Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Choice and Its Enemies. By Pejman Yousefzadeh / TCS — Permalink H.L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy." Being a libertarian-conservative means being possessed of the haunting fear that someone somewhere is itching to play busybody on a level one might have once thought was inconceivable. Read remarks from Steve Antler, Roger L. Simon, Pejman Yousefzadeh, and Glenn Reynolds. [memeorandum] Quote from the related NYT article - In another study, she found that people who chose one chocolate from a selection of 30 expressed more regret and uncertainty about their decision than those who chose among six kinds. That's because with 29 other options, there is a bigger chance of losing out on something better. For me, this gets at the casuality issue.  Maybe it wasn't uncertainty about the decision due to the choices.  Maybe it was because they were in the store longer and all the shouldn't and don't, mothers editing about chocolate had a chance to start to play.  Not enough data to make that decisions either. Today's news seems to have a theme for me - - do you want good? do you want bad? there are no other choices for you, you big dummy! 6:33:22 PM    comment [] G.M. Reports $1.1 Billion Loss. General Motors blamed the $1.1 billion first-quarter loss on a stark turnaround in its North American operations. By By DANNY HAKIM. [NYT > Home Page] Blames 6.6 billion dollars of annual healthcare costs for the problems.  Hmm, let me see, 162 billion in revenues divided by 6.6. in costs... IS it really the health care costs??? 5:33:27 PM    comment [] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0419/p11s01-legn.html?s=u Yet, in what can only be described as a twist of irony, some educators worry that through this perpetual connectivity iPods will actually encourage isolation. Why strike up a conversation on the way to class when you can choose from thousands of songs in your headphones? In fact, why use an iPod for class at all when those gigabytes can also be filled with anything from Beethoven to Britney Spears? I think one of the signs of maturity with technologies will be if we can get beyond this either or positioning. There are things that isolation is good for. There are things that relationships and sharing are good for. There is a time for introversion, there is a time for extroversion. We all have a natural perference but technology is NEUTRAL on this issue It is just a tool, for chrisakes, not a dictate, not a lifestyle, not a destiny. 5:29:39 PM    comment [] Government Diversifies Nutrition Guidelines. The Department of Agriculture introduces a new food pyramid that incorporates a symbol for physical activity. The nutritional guidelines, accompanied by a Web site offering tailored recommendations, are aimed at changing American lifestyles. [NPR Programs: All Things Considered] So, ok, this fries me.  A FOOD pyramid implies that, duh, it is about food. While food and exercise are definitely about health, exercise is not part of caloric INTAKE - - exercise is about caloric usage. OK to create guidelines on healthy lifestyle if you must DoA but call it what it is.    On the other hand, these are people who told us we could eat all the no fat foods we wanted without pointing out to us that they were filled with sugar... 5:10:21 PM    comment []

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