The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. CULTURE
The politically-loaded film Fast Food Nation hits movie theaters.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Assistant Editorial Director Peter Suderman on the unappetizing result:
“Fast Food Nation kicks off with a suit-clad fast food chain boss telling one of his executives to investigate a meat packing plant rumored to be allowing fecal matter to infect the beef. But the only thing that’s contaminated here is director Richard Linklater’s meandering, unfocused movie, which has an unmistakable whiff of Causeitis — a compulsive inability to avoid taking up any of the many issues in the lefty activist canon.”
2. HEALTH
A news study finds marathon runners have a higher than normal risk for hardening of the arteries.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Policy Analyst Brooke Oberwetter compares health risks from various behaviors:
“If running, specifically distance running, is how you’ve decided to lower your risk of dying from the many things that can kill you these days–such as being alive, for example–you’re in for some unpleasantness according to the New York Times: ‘Healthy men over 50 who had finished at least five marathons in the last five years were more likely to have major calcium deposits in their arteries than healthy men who did not run as much, according to a study presented yesterday at an American Heart Association meeting in Chicago.’ Fascinating. You know what else is linked to hardening of the arteries and cancer? Smoking. And secondhand smoke. I think it’s time we look into banning marathons. You know, to protect people from themselves.”
3. SCIENCE
Al Gore’s global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, comes out on DVD.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Iain Murray on Gore’s mission to become Captain Planet:
“Once again, Gore is doing what he does best, exaggerating the arguments in favor of action on global warming while disparaging and misrepresenting the arguments against it. He has had a lot of practice at this, having repeated the same misleading points over 1,000 times in lectures all over the world. So full of holes, however, is his argument, that it is difficult to know where to begin.”