Most of the world has been on vacation this month, and I believe The Johnston Papers deserves a break as well. Never mind that it has seemed to be on break for most of the year.
I would not dream, however, of leaving you with nothing. While you wait for something more substantive, here is my better-than-nothing, back-of-the-envelope summary of what’s wrong with the world this month.
Why reading Time won’t make you smart. A Time magazine cover article earlier in the month was titled “Why exercise won’t make you thin.” The article’s thesis is exactly what the title suggests: that exercise does nothing to assist in weight loss. “In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,” according to Eric Ravussin, a “prominent exercise researcher” quoted in the article.
The problem, it appears, is that people tend to eat more after they exercise—imagine that!—thus undoing the calorie-loss benefits of the exercise. Although one might think this could be solved by applying a little self-control, the article’s author, Time reporter John Cloud, says this is simply too much to expect from mere humans. Self-control, he explains, is “like a muscle: it weakens each day after you use it. If you force yourself to jog for an hour, your self-regulatory capacity is proportionately enfeebled. Rather than lunching on a salad, you’ll be more likely to opt for pizza.” And you’ll gain weight, rather than lose.
Great! Another reason to avoid exercise—it will make you fat. If you believe that, I have some bad news: you’re stupid. Ever notice that there aren’t a lot of obese triathletes? Could be a coincidence, I suppose.
I am not a prominent exercise researcher, but I am quite sure that the key to weight loss is to burn more calories than you consume. Exercise more, eat less. I realize that some people have legitimate conditions that get in the way, but for the masses, it’s not complicated. I’m not saying it’s easy.
In the category of demonstrably silly conclusions by experts, the Time article is in a class with “The Marriage Crunch,” the infamous Newsweek article from 1986, which claimed that college-educated white women who were still single at age 30 had only a 20 percent chance of marrying—ever—and that by the age of 35, the likelihood dropped to five percent. It went on to state that a single 40-year-old woman is “more likely to be killed by a terrorist” than to get married.
Remember the panic that ensued? Little matter that everyone knew plenty of women who had married in their thirties and forties—the experts said it couldn’t happen. Newsweek did print a retraction, of sorts—20 years later—explaining that the odds had turned out to be better than expected. People are idiots.
More town halls. During the presidential campaign I complained that candidates in both parties were holding “town hall meetings” that all had one thing in common—they were never held in town halls. Since then, the situation has worsened. Now, they’re not even called town hall meetings—they’re just “town halls”; and they still never take place in a town hall.
Congressmen, senators, and even the president have been holding “town halls” all over the country this summer. The absurdity of the phenomenon was summarized in this elegantly nonsensical sentence in a local new source: “About 1,800 people are expected at Portsmouth High’s gym for the town hall . . . .”
And this headline: “Obama’s Montana Town Hall Set for Bozeman Airport.”
Does nothing matter anymore?
Come to my barbeck. Almost as ubiquitous as the town halls in August are the “barbeques,” which are hosted not only by politicians but by businesses, churches and other non-profit organizations, and even private citizens. I’ve thought about going to a few of them, but I’m not really sure what a barbeque is.
In the rapidly dying language that I speak, “barbeque” is not a word. It does not appear even in my pathetically permissive dictionary, which recognizes such non-words as “irregardless.” (It is, however, allowed by my Microsoft spell-check program—the same one that also allows “miniscule.” Turn your vocabulary over to computer geeks and that’s what you get.)
I’m not sure how this word would be pronounced if it did exist in my language (which I call “English”), but presumably it would be “bar BECK.” The “q” would have a “k” sound, and the “ue” would be silent, as in the only other words I can think of that end in “eque”: cheque, discotheque, and cinematheque.
From what I can piece together, however, these people are trying to spell “barbecue,” which is a word. Why they can’t find the correct spelling in a dictionary, even though they obviously know the first four letters, escapes me.
Someone, I guarantee, is going to harpoon me for making fun of people who can’t spell. That’s not what I’m doing. This is not a spelling error by one person. This is a full-fledged trend, and is in danger of becoming a minority position. We can’t have that.
I do understand that not everyone is a spelling savant. That’s why we have dictionaries. If you had trouble with math, would you just give it your best guess when you have to add or subtract? “Let’s see, 15 plus 25 is—gee, I don’t know. How about 50? Yeah, that looks right.” I think not. I suspect, instead, you would reach for the calculator.
So look it up, please. Or maybe that requires too much self-control.
