the Scott Stein

Okay, letting your blind friend drive your all-terrain vehicle is stupid. No argument there. And no one should be happy when someone dies an unnecessarily violent death. But that's not what bothers me in this story from WTOV Channel 9:

Chief Deputy Allen Haueter said Hoyle was with two friends behind a home on Steubenville Pike when he asked one of his friends if he could ride his ATV.

But Haueter said Hoyle didn’t have a license to drive, and that he was considered legally blind.

Haueter told NEWS9 the men helped Hoyle onto the ATV anyways and warned him to go slow, but Hoyle didn't listen.

Did you read that? Anyways. What the hell is that "s" doing on the end of anyway? This is an NBC affiliate, not a high school television station.

(If someone goes back and removes the "s" by the time you read this and visit the link, you'll have to take my word for it. It says anyways right now.)

I just learned of a new phrase, "Eating Competence," which is used in a study by researchers at Penn State.

Eating competence, as it was defined for the study, is the idea that a person is aware and able to balance their hunger, appetite and eating enjoyment with their body's biological tendency to maintain a preferred and stable weight.

I guess this means that people who know they can eat a cheese steak once in a while without putting on weight, and do so, are going to maintain a "preferred and stable weight." And those who cannot eat a cheese steak without putting on weight, and who don't know this fact about themselves and therefore eat the cheese steak, are not going to maintain a "preferred and stable weight."

I'm not saying there can't be anything to this idea of Eating Competence. We see it with alcohol consumption, anecdotally. Some people know their limits better than do others, and are better at avoiding excess. Maybe thin people do have more Eating Competence and are more in tune with their bodies and what and how much they should eat in order to maintain their weight.

But notice the use of "preferred." By whom? And notice the assumption that it is always best to balance hunger, appetite and eating enjoyment, with maintaining weight as the goal. For me it is, more or less — I enjoy food, just not enough to allow myself to become a fat guy. Then again, that could be because I am Eating Competent. Or because I don't put on weight as easily as some other people do. I can imagine, though, that someone without my metabolism could decide that a life with ice cream is worth the health risks that accompany increased weight. How much increased weight is the ice cream worth? Not much, to me. But not everyone is me. If people place different values on pleasure and health than the researchers do, if people are willing to trade a bit of the second for more of the first, does that make them incompetent?

The researchers believe that, "[g]iven the associated health benefits, education that develops EC [eating competency] appears prudent." Of course they do. I wonder if they'd like to play a role in developing such grant-funded educational programs and related polices. Probably not. Still, if people want to lose weight, and this information can be helpful to them, fine.

I don't know all that the study entailed, only that "[a]s part of the study, the Penn State researchers administered an on-line survey to 370 participants and a paper version to another 462 people." Maybe there's more to it. Either way, coming up with a phrase like "Eating Competence," and, by implication but obviously, "Eating Incompetence," could be the first step to making this a disorder, if not a disease. Where that might lead is anyone's guess. Have fun inventing seemingly paranoid possibilities and connecting it to various recent proposals to have government subsidize or take over health care or health insurance. I know someone who would love the phrase "Eating Competence." I'm sorry I didn't come up with it myself.

(Hat tip, Dave Lull)

My former student, Pietra Dunmore, a recent graduate of Drexel University, writes to tell me that she is on the cover of a new novel, She's No Angel by Janine A. Morris. Pietra is a model as well as an aspiring writer, and that's her on the front cover, below. Congratulations to Pietra.

I read Code of the Woosters, by P.G. Wodehouse, in June of 2006. It was my first Jeeves novel. It was one of the funniest, most entertaining novels I'd ever read.

It probably didn't hurt that, at the time, I was on vacation with my wife in Montauk, New York. Our son was staying with my parents in Queens, and we had a few days to ourselves. So I read while lounging on a breezy beach and drinking a tall Captain Morgan and coke. Ideal conditions for laughing along with Bertie and Jeeves.

But it wasn't the rum or the sand that made Code of the Woosters so much fun. It was the novel. My students who've read it, for a course I teach, have laughed just as hard as I did when I first read it. I have no reason to suspect that they supplemented the assigned reading with rum of any kind.

I have since read three more Jeeves novels. They've each been easy enough to read and amusing in spots, but each has been less entertaining than the previous one. The last one I read, just recently (Jeeves and the Tie that Binds), was even a bit tedious. I don't know if I'll read any more of them. As the Grumpy Old Bookman pointed out, Wodehouse wrote a "series of books which are, effectively, the same book each time, but with enough variation to hold the reader's attention." For me, the variation is no longer enough. I remain convinced, however, that my preference for Code of the Woosters is not simply because I read it first (though that might be part of it), but because it is a better novel than the ones I read later.

On a related note, I've watched episodes from the first season of Jeeves and Wooster, starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. They are competently acted and produced, but they don't come close to capturing the humor of Code of the Woosters. It all comes down to the narrator's tone, his idiosyncratic way of expressing himself, which a movie or television show cannot duplicate. Some books are meant to be books. If you haven't read any P.G. Wodehouse, I obviously recommend Code of the Woosters. It's very funny. Rum is optional.

Update: The conversation has continued over at Books, Inq.

Another Update: The conversation also continues at Brandywine Books.

CNN reports that Sen. Hillary Clinton is to announce a "mandatory health care proposal." It would require all Americans to have health insurance.

A Clinton adviser compares the plan's so-called "individual mandate" — which requires everyone to have health insurance — to current rules in most states that require all drivers to purchase auto insurance...

States require drivers to have auto insurance to protect other drivers in the event of an accident. With auto insurance, there is at least the premise that it is required in order to prevent one's rights from being violated by another's actions. The logic is that an uninsured driver is likely (depending on his income, obviously) to not be able to pay for the damage he causes to someone else's property or health. One can only make this argument for health insurance by stretching the logic beyond its limits — the old, "people-without-health-insurance-cost-society-money" argument.

Of course, Clinton wants the government to pay for people who can't afford insurance (a supposed cost of $110 billion, though the article doesn't say over what time period, and we can agree it'll cost more than that if put into practice, like everything else does).

Of course, Clinton's plan also requires large businesses to pay for some of their employees' insurance (hello, Walmart). It's a good thing that this has no "public" costs and no unintended consequences. Big businesses like Walmart won't react in any way to these new requirements. They won't increase their prices to offset their increased staffing costs, hurting all the working folks who benefit from low prices. They won't cut back on hiring due to increased costs per employee, hurting people who need jobs. They'll just contribute to health insurance, if a new law tells them to, and let their shareholders take the hit. Because that's how big businesses do things.