I recently found Mark Irons’s Patterns for Personal Web Sites. Great stuff. Words to live by. If you have a personal website, go take a look-see.

So I was listening to the radio today, and they were having a discussion about the recent fast-food lawsuit. You know, this one.

Now, I don’t like to waste my time bashing lawyers. First of all, the law is (duh) pretty complicated. These days I’m trying to learn not to shoot my mouth off about things I don’t understand. It’s kind of like physics. Unfortunately, I know a few things about physics, and when I see laypersons (usually on sites like this one) spew their opinions on physics, it drives me up the wall. I want to say things like this to them, but somehow I manage to refrain. The thing is, some people have the sense not to comment on physics. but everyone thinks they have something tremendously valuable to share about the law. And at least with physics you don’t have hordes of people screaming about how horrible and wrong physicists were to, say, discover the top quark. Somehow the Pledge of Allegiance resonates a little more with people. I’m not sure why.

Second, everyone loves to pick on lawyers. For example, take my poker buddies (please!) A few weeks ago, I threw out the timid suggestion that I maybe kinda sorta was thinking about going to law school. You’d have thought I announced I was personally responsible for Sports Night going off the air. “What are you thinking?” they cried. “You want your job to be all about destroying other people’s productivity?” When I said that rather than being a lawyer, I thought it would be interesting to be a law professor, they were even more horrified. “So you want to train other people to destroy productivity?” Sigh. Picking on lawyers. So trite.

So that said, the fast-food lawsuit really pisses me off. The one thing that freaked me out about the tobacco lawsuits all those years ago was the thought that, “uh-oh… they’re going to come for cheeseburgers and ice cream next.” And lo and behold, here we are.

As I understand it, the basic argument against the tobacco companies went something like this. A) Tobacco is very dangerous, B) tobacco is very addictive, and C) the tobacco companies actively lied and attempted to cover up evidence that pointed to A) and B). For me personally, C) was the kicker. I think C) is what made the tobacco juries so mad as well.

But the fast-food situation is totally different. Maybe you can make a case for A). But nobody’s arguing B), and as for C)… is there anyone in this country who thinks cheeseburgers are healthy? The calories and fat content is posted on the wall right next to the order counter, for crying out loud. So I’m pretty confused about the whole thing.

Certainly there are some lawsuits against fast-food companies that have merit. For example, there were a couple of suits over the issue of fast-food companies using animal fat in (nominally) vegetarian meals, such as french fries. If McDonalds is failing to disclose that their fries are cooked in beef fat, vegetarians are perfectly justified in being angry over this. But that’s a totally different issue. Nobody’s trying to cover up the health effects of cheeseburgers. How could one not be informed about this? How can you sue someone for producing a dangerous product when that danger is common knowledge? What gives?

Anyway, I was so annoyed that instead of having a sandwich for lunch today, I went out and bought a double cheeseburger Value Meal at Burger King today. A large Value Meal. That’ll show ’em.