-
There ain't no social problem that nanny-staters and earnest
do-gooders can't make worse. The latest data point
comes from an unlikely source: a New York Times
article
from Harriet Brown, discussing ham-handed (heh!) attempts
by
public schools to make their students more svelte. Only problem is that
many such efforts are (at best) ineffective and based on shaky science.
In some cases, they probably make things worse: "A recent Internet
discussion board among families with anorexic and bulimic children
identified middle school health classes, which focus on weight, as the
No. 1 trigger for their teenagers' disorders."
(Via Prof Althouse.)
-
In serendipitous fashion, Jonathan Adler at Volokh
points to a Philadelphia Inquirer story
where a Greenpeace fact sheet was released containing the (verbatim)
sentence:
In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE].
A Greenpeace spokesmodel, apparently called in to fill the "humorless stereotype" role, followed up with the comment: "Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don't even think it's funny." -
Fortunately, Al Gore remembers to fill in the blanks in his
alarmist and armageddonist rhetoric. Over in BBC-land, he's quoted:
But Mr Gore, fresh from an appearance at the Cannes film festival, delivered a starker message that the world was now facing a "danger which could bring the end of civilisation."
(Via Drudge.)
May
30
2006
URLs du Jour
2006-05-30