Thursday, March 30, 2006

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I've read a few lengthy articles in the past couple of years, "pushing back" against the rising concern regarding the obesity epidemic; I blogged about one of them. These articles tend to claim that: 1) Fitness, not fatness, is the important thing; 2) That the hue and cry over fatness is, in large part, moralistic and aesthetically-driven, rather than health-driven. Now it appears there is a large study that indicates that obesity is, in fact, a risk for heart disease independent of fitness, and the more significant of the two. In other words, obese and fit is not nearly as good as trim and fit (in fact, it appears that obese and fit is worse than trim and un-fit). I strongly suspected as much--though it is a perilous business to hang one's hat on the latest study, because surely there will be another that comes along to cast doubt on the predecessors! The other thing I can't get over, in all these articles, is that they treat the "fat and fit" case as if it were a significant occurrence (which it certainly isn't, in my experience), rather than an interesting, but mostly hypothetical, alternative hypothesis. 8:25:14 PM    comment []

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Update on www.FilmValues.com Since I occasionally get emails regarding my post on the disappearance of www.FilmValues.com, I thought I would provide such update as I can. I still have no idea what happened to the site. I have searched, briefly (including newsgroups) without success. The best replacement I have found so far is KidsInMind.com. 1:59:54 PM    comment []

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Also, (in regard to the idea of a selective reading from a novel) what about book previews? Why not have book previews, just like we have movie previews? I personally love movie previews, and they often entice (and more often, dissuade) me to watch a film. Why not thave the same thing for books? 1:49:16 PM    comment []

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Have you ever read a book (I'm thinking primarily of fiction), and really wished you could get someone you know to read it, because it conveys some truth you have previously grasped, but never articulated? It happens to me moderately frequently. But getting someone else to read a book just because you think it is interesting or relevant can be a tall order. I know my own reading list is quite backlogged, and I wouldn't be terribly receptive to most requests of this sort. That got me to thinking--what I'm really looking for is a selective samplilng of the book, calculated to convey much of the essential flavor of the book, in 20 pages? Not an abridged version, nor a Cliff Notes-style synopsis. It should use only the verbatim language of the book. That way, when I am trying to explain to someone the mental state of the protagonist of Lucky Jim, for instance, and the language used by the author to describe it--eloquent phrasing describing a trivial existence; an internal voice with mastersful phrasing inhabiting a weak and defeated character; self-conscious without being self-psycologizing--they could read 20 pages, and have a clue as to what I'm talking about. I know this will probably make me sound like an awful philistene to some, but it seems, to me, of at least hypothetical usefulness! 1:49:14 PM    comment []