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More to Morality than the Politics of Sex
From an interesting opinion piece by Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal and OpinionJournal.com. After referencing notorious cheaters, liars, and miscreants like Barry Bonds, Andrew Fastow, Jack Abramoff, James Frey, etc., Henninger writes:
Politics killed ethical formation. Entire presidential campaigns and Supreme Court nominations are fought now over someone's idea of morality. What's right and wrong has become as red and blue as our politics. But look a little closer. These religious wars are about one thing: sex. After the 2004 "moral values" presidential election, Pew Research surveyed public attitudes. But the only explicitly identified determinants of moral belief named in their questionnaires are abortion, gay marriage and gay rights (and belief in God). Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, ignited a 33-year war over sex, bowdlerized for political discourse as "privacy." Pew collapses all moral life in America down to abortion and gay rights because the political class believes those issues move votes. And the result is that anything else important, like what Messrs. Bonds [Barry baseball cheat]or Fastow [Andrew, Enron cheat] represent, is ignored. Our political culture's preoccupation with sexual boundaries has smothered the more important ability of religious or ethical formation to function in the U.S. Currently the most rigorous whole-person moral system resides among evangelical right--at least in terms of keeping one's earthly life in perspective. But because the religious right has "positions" on abortion and homosexuality, politics seeks to undermine its entire function in the life of the nation. Inner-city parents desperate to use vouchers to send their children to values-forming parochial schools can't, because the reigning political calculus holds this would somehow "advantage" an abortion-resistant Catholic Church. Meanwhile the only values taught now in public schools are diversity, tolerance and respect for the environment. I'll bet Andrew Fastow and Barry Bonds believe in all that to the bottom of their souls. Let's admit the bitter irony of the unending sex wars. They've obliterated the ability to talk rationally in public about anything that smacks of "religion." Too political. Thus a modest proposal: Maybe it's time for the sex obsessives on the left and right to take their fights over abortion and gay rights into a corner somewhere and give the rest of society space to restore some ethical rootedness in an endlessly variable world. Because letting the vacuum persist long enough on values useful to everyday life will breed too many little Bonds and little Fastows. And because the constant public magnification of these ethical breakdowns makes everyone feel like scuzz by association. It has a corrosive affect on the rest of us, on our sense of who we are.
Of course abortion, for example, isn't simply an issue of sex..
Missing Link?
From an article titled "Scientists Call Fish Fossil the 'Missing Link'" by John Noble Wilford in the NY Times:
Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375 million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought "missing link" in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land. In addition to confirming elements of a major transition in evolution, the fossils are widely seen by scientists as a powerful rebuttal to religious creationists, who hold a literal biblical view on the origins and development of life. Several well-preserved skeletons of the fossil fish were uncovered in sediments of former stream beds in the Canadian Arctic, 600 miles from the North Pole, it is being reported on Thursday in the journal Nature. The skeletons have the fins and scales and other attributes of a giant fish, four to nine feet long. But on closer examination, scientists found telling anatomical traits of a transitional creature, a fish that is still a fish but exhibiting changes that anticipate the emergence of land animals - a predecessor thus of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs, mammals and eventually humans. The discovering scientists called the fossils the most compelling examples yet of an animal that was at the cusp of the fish-tetrapod transition. While Dr. Shubin's team played down the fossil's significance in the raging debate over Darwinian theory, which is opposed mainly by some conservative Christians in the United States, other scientists were not so reticent. They said this should undercut the creationists' argument that there is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind. Dr. Novacek responded in an interview: "We've got Archaeopteryx, an early whale that lived on land and now this animal showing the transition from fish to tetrapod. What more do we need from the fossil record to show that the creationists are flatly wrong?"
Moderate Drinking Good For You....Maybe Not
From a Reuters story on MSNBC.com titled "Light drinking may not be good for you after all":
Researchers poured cold water on the idea that moderate drinking helps prevent heart disease Friday, noting that many studies include teetotalers as a control group but don't ask why they did not drink. Several major studies have found that light to moderate drinking - up to two drinks a day on a regular basis - is associated with a lower risk of heart disease. Some have also found a lower risk of some cancers. But a team at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and the University of California San Francisco analyzed 54 studies and found that only seven of them differentiated between people who abstain from choice and those who may have quit drinking for health reasons. When such studies show a higher death rate for abstainers than for moderate drinkers, it may be because of the poor health of some abstainers who recently quit drinking and not because alcohol is good for health, they said. In the seven studies that included people who have not drunk alcohol for a long time, by choice, there was no difference in rates of heart disease between drinkers and non-drinkers.
Thin People's Habits
From a story titled "Lose Weight by Following the Habits of Thin People" on abcnews.com:
Thin people favor bulky foods. Foods with a high-water content, such as fruits, vegetables, water-based soups and stews, and cooked whole grains fill you up but are low in calories. These types of food also tend to contain a lot of fiber, which also has a satiating effect. Start your meal with a soup or a salad... Thin people don't skip meals. When you're starving, it's much more difficult not to overeat. Thin people don't skip breakfast...A recent study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association showed that people who ate breakfast were less likely to be overweight than those who didn't. Thin people watch portion sizes. Thin people take a look at what's on their plate and make sure that what they see consists mostly of fruits, vegetables and lean proteins. They also make sure to limit the amount that they eat in one sitting by buying just a single serving's worth of food and using smaller-than-normal plates. Thin people don't sit still.
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