Knoxville doesn’t appear in Men’s Fitness magazine’s lists of America’s top 25 fattest and fittest cities. Memphis earns the honor of 4th fattest city. Nashville is the 25th fittest city. The ranking indicates that:

Almost 9 out of 10 Tennesseans get so little exercise that they risk health problems, according to a study by the CDC. In fact, in the same study, one out of three people hadn’t gotten any physical activity in the past month.

Curiously, in the report card Environment section under “Air” Nashville receives a “B,” while Memphis gets an “F.” In contrast, for “Climate” Memphis earns a “B,” while Nashville gets a “D.” Are these two cities, 200 miles apart, that much different with respect to air quality and climate? I haven’t spent a lot of time in either, but I would have guessed that if there was a difference between the two cities, it would have run the opposite way–air quality worse in Nashville, climate worse in Memphis.

Josh Marshall nails the ongoing White House Social Security con job:

So now you can see from memos emerging from the White House itself that this isn’t about ‘saving’ Social Security. If it were, what would that sentence mean — (“For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win”)? The first time in six decades they can save it?
Clearly, this isn’t about ‘saving’ Social Security. It is a battle to end Social Security and replace with something that Wehner clearly understands is very different, indeed the antithesis of Social Security.
This entire debate is about ideology — between people who believe in the benefits Social Security has brought America in the last three-quarters of a century and those who think it was a bad idea from the start. There is an honest debate to have on this point, a values debate. Only, the White House understands that the belief that Social Security was always a bad program isn’t widely shared by Americans. So they have to wrap their effort in a package of lies, harnessing Americans’ desire to save Social Security in their own effort to destroy it.

Yep. We’ve seen them follow this misdirection play on issues concerning regulation, the environment, even Iraq. This time they may have gotten too greedy. I think it’s time for them to go down in flames.

Another leaked memo:

The U.S. Army Reserve, tapped heavily to provide soldiers for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is “degenerating into a ‘broken’ force” due to dysfunctional military policies, the Army Reserve’s chief said in a memo made public Wednesday.
“I do not wish to sound alarmist. I do wish to send a clear, distinctive signal of deepening concern,” Lt. Gen. James Helmly said in a Dec. 20 memo to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker.
. . .
“While ability to meet the current demands associated with OIF (Operational Iraqi Freedom) and OEF (Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan) is of great importance, the Army Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements including those in named OPLANS (operational plans) and CONUS (continental United States) emergencies, and is rapidly degenerating into a ‘broken’ force,” Helmly wrote.

Hmmm. Sounds awful similar to the “our military is being stretched too thin” argument that a certain presidential candidate was making three months ago.
Thought exercise: if America’s social security issues are a “crisis,” and malpractice lawsuits are a “crisis,” does this not constitute a “crisis” in our military?

What happens when a “Pineapple Express,” an “Arctic Express,” and system from the Gulf of Mexico all meet? We may soon find out.

“Don’t sound the alarm,” weather service meteorologist Johnny Burg said. “But tell everybody to just pay attention to future forecasts.”
The three storms are likely to meet in the nation’s midsection and cause even more problems, sparing only areas east of the Appalachian Mountains. Property damage and a few deaths are likely, forecasters said.
“You’re talking a two- or three-times-a-century type of thing,” said prediction-center senior meteorologist James Wagner, who has been forecasting storms since 1965. “It’s a pattern that has a little bit of everything.”
. . .
The same scenario played out in 1937, when there was record flooding in the Ohio River Valley, said Wagner, of the prediction center.
He was worried about the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys as the places where the three nasty storm systems could meet, probably with snow, thunderstorms, severe ice storms and flooding. Some of those areas already are flooded.

I don’t put much stock in long-range weather forecasts (or short-range ones for that matter), but this is something to keep an eye on.

More evidence to file into the we-already-knew-that files. Simply put, the system cannot cope when there are three or more teams vying for supremacy. So if there are multiple undefeated teams in contention, the two with the highest preseason rankings will get to go to the championship game. Or if there are several one-loss teams in the hunt, it will likely feature the two which lost earliest in the season.
Either way, teams–and college football fans–get screwed. And we’ll continue to miss out until the NCAA implements an eight (or more) team playoff.