On fat
Nice Reason article here.

I'm somewhat plus-sized. Not hugely so, just out of proportion for a short frame. Think of Bobby Hill (but NOT Bobby Hill), or your generic penguin.

I am the size I am partly because I like food, partly because exercise is a chore. Sullum is exactly right that there are tradeoffs involved and that you try to do what works for you and then live with the consequences.

Sometimes you're all set to rant and then you find that a celebrity blogger made your points for you already.
Other times you're all set to rant and then you find that one of your own friends already put it better than you would have put it.

Mayor Moonbeam, the Modern Day David Dinkins
"Jerry Brown said he would be cleaning up the neighborhood, but all he's done is plant flowers."
--an angry resident speaks out about Oakland's latest violent crime surge

Then again...
Social conservatism is overrated. Stories like this make me insanely happy. Great synopsis of it here.

I'm totally serious about this. Ozzy Osbourne's current place in pop culture is excellent on all counts. Of course the usual suspects are all up in arms.

Here's what's great about it, though:
1. Ozzy isn't larger than life. He's nobody's hero. Based on the TV show, he's just this guy. Which is really all any celebrity ever should be.

2. (Courtesy of my Mom.) The Osbournes ought to be more effective than any anti-drug PSA ever could be. You can tell from the show just how much of his brain Ozzy lost to his old habits. To the extent that he's "out of it," you can ridicule him. You can think to yourself, that's probably not what I want to become.

Years after the fact, it turns out I was right.
Father figures are beneficial to children. Brief commentary here (May 5 entry).

So there's this on-line community made up mostly of Harvard people. Every time I talk about it, I remember after the fact that everything posted there is subject to a confidentiality clause. In short, what's posted there, stays there. I've (alas) probably violated confi many times just in bloggage. So one more time can't hurt, right? (The basic idea is not to share other people's personal info, but brief recounting of political arguments doesn't seem to violate the spirit of that, does it?)

Anyhow, this one time something about single parents came up. I strongly, intuitively, believe -- well, basically, what the study seems to confirm. Kids are better off with two parents than with one. I got flamed for putting it in gender-specific terms. People (you can guess what axe they had to grind) wondered what a man and a woman had that two men or two women would lack. This study doesn't seem to get into it that way but at the very least, it confirms what basically everyone knows: a stable couple does a far better job of parenting than a single parent and a flavor-of-the-month significant other.

(A reasonable conclusion is that people do a better job of taking care of their blood relatives than of their significant other's kids-from-a-prior-relationship.)

Given that I'm so opinionated, and that I'd like to think I'm reasonably good at analytical thinking, you'd think I wouldn't suck at arguing with people. But it's true. Then again, this particular group used to have one or two token conservatives, one or two moderate "voices of reason," and legions who think basically whatever it is that a typical college student thinks.

Nowadays even the token conservatives are gone, so the moderate voices of reason are themselves (relatively) the token conservatives. So I hear.

Slashdot morons
Not idiotic so much as self-centered.

If copyright laws get in their way, stupid or otherwise, they raise a stink to high heaven. But point out stupid traffic laws (or rather, stupid enforcement mechanisms) and instead of seeing the connection, these doofs get all sanctimonious about safe driving.