I have four wonderful children: Mallory (17), Zach (16), Reagan (13), and Blake (15).

Of course I’m biased, but they are all wonderful, respectful kids with great hearts and wonderful outlooks on life. They are fearfully and wonderfully made, and they are all blessings from the Lord that I really don’t deserve. My wife Lisa does, but I don’t.

Though all have had their share of accidents, Blake seems to be the one most prone to hurting himself. His soccer coach immediately named him “Crash” because of his style of play. He loves skating, and his arms and legs are frequently covered with bruises, scrapes, and cuts. At a rainy out door Little League baseball cookout, Blake was swinging on his elbows between two picnic tables in a pavilion with a concrete floor. There isn’t much give in those kinds of floors. There was a lot of humidity in the air, and things were slippery. I saw him swinging out of the corner of my eye, while talking to someone. While I didn’t think that was the best idea in the world, I figured he knew what he was doing and didn’t go over to say anything to him. As he gained momentum, sure enough, up his legs went, and out his arms went, and down his head went. He hit the concrete with the back of his head. Hard. Off to the emergency room we went. He went to an ice skating party, and we had to take him to the emergency room with two very loose and damaged front teeth, and a cut lip requiring stitches. You see the pattern here. He has applied for an emergency room frequent-flyer card. At his 13^th birthday party, someone was saying nice things about Blake and what a wonderful kid he is. My response was something to the effect of “thanks, but hey we’re just glad he’s made it this far.”

As I see frequent news reports of studies that shows health related issues, or see a pharmaceutical company (I’m normally a fan of their work) showing a commercial about another potential disease that sends people running to their doctor in fear, or hear of this potential health problem or that one, I often lament to my wife that with all the potential and seemingly serious everyday threats to our health, I’m surprised the human race has made it this far. The last time I checked, our population was still rapidly expanding, so much so that overpopulation advocates are already raising alarms that at current trends we will render the world unable to support its human population.  So here is a recent example of what I’m talking about.

Over at Scientific American.com, there’s an article discussing the dangers to one’s health of being overweight. Don’t we already know that? Wouldn’t a reasonably intelligent person understand that obesity is inherently unhealthy the same way one would presume smoking would be? This article states that it’s unhealthier for women to be even a few pounds overweight rather than men. But the line I found most disturbing was this: “…the federally funded National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey did not find in a 2005 study that being a little overweight or underweight increased health risks (italics mine).” We need federal money to pay for a survey to tell us that? Who decided we needed that? To what purpose? More nanny-state public service ads advising us to eat right? Legislation prohibiting obesity? Maybe such legislation would allow people to trade obesity “credits” like they’re trying to do in CA with industrial emissions in an effort to reduce global warming, which isn’t even proven to be caused my manmade sources. One person could choose to be overweight as long as they paid somebody else to be under or normal weight.

And here’s the closing paragraph:

"This finding is a sobering reminder that because obesity is now a worldwide problem (with the exception, I presume, of poverty and famine affected third world countries, which are seeing the most population growth – auth.), the phenomenon of 'global fattening' will contribute to a pandemic of chronic diseases for many years to come," said Timothy Byers of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in a journal commentary.

This is hysterical codespeak for “you better give me more of your tax dollars so I can study this problem further, determine that the problem still exists, and ask for even more of your money, thereby sustaining myself to the lifestyle to which I’ve grown accustomed, while staying away from that dreadful and nasty private marketplace where I might have to compete for my living.” Please.

So here we have the federal government, using your tax dollars and mine, to study something anyone with common sense would already know. It just drives me nuts. Maybe I should call my congresswoman to ask her to sponsor a study to see how federal wastage on studies like this affects people like me. It would probably prove just as useful, which is to say not at all.