A Couple of Items

Two things:

First, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts has launched a new campaign called Mass in Motion, aimed at trimming the waistlines of Commonwealth residents. The plan will require fast food outlets to post calorie counts for the items on their menus. It mirrors programs in place in California, New York City, and Seattle.

The usual clique of libertarian commentators has generated a mild uproar in response to Patrick's worthy proposal. I scoff at their self-righteous stance, for as a borderline underweight resident of the Commonwealth, data posted on the menu will enable me to accurately choose the most caloric item and forstall my slide into emaciation. Fast food establishments will easily offset the tens of thousands of dollars lost to laboratory calorimetric tests by weight-conscious beanpoles' deliberate purchases of the most lard-laden, high-priced concoctions on the menu. I thank the government for safeguarding my hard earned body mass.

Second, a 13-year-old in Orange County texted 14,528 times in one month, or about 484 times a day, or about 30 times an hour, or about once every two minutes. Since this girl spends so much time text messaging, one wonders what those messages could possibly concern. She has no time between messages to generate new topics for communication, unless she's a prolific liar, so she must receive other peoples' messages and immediately relay them to the next recipient in a chain of gossip. This girl is the proverbial grapevine.

Even more surprisingly, the average 13- to 17-year-old text messages 1,742 times a month, or about 58 times a day, or about two times an hour. I imagine that a high proportion of 13- to 17-year-olds are barely literate, since they have no time to read between opening and chuckling at messages received every two minutes from that girl in Orange County. Their quasi-English syntax is constructed from "phononyms" and acronyms, they have no grammatical knowledge, and since they text message instead of communicating aloud even within earshot of the message's recipient, they have no concept of pronunciation. I had better start learning cell-phone English before verbalization ceases in 2012, or else I'll be talking to the void. This post is good practice for the more likely fate.