Gabby Giffords, ever smiling, struggles through an interview with Diane Sawyer.

Giffords can only get a few words out — "so slowly" — and Diane Sawyer has no compunction about supplying words all around Giffords's words, most notably at the end of the interview — you have to watch the video — when she turns Giffords into a puppet who voices the last word to a long sentence yammered out by Sawyer. Sawyer repeatedly assures us that Giffords understands everything and is able to think well, that her only intellectual deficit is in speaking. We're told how effective Giffords will be in pressuring Congress to enact gun control. She will be taken around to the members of Congress so they will be subjected to the ordeal — if they want to say "no" — of saying "no" to her face.

This is how it's done. At what point do you say "no"... enough?

ADDED: The most poignantly telling moment in the interview is when Giffords is invited to say what matters most to her. She says: "family."

Read more ►

"More intelligence and fewer offspring?"

"Perhaps Idiocracy was stating a more general rule...."

But another thing...

When it comes to humans, for example, though our brains are only 2% of our bodies, they take up a whopping 20% of our energy requirements. 

If that's really true, it could be the key to why one person can eat heartily and never gain weight while the next person, eating the same thing, gets fat. Maybe it's a big brain/small brain distinction. Also, is it possible that instead of going to the gym or getting on a bicycle when we hope to lose weight, what we really should be doing is studying calculus or reading philosophy?

ADDED: Idiocracy primer:

Read more ►

"Anesthesia awareness is an intrapersonal event..."

"No one else sees it. No one else knows it. You’re the only one."

Read more ►