For the past few years, the latest rage seems to be blogging/tweeting about weight loss. Somehow people have convinced themselves that declaring their plans publicly will make it happen.

I won’t get into that (there are enough scientific studies that show the opposite happens), but what gets to me is the complete focus on an arbitrary number. If I was to say “Hey I have a website that generates $100,000 revenue, do you want to buy it?” you obviously want context for that revenue. So when people start criticizing Groupon because their margin isn’t as good as some other (not-competing) company, you have to shake your head. Mark Cuban does have the right idea … most of these guys only care about pageviews, intelligent discussion be damned.

And so back to losing weight, it’s the same foolishness. Except at least in the case of business and finances, such simple minded thinking gets called out. Weight loss? Never. Would you rather be 150lb at 25% fat or 160lb and 15% fat?

We seem to be living in a world of context-less sensationalism, slowly rotting away any and all meaningful intelligent thought. What a dour note to end on