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Allie_

Published Letters: 1932
Editor's Choice: 125

Friday, June 8, 2007 10:39 PM
Original article: Healthy, my ass

not my interpretation

No one's reinterpreting anything: that is the conclusion the CDC came to as well. Obesity is a serious health problem. OBESITY. Being moderately overweight is not a health problem.

Being underweight is also a serious health problem - in fact, it's more dangerous than being obese.

Those are their conclusions, drawn from their data.

The only contradiction here is between what you would like to be true about what a woman of healthy weight looks like and what the CDC has found to be true.

Friday, June 8, 2007 10:52 PM

re: KYjurisdoctor

Oh dear, you pushed one of my buttons. I live in Memphis, where we got hourly media updates on Mary Winkler.

The problem with Mary's trial was that people are very credulous. She presented a case that she had been abused and people bought it, despite an earlier confession in which she stated that her husband had never abused her and she killed him because he got mad at her for falling asleep during a movie. The clincher was a pair of clear plastic platform shoes which she claimed her husband made her wear during sex. Because, you know, any man who likes kinky sex deserves to be shot in the back while he sleeps. The fact that she killed him the day before the bank was going to contact him and tell him his wife had blown their entire savings on a Nigerian scam was somehow less important than a claim of abuse which contradicted her own testimony and was substantiated by zero witnesses.

On the other hand, at least Tennessee requires mandatory jail time for drunk driving.

Friday, June 8, 2007 10:58 PM

re: Harry Seldon

So... where do you put parole violators, in whatever country you're from? Presumably when someone violates parole, the courts in your country do SOMETHING.

This "vulnerable young woman" is being put in solitary not as an extra punishment, but as a special concession.

By the way, I agree with whoever wrote about the books. Fine world we live in, where TV is allowed in prison and books aren't.

Monday, June 11, 2007 09:25 AM
Original article: "The Sopranos" goes dark

loved it

I loved it. And it ended exactly the way I hoped it would - not neatly, not tidily. The guilty don't always suffer; most of the time they just sort of go on with their lives. Meadow becomes Carmella. Janice becomes Livia (masterful makeup job on her!), and A.J. looks like some day he might yet become dad.

As an aside, I spent half of last night's episode writing a letter to Cary in my head: Dear Cary, is it allowable to murder people who tap their fingers during tense moments on TV? No? Well... darn.

The culprit was my mother, who also interjected her hopes and fears out loud, periodically, throughout the night: "Now is when it happens, Paulie's going to do it... look, this is going to be an ambush... it's this guy, the guy walking through the door of the diner, no, this guy."

Tap tap tap, tappity tap tap tap. Geez, mom, would you relax already?

No, Tony lives, going out in a blaze of... banality, grease-scented air, to the strains of a song I saw performed live when I was 13. Made in America, indeed.

Chase makes us feel it, during those last seconds, what it's like to be Tony. Is it this guy? How about these two guys? How about those onion rings. We even get to watch him pick the show's closing music, hmm, hmm, hmm... perfect.

When the screen went dark, I laughed out loud. Meanwhile Mom was saying, "Did we lose the satellite?" No, mom, Chase is just a bastard. How I love him.

On top of all this, Phil's death - pure fan-service.

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