn't because of anything he's done, it's because the rest of the wizards are so stupid.

SPOILER WARNING: At this point if you don't want to know more specifics then go away and come back after you've read the book. Is everyone gone? OK, here we go.

SPOILER:

At the beginning of the book, Harry needs to be hidden. Where does the Order of the Phoenix choose to hide him? The Burrow, where his best friends the Weasleys live. The same place he goes EVERY SUMMER. And if that isn't dumb enough, the Weasleys host a wedding while he's hiding there. They disguise him, but Luna, a friend from Hogwarts, is able to pick him the minute she arrives. That's a safe hiding place.

After seven years of working up to the grand battle of good vs evil, the war itself is badly written. In today's world, I don't think it's great to glorify war, but if you're going to write about a war, do it right. Harry spends most of his time in hiding, while the real rebellion is going on at Hogwarts and elsewhere. The reader never gets to see any of this, we hear about it later.

The book actually falls apart at the end as Rowling throws continuity out the window. It's like she didn't read her own book. In one instance the paintings in Hogwarts are fleeing through each other's frames, despite Harry and the reader being told early in the book that they can't do that. A magic weapon is stolen, yet it mysteriously appears in the middle of the final battle. Rowling has gone out of her way in past books to emphasize that magic had rules. In this final chapter, she throws them away.

What bothers me the most is a speech that Voldemort gives at the end, saying Potter has survived through accidents, luck, and by sacrificing others. By the end of the book, he's proven right. Voldemort is not stopped by Potter, but by an accident of his own making. The deaths of various characters are tossed in as to be almost completely devoid of meaning.

This is a children's book, and children should be able to take away the joys of reading a well-crafted story. This wasn't it.