Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Street scene on Mackinac Island. Click to enlarge.

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This blog had 5,185 visits during November, which is an average of 172.8 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 178.9.

To the Editor:

Once upon a time in America (in Berkeley, to be precise) a Free Speech Movement brought students together to protest restrictions on political activities on the campus. Now, however, students at Amherst College demand that their classmates who advocate free speech should be remanded to “extensive training for racial and cultural competency.”

When did this core constitutional principle become not only divisive, but also identified with invidious discrimination? How is “free speech” now the enemy?

ELLEN D. MURPHY

Portland, Me.

Note from KBJ: It's really quite simple. Progressives are unprincipled. When they're out of power, as they were until recently in academia, they demand freedom of expression. When they're in power, as they are now in academia, they demand the suppression of freedom of expression. Progressives used to be totalitarians manqué. Now they're totalitarians simpliciter.

Zebra (1983). A vastly underrated band.

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To the Editor:

Re “Obesity Rises Despite Efforts to Fight It” (news article, Nov. 12):

Obesity has been a growing concern over the last few years, and is becoming more and more of a concern because more Americans than ever before are obese.

I myself am overweight, but continue to be aware and careful about what I eat, exercise with a personal trainer and swim at an indoor pool. But there are extraneous variables as to why one is obese: medicines someone is on, heredity (familial), resources a person may not have (access to a gym or a pool), health status (how are a person’s feet, knees and hips).

We should not point a finger at someone who is obese, for there may be reasons besides overeating one is obese, and the person may not have control over it. As a human race, we come in all shapes, colors and sizes, and what we need to do is respect people no matter their color, shape or size.

AMY ROSENFELD

New York

Note from KBJ: Yes, there "may be reasons besides overeating," but the overwhelming majority of fat people are fat because they eat too much relative to their caloric expenditure. I am sick to death of subsidizing laziness, stupidity, and lack of self-control. If you want to die young, fine, but leave me alone!

I heard that 2015 is the wettest year on record in Dallas/Fort Worth. Don't I know it! This past May, and now again in November, we got rain for days on end. I wouldn't mind the precipitation, except that it plays havoc with the bike trails on which I ride. Today, for example, I had to improvise like crazy to get my 34 miles. It was not pretty. At one point, I walked my bike on a grassy knoll (!) for a quarter of a mile to get around an inundated trail beside a lake. All's well that ends well. I rode 427.6 miles in November, which gives me 4,424.4 miles for the year, with one month to go. The image (click to enlarge) shows me near one of the flooded underpasses. I put my iPhone 5c on a ledge, propped it up with a piece of debris and a weed, and used the 10-second timer to allow me to get in place near the railing. Apart from the flooding, riding conditions were excellent today. The wind chill was 43º when I left my house and 44º when I returned, three hours later. As you can see, I was bundled up against the chill.