Don't Step on Faith

Do you remember all the things you learned in elementary school? I doubt many people past their teens do. Once school is done, most people do not have much reason to know basic but useless facts like the capitals of all 50 states and the major components of a living cell. Everything we learned back then isn’t useless now, but people tend to remember the important stuff . . . right?

One of the earliest “life lessons” that was repeatedly imprinted into my memory was “look both ways before you cross the street.” It seems so basic – a four-year-old could tell you what to do before you cross the street. Well, apparently everyone does not know
What a four-year-old knows. Just about every day that I ride my bike through the city, I come across people who step off the curb without looking in any direction that traffic might be coming from. Some keep their eyes fixed straight ahead – maybe they trust their lives to traffic lights, I mean, everyone obeys traffic laws, right? Other people keep there heads down the whole time. I guess they see it as a leap (step?) of faith.

There are times when an observer might not be able to tell that I looked before crossing the street even though I did do it, so I can accept that I’m not always able to tell when someone looked. The thing is, I know these people didn’t look. Why else would they step off the curb, directly into the path of my bike when I’m flying down the street and they have a red light? A lot of times when this happens, I’ll slow down and stop with less than a foot of space between my front tire and the person, and they still won’t know I’m there. Sometimes, I’ll modify my path so that I pass in front of them with ample clearance, but they will still jump in surprise.

If people care so little about their health and well-being, they should at least find neater, more effective means of ending it all. I don’t have any statistics, but I can confidently assure you that jumping in front of a moving bike is not likely to lead to a successful suicide. If you’re not trying to die, why even take that step of faith?

Nanny can save us

On an NPR podcast I was listening to today, they were talking about new legislation being proposed (I think it’s in NY, but I don’t remember for sure) that would give government to the blood sugar test results of diabetics. The idea is that all that info would go in a database, and when someone’s results show they are getting dangerously close to experiencing the serious complications diabetes can cause, they would get some sort of automatic notification. (e.g. “Take your medicine or your leg is going to get cut off.”) People against the legislation claim that in combination with smoking bans and bans on trans fat, it would bring us one step closer to a nanny state.

Is the idea of a nanny state really that ridiculous or wrong? When violence and disorder reach an extreme in a particular area, there is talk of making it into a military state and imposing marshal law – at least temporarily. They say that desperate times call for desperate measures. Isn’t this a desperate time for health in the U.S.?

All kinds of surveys and studies show that we are one of the fattest countries in the world. Obesity has grown from being a rare oddity to a nationwide norm. I’m sure that if you look at the statistics from any health insurance company, you will find that a disturbing amount of money spent goes towards preventable health problems. Through this country’s high healthcare costs, we are all footing the bill for smokers, folks who aren’t eating well, and people who don’t get enough exercise.

If we had a nanny state, maybe when I went to the supermarket, I wouldn’t be forced to choose between the exorbitant prices for healthier food and the lower prices of unhealthy options. Maybe my insurance would be forced to help fund things like a gym membership that would help keep me out of the doctor’s office and save them money in the long run.

Smokers are already complaining about losing the right to pollute the air that I have to breathe – but they should learn the difference between a right and a privilege and they should spend some time thinking about what happens when one person’s freedom impedes on another person’s freedom. Does the same hold true when it comes to other health related vices? We cannot escape the fact that we live in a world with other people. Your health affects my life and my health affects yours. That means if we both stay healthy, it’s better for everyone.

Before you light that up . . .

It seems like most people I see/meet are smokers. I can never understand why so many people continue to smoke despite all of the well-known negative results. Well, here's one more negative result you may not have known about (this one is for the ladies) -

Smoking makes your boobs sag.

Yep. Check out the last paragraph of this article.