Just take one more minute for rational reflection and you will be all set.

That's what I have to say to metalmom, who writes this comment to "Do We Really Need to Take 10,000 Steps a Day for Our Health? The advice that we take 10,000 steps a day is more a marketing accident than based on science. Taking far fewer may have notable benefits" (NYT):

What really burns me up about the endless reports of how we need to do at least 30 minutes of vigorous exercise five days a week: who has time for that? Let me get this straight. You have young children. You get them off to school and then commute an hour to your job. Do your job all day and then rush home to your kids. Help them with their homework, make dinner, attend school-related or community-related events. And all the housework including laundry and grocery shopping, and yardwork. Fit in a few minutes of conversation with your partner. Handle phone calls about the family or friends. Then fall into bed too stressed out to sleep. Repeat every day. Don’t forget to get your vigorous exercise in! And feel guilty if you don’t!

Such unnecessary burning up! 

ADDED: It occurs to me that if one were really burning with anger, it would consume calories. I'm thinking I could get rich writing a new diet book. Has anyone ever used this idea before? You lose weight by getting angry, so angry you feel the burn. That heat could not exist if not for calories. So don't worry about going running or off on your long runs. Stay on the internet and keep reading those websites that fire you up.

FROM THE EMAIL: Washington Blogger writes:

I lost 7 pounds reading the Althouse comments section. Now all that weight is back under the new format. However, blood pressure is down. I think my doctor prefers it that way, so you get a thumbs up from her. :)

"In the war of racism, we don't want scouts, we want soldiers."

That's a comment, from Washington Blogger, that was emailed to me after I noted the absence of any Critical Race Theory analysis in the New York Times story about the West Point cheating scandal. 

The "scout"/"soldier" terminology harks back to a post 5 days ago about the "tech elite's favorite pop intellectual Julia Galef." As NY Magazine put it:

"Galef argues for what she calls 'scout mindset,' which she contrasts with 'soldier mindset.' The idea is that evolution has wired our minds to be soldiers (focused on winning) instead of scouts (focused on ensuring our mental maps accurately reflect the territory of reality). To adopt a scout mindset is to resist falling prey to 'motivated reasoning,' in which we distort our thoughts to achieve a desired outcome."

Here's the graphic comparing the 2 mindsets:

I read Washington Blogger's statement — "In the war of racism, we don't want scouts, we want soldiers" — as satirizing the present-day "woke" pose. And I want to add that I think that mentality is at odds with Critical Race Theory as it was originally understood and used by legal academics in the 1990s. Based on personal contact, I believe that these scholars were — to use Galef's model — scouts, not soldiers. 

The phrase "war of racism" is a bit confusing. I'm assuming the commenter means "war on racism." Obviously, there is room to say that there once was a war on racism but those fighting racism used racism too and, at this point in the evolution of the war, with racism on all sides, "of" is more accurate than "on."

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There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.