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The Off Topic Topic

Started by Korea, March 10, 2009, 06:24:26 AM

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derspiess

Quote from: mongers on August 15, 2018, 04:27:27 PM
Quote from: derspiess on August 15, 2018, 11:27:33 AM
Food in general is cheaper than it's ever been.  At least it seems so :D

But at what cost?

Gettin' fat.
"If you can play a guitar and harmonica at the same time, like Bob Dylan or Neil Young, you're a genius. But make that extra bit of effort and strap some cymbals to your knees, suddenly people want to get the hell away from you."  --Rich Hall

Admiral Yi

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/john-boehner-is-joining-a-marijuana-company-2018-04-11

QuoteJohn Boehner, former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, and Bill Weld, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts who was the 2016 running mate of Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, are joining the advisory board of Acreage Holdings, which owns cannabis licenses and assets in the 30 states where cannabis is approved for medical or recreational use.

garbon

"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Admiral Yi


Eddie Teach

It's an amusing footnote.
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

Josquius

#67460
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 15, 2018, 10:26:51 AM
Interesting piece in the Guardian about obesity.

Here is a picture of a crowded beach in 1976 (no fat people).  just picture in your mind the difference today.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/25/1976-long-hot-summer-political-upheaval

The opinion piece considers what changed.  The conclusion the author draws:

QuoteSo what has happened? The light begins to dawn when you look at the nutrition figures in more detail. Yes, we ate more in 1976, but differently. Today, we buy half as much fresh milk per person, but five times more yoghurt, three times more ice cream and – wait for it – 39 times as many dairy desserts. We buy half as many eggs as in 1976, but a third more breakfast cereals and twice the cereal snacks; half the total potatoes, but three times the crisps. While our direct purchases of sugar have sharply declined, the sugar we consume in drinks and confectionery is likely to have rocketed (there are purchase numbers only from 1992, at which point they were rising rapidly. Perhaps, as we consumed just 9kcal a day in the form of drinks in 1976, no one thought the numbers were worth collecting.) In other words, the opportunities to load our food with sugar have boomed. As some experts have long proposed, this seems to be the issue.

The solution the piece implies is not a matter of individuals making better dietary choices, but better regulation of the food industry.

I think the piece is a bit simplistic in that it does not address why obese people make poor nutritional choices, it simply blames government for allowing those choices to be made.  But I think it likely that there is another structural problem with food delivery - junk/fast food costs less. So it is not surprising that so many people eat it and get fat.  In fairness the article does mention that obesity is more prevalent in lower socio-economic groups.  But why is that?  The article simply says "lower spending power, stress, anxiety and depression associated with low social status makes people more vulnerable to bad diets".  I don't think that is very helpful.  All that amounts to is poor people are always going to make bad food choices.  Putting aside how demeaning that logic is to poor people, I think we are better off looking at structural causes rather than simply concluding the poor must be protected from themselves. 

I think the issue is the cost and availability of health foods vs unhealthy foods.

Now how does that get addressed?  Not sure.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/15/age-of-obesity-shaming-overweight-people



Rich person's commute= 15 minute bike to work.
Poor person's commute= 30 minute drive to work.

Rich person's special weekly treat= eating out at a fancy restaurant and a walk around the city centre.
Poor person's special weekly treat= crappy delivery pizza.
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Threviel

And vegetables don't have to be fresh, frozen is often just as good or better. Perhaps less tasty, but nutritionally quite good.

Syt

Fox News compares Denmark's welfare state to Venezuela, Danish politican replies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ1gjObNDv8
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

Habbaku

Quote from: Syt on August 16, 2018, 07:15:34 AM
Fox News compares Denmark's welfare state to Venezuela, Danish politican replies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ1gjObNDv8

Does Fox News deliberately try to find the dumbest sounding/looking anchors for these types shows?
The medievals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people.

-J. R. R. Tolkien

Habbaku

 :lol: And of course, her show is named "The Intelligence Report".
The medievals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people.

-J. R. R. Tolkien

Tonitrus

Surviving two rounds of Allied WW2 bombing and having to live in Belgrade for 80 years?  Not bad lizard...not bad.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-serbia-aligator/muja-the-alligator-still-alive-and-snapping-in-his-80s-at-belgrade-zoo-idUSKBN1L014T

The Brain

I wonder if he even knows he's in Belgrade. He is over 80.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

Razgovory

Man, I thought yesterday was Friday.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

Syt

When you look at this cover and think, "What a beautiful ... FW-190!"



:nerd:
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

derspiess

GIANT LADY SNATCHES KRAUT PLANE FROM SKY
"If you can play a guitar and harmonica at the same time, like Bob Dylan or Neil Young, you're a genius. But make that extra bit of effort and strap some cymbals to your knees, suddenly people want to get the hell away from you."  --Rich Hall