Item 1: The Deadliest Sin. Every July 4th, there are hundreds of "eating contests" all across the United States, celebrations of the long-condemned sin of Gluttony, one of the Seven Deadly Sins that, according to the Catholic Church, puts one's "immortal soul" at risk of "eternal damnation".
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The full list of the Seven Deadly Sins is Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth.
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Of these, the deadliest in personal terms and ugliest in today's world of want is gluttony, defined simply as "eating to excess" (Wordnet, Princeton University) or, more fully, as "an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires".
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The world is starving, with hundreds of millions of people so malnourished that even a few weeks of food intake below the ordinary produces mass death. Specifically, Bread for the World Institute's website reports that:

"798 million people in the developing world are undernourished. They consume less than the minimum amount of calories essential for sound health and growth.

"Poor nutrition and calorie deficiencies cause nearly one in three people to die prematurely or have disabilities, according to the World Health Organization.
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"153 million children under 5 in the developing world are underweight. Worse yet, 11 million children younger than 5 die every year, more than half from hunger-related causes.

"Most of these deaths are attributed, not to outright starvation, but to diseases that move in on vulnerable children whose bodies have been weakened by hunger.
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"In the developing world, 27 percent of children under 5 are moderately to severely underweight. 10 percent are severely underweight. 8 percent of children under 5 are moderately to severely wasted, or seriously below weight for one’s height, and an overwhelming 32 percent are moderately to severely stunted, or seriously below normal height for one’s age."

TheHungerSite.com is a "click to donate" website in which visitors can give food for free, paid for by sponsors who want to be associated in people's minds with alleviating hunger. Its figures are a little different, but, alas, in the same ballpark as those of Bread for the World:

"It is estimated that one billion people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition. That's roughly 100 times as many as those who actually die from these causes each year.

"About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes [that works out to 8,760,000 per year, more than the total population of New York City]. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000 twenty years ago. Three-fourths of the deaths are children under the age of five.

"Famine and wars cause about 10% of hunger deaths, although these tend to be the ones you hear about most often. The majority of hunger deaths are caused by chronic malnutrition. Families facing extreme poverty are simply unable to get enough food to eat."

In lite of these horrendous facts, it is an OBSCENITY of the worst order that the First World actually celebrates and rewards GLUTTONY, a sin that has been recognized as evil for many, many centuries.
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Aside from the issue of gluttony in a world of starvation, there is the practical reality that the U.S. is the fattest country in the world, and tens of millions of Americans have a serious weight problem. This is no time to be celebrating the base cause of obesity: eating too damned much!
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The Food and Drug Administration says:

"'Overweight and obesity may soon cause as much preventable disease and death as cigarette smoking,' says Satcher, whose term expired Feb. 13. 'People tend to think of overweight and obesity as strictly a personal matter, but there is much that communities can and should do to address these problems.'

"About 300,000 U.S. deaths a year are associated with obesity and overweight (compared to more than 400,000 deaths a year associated with cigarette smoking). The total direct and indirect costs attributed to overweight and obesity amounted to $117 billion in 2000.

So why on Earth are major corporations and media glorying in gluttony? It is disgraceful that media play up hot-dog eating contests, pie-eating contests, and other such dangerous and disgusting obscenities in a world of want and a nation suffering serious health problems from obesity.
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What can we do? Probably the most famous of these glorifications of gluttony is the July 4th contest at Coney Island each year sponsored by "Nathan's Famous", which sees people gorge themselves on more than 40 hot dogs in 12 minutes). If we can get that shut down, we can make progress against the perverse glorification of gluttony in these profoundly ugly spectacles.
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If you share my indignation, tell Nathan's it should be ashamed of itself. Send them email to ask them to stop rewarding gluttony in a world of starvation: cs@nathansfamous.com is the "Consumer Suggestions" email address; the postal address, phone and fax info are:

Nathan's Famous Executive Offices
1400 Old Country Road
Westbury, NY 11590

Phone: 516-338-8500
Fax: 516-338-7220

Tell them you are indignant. Perhaps they will pay attention if you also pledge to boycott Nathan's and all its restaurants and brands (which you can find at its website, http://www.nathansfamous.com/). Then follow thru and indeed boycott all of Nathan's businesses.
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If Nathan's discontinues its glorification of gluttony in a world of starvation, we will have taken a major step in the right direction, and other such contests might also come to a permanent end, to be resumed only if and when everyone, across this entire planet, has enuf to eat.
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Item 2: New Start at the WTC. I hated the bulky, blocky imposition the World Trade Center made on New York's skyline, but was resigned to its permanence. The open-air observation deck atop it was wonderful to look OUT from, to be sure, and the hoards of people rising from the bank of escalators from the PATH was exciting during rush hours. But the sterile, empty plaza was an eyesore, and most of the time there was nothing to do there for ordinary people, who couldn't afford dinner and drinks at Windows on the World.
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The broadcast tower atop the WTC did give me, perhaps 13 miles away, straight-line, in Newark, really good TV reception, better on my second floor than first and glorious on my third floor. But a TV broadcast antenna on a worthier architectural base would have been much better.
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Then the towers came crashing down, and New York got a chance to start over. Rarely does a city get to rework its skyline in any major way twice in 35 years.
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The cornerstone of a new skyscraper (the dishonestly named "Freedom Tower", as tho the WTC attack had anything whatsoever to do with an attack on freedom) was today laid on the site devastated by the 9/11 attacks, and New York has now begun to redevelop that ground. Alas, the design chosen is of an imitation-skyscraper. Rather than a real building, much of the "Freedom Tower" will be a void, a make-believe building holding up a useless toothpick of a spire that mocks rather than celebrates the vitality and utility of real skyscrapers. Still, it's a step in the right direction.
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For one thing, it has a geometric point, rather than being a simple rectangle, like the empty-headed boxes of the old WTC. Unfortunately, the geometric point may have no architectural nor functional point. Altho six months ago the claim was made that a 300-foot broadcast tower would top the spire, the architect's rendering shown on AOL today does not appear to incorporate such a tower. I hope the rendering is just not large enuf to show clearly an antenna that is nonetheless planned.
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The more important 'point', however, is that starting actual construction on the old WTC site shows that New York hasn't rolled over to play dead, nor to make Downtown into a mawkish paean to loss and grief.
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New York is finally doing what New York has always done: accepted that the past is at best prolog, and now it's time to move on.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:54 PM