Looking cool and feeling crappy

Oscar over at ColumnistManifesto analogizes cell phone patter to cigarette puffing. Both fill a void, both create an impression of connectedness. One is disgusting. The other is, a replacement for what medicine has forced us to reject.

But wait. Does anyone ever actually enjoy talking on a cell phone? I never really took to cigarettes and I don’t really take to cell phones either, but still, I did so want to love cigarettes (this is before studies labeled them as Certain Death, even in instances where the smoker is 100 feet removed from you). They were such great pauses in life – they transitioned you from one event to another, they let you take stock, to inhale not so much the smoke, but the moment…

Too bad they always made me feel so crappy. I was glad (some 30 years ago) when they went into disfavor. I was no longer torn between the love for the sport of it and the hatred for the physical effect.

But cell phones – who will take these instruments away from me and tell me they should be banished? Sure, I love them, indeed. There are people whom I would rarely talk to if it weren’t for the cell. But at the same time, I feel ill when it cackles and dies, when it rings at inopportune times, when I pass through areas where it seems just not to work.

Clearly I need a replacement. Should we reconsider chewing gun?

A peachy predicament for our man Tony

The Guardian is reporting (via Europhobia) that a motion has been put forth before the Parliament to impeach Tony Blair for his "gross misconduct" in Iraq. Chances of its success are small, but it is a strong statement, given that no such motion has been entertained in Britain for close to 200 years.

And if you are not a member of Parliament but would still like your voice heard on this, you are directed to an online petition (at impeachblair.org) where you can sign the following statement:

"I wish to see Tony Blair impeached and required to answer in the Court of Parliament that he repeatedly and substantively misled the people into the Iraq War of 2003 while choosing to remain in office when he is in clear violation of the traditional convention of ministerial resignation."

While the British are debating the propriety of impeachment based on misleading statements that led the country into armed conflict, we’re debating the propriety of not including more materials and evidence of the Lewinsky scandal in the “impeachment” exhibit of the Clinton Library.

I knew it: the reason airfares have gone up is because there’s too much junk food out there

As if there weren’t enough reasons to promote healthy eating and proper exercise, here’s another: staying with a sensible diet will reduce the cost of flying and cut back on fuel emissions.

From the IHT today:

[A] report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine … said that "an obesity epidemic" among Americans has had "unexpected consequences beyond direct health effects." Throughout the 1990s, the average weight of Americans increased by 10 pounds, or 4.5 kilograms, causing airlines to spend $275 million on an extra 350 million gallons of fuel just to carry the extra weight, the agency says. The extra fuel burned caused an estimated 3.8 [million] tons of carbon dioxide to be released into the air.

[UPDATE: The numbers are editorially corrected by me thanks to the very clever reader who did the math and determined that the IHT article had missed the word "million" in the transcription.]