Full Of It

Stuffed. Engineering firms report increasing difficulty designing airtight respirators to protect American factory workers and firefighters. The culprit? The changing shape of our faces. While 60% of Americans are overweight and 30% are obese, 87% of all firefighters, 73% of American healthcare workers and 91% of those in law enforcement are overweight or obese.1 What’s…

Unending Horror?

Worldview and way of life. Today is the anniversary of the Columbine Massacre of 1999. Now the Virginia Tech slaughter dwarfs it as the worst massacre in U.S. history. Today also marks the anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1899. Hitler, Columbine and Virginia Tech share a common ancestor – Friedrich Nietzsche. But…

Thin…and unfit

Wobbly waifs. This past fall, the Madrid fashion show banned overly thin models, saying unnatural thinness sends a terrible message. Organizers said models had to be within a healthy weight range. This image of waiflike women wobbling down runways is one way to better understand Islamist rage against America. Muslim fury is not against thin…

Frankenstein and Easter

For years, the haunting specter of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster disturbed readers’ sleep and terrorized moviegoers. Then director Mel Brooks and actor Peter Boyle turned him into a lovable yet clumsy klutz in Young Frankenstein. I’m not sure that Mary Shelley would have been entirely pleased. She wasn’t writing comedy. Shelley was instead imagining whether a…