Saturday Miscellany

First, it seems like yesterday, but it was one week ago that I expressed some doubt over Zachary Karabell’s joy over the advent of a weight loss drug called Ozempic. Check out last week’s Saturday Miscellany.

I am far from being competent to judge, but I did list some of the side effects designated by the manufacturer. One intrepid commenter pointed out that manufacturers are obliged to publish such lists, to forestall lawsuits of some such.

Naturally, I am undeterred. I do not believe in magical cures. And I trust that healthier habits are better for maintaining a healthy weight than taking a pill or even a potion.

Alas, in the matter of Ozempic, the New York Post offers some of the downsides of the pill-- especially what happens when you cease taking it:

Drugs designed to treat diabetes have become one of the hottest and most controversial weight loss crazes.

But some people who hopped on the Ozempic train are starting to regret it, claiming they’ve gained back more weight than they lost when they stopped taking it.

Ozempic and Wegovy, a drug called semaglutide designed for people with Type 2 diabetes, helps the pancreas release the right amount of insulin when blood sugar levels are high.

However, both have become widely used as weight loss drugs.

The 41-year-old mom found that she was becoming more full quickly with smaller portions of food. However, she had to stop taking the drug cold turkey when the manufacturer’s Wegovy coupon stopped since her health insurance didn’t cover it and she would have to dish out $1,400 a month out of pocket.

Within just one month, she gained all the weight back, plus an extra 10 pounds more than when she started taking Wegovy.

“The weight started coming on like never before,” she shared, adding that she was at the most she’d ever weighed: 245. “I was insatiable. And I’ve never been that way. I was so hungry. It was crazy the way it felt.”

“It was awful, it’s still awful,” she added. Bayandor now weighs 246 pounds and has not been able to lose any weight since quitting Wegovy.

Aside from the costly expense, some people have stopped taking these weight-loss drugs due to extreme side effects.

CNN reported several dieters who have been diagnosed with severe gastroparesis, a condition that slows or stops the movement of food from the stomach to the small intestine, likely as a result of taking Ozempic, their doctors believe.

Some people are rushing to the restroom and waking up with soiled sheets, and some say they joined a “s – – t the bed club,” saying they’ve woken up to find themselves covered in their own poop.

“Ozempic finger” has digit and wrist sizes shrinking, and jewelers have reported that women are coming in droves to size down their rings and bracelets — up a shocking 150% compared to last year. Another nasty side effect is “Ozempic burp” — specifically “sulfur burps” smelling of rotten eggs.

Some have even said their butts have flattened “like a pancake” — including one person who reportedly had undergone a previous Brazilian butt lift.

I provide this information for your edification. And to correct those who thought I was being overly cautious regarding Ozempic and Co.

On the brighter side, recent studies have shown that Ozempic does not make people more suicidal.

Second, from the San Francisco area, a girls basketball team figured out how to deal with a trans female player on an opposing team. From the Twitter account called: WomenAreReals:

Tonight in the Bay Area, a girls’ high school basketball team, consisting mostly of Muslim girls, forfeited a game against a team with a male player. The girls refused to play against the boy or share a locker room with him. You will not see this story in the news. Of course the boys teams played. Girls lose while boys remain unaffected. Don’t let women’s sports die in silence.

Third, you will be happy to hear that New York Mayor Eric Adams has declared that crime in the city is down.

And yet, in 2019 car thefts clocked in at 5,438. Last year the number rose to: 15.802.

Great job, Eric.

Third, you might have missed the story. It took place at a New Jersey mall a week or so ago. A Jewish family was minding its own business. Yet, one family member was wearing a pro-Israeli sweatshirt.

Their presence elicited an unhinged outrageous attack from someone named Maria Bonilla Hernandez. For her part Hernandez had recently graduated from a school called, you guessed it, the Barack Obama School for Social Justice.

What did she learn there? Well, a couple of elements of her rant suffice:

“You’re a wh*re! Your mother is a wh*re! Your grandmother is a wh*re!”

 “Free Palestine! F*cking die, b*tch!”

This tells us that in certain parts of America public displays of anti-Semitism are now acceptable. 

Fourth, you will not be surprised to hear that the Biden administration is funding terrorism. Most especially they are supporting the Palestinian Authority with cash grants. The money is being used to provide trust funds for the families of those who murder Jews:

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The terrorists who started a war on Oct. 7, according to Palestinian Authority law, will be compensated financially for a massacre well done. The same PA that President Biden wants to run postwar Gaza will reward the murderers’ families with grants followed by monthly stipends for life. That means taxpayers from the U.S. and Europe will help pick up the tab.

The Palestinian postal service said at the end of the year that “martyrs, wounded and prisoners”—Palestinian terrorists or their families, in other words—will receive their November stipends starting this past Saturday via the Palestine Post Bank. The PA is in a fiscal crunch, so this time payments will be at a reduced rate of 65%, plus 14% of the money that the martyrs & co. are owed from past deductions.

Fifth, Peggy Noonan reflected on the fact that when an accident in a Tokyo runway set an Airbus aflame, the crew supervised and organized an evacuation-- and hundreds of people all survived.

What was there about the Japanese that allowed them to do so? Peggy Noonan reported in the Wall Street Journal:

I asked Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, what it is about the Japanese that saved the day. “It’s a society that places high value on personal honor, responsibility to community, and respect for authority,” he said. “No one in Japan would mouth off or be violent with a flight attendant trying to protect you and the rest of the flying public, for example.” He followed up, in a text: “Also, here five year olds walk to school unaccompanied, crossing busy streets for blocks. Cars stop and kids at walkways cross. It’s sublime.”

Noonan continues by reflecting on what members of our own individualistic culture would have done:

More every-man-for-himself. American individualism is a beautiful thing but can tip toward narcissism, and we’re tipping. The guy in seat 3A would be rummaging through the overhead looking for his bag and blocking the aisle. The 20-year-old woman would be standing on her seat and screaming as she live-streams on TikTok. The social-media influencer in 15B would be demanding someone come and lift her from her seat.

This thesis, and the comparison contained therein, comes to us from Ruth Benedict’s World War II treatise, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. 

Noonan has offered an excellent synopsis of the difference between shame and guilt cultures. 

I expounded at length on the subject in my book, Saving Face.

Sixth, for those who follow fourth century theology, the following counts as the best witticism about the overdue resignation of one Claudine Gay.

We owe it to David Peters, via Twitter:

You’re telling me the president of Harvard resigned over pelagianism?! In 2024?!?

This is considerably more amusing if you know what Pelagianism was. I suspect that precious few modern readers know about the the fourth century monk Pelagius, and about his most important opponent, Augustine, the bishop of Hippo himself.

Anyway, Pelagius became famous or infamous, as you wish, for denying the doctrine of original sin. God’s creation, as he had it, was all good, though human beings could defy it by sinning. And he  did not believe that human beings were conceived in sin, through a sinful action. To which Augustine replied that beings conceived in sin required baptism… and so on.

The debate over original sin eventually led to the dogma of the immaculate conception. If, as the theology held, the Virgin Mother was herself conceived through a sinful act between her parents, her body was necessarily corrupt. But, if it was corrupt that meant that Jesus had gestated in a corrupt vessel for nine months.

Theologians in the Middle Ages tormented themselves over this question until one Duns Scotus, at around the year 1300, figured out that since Jesus Christ was God, he could retroactively cleanse his mother’s womb. 

This became Church dogma in the nineteenth century, called the immaculate conception. Keep clearly in mind this action refers to the action whereby the parents of the Virgin Mary conceived her, not the action whereby she was impregnated through the Holy Spirit.

As for how Mary herself was impregnated, Augustine remarked that if Christ was the Word, his mother must have been impregnated through her ear.

And, no, I did not make that up. It comes from times when people took their theology seriously.

I trust that you now feel enlightened. 

Seventh, I currently have some free hours in my consulting and coaching practice. If you are interested contact me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com