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Government Should Ban Skinny Models To Curb Anorexia, Say Researchers
smoothjazz writes "Governments are justified to prevent very skinny models from walking the catwalk and ban photographs and advertisements suggesting that extreme thinness is attractive, according to a group of researchers who found that social and cultural environment influences on young women is largely responsible for the spread of chronic eating disorder."
Oh wait, researchers have freedom of speech. Come to think of it, so do marketing firms.
Banning skinny models definitely would help fix the problem. I'm normally against such type of regulation but when the common person is blasted in the face by constant advertising in every form imaginable 24/7 then i tend to fall on the side of regulation.
It's not like the average person can moderate the amount of advertising that rapes their eyeballs and subconcious every day.
Fat models, skinny controllers, dumb views...
Oh, wait, are we not talking about code all of a sudden? Okay, in that case, dumb, skinny models, and no fat chicks.
In fact, forget I was here.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
So there are going to be a lot of people who will throw everyone and everything else under the bus.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Let's ban fat people on TV too. Everybody you see must be within 10% of their ideal weight as determined by government regulators.
The social manifestation of the persecution of beauty.
You know, the thing about insurance of groups, which is essentially a statistical undertaking, is that there are always outliers in both directions, and they are accounted for. There are insured people who never go to the doctor or need medical treatment. And there are insured people who go every time someone *else* sniffles. Over a large population, it'll balance out just fine.
Whenever someone starts sniveling about the over-users, take a moment to remind them of me, someone who has been well insured for decades and hasn't *ever* made a health insurance claim -- I seem to have an immune system like a Sherman tank. So far, lol. 55 and counting, though, not too bad.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Next, a government agency dedicated to monitoring body fat content for all employees of media companies. It will "create" 50,000 jobs in the federal bureaucracy. When an editor for the New York Times cheats on her diet, it will be a federal offense punishable by a fine of $50,000 or up to 5 years imprisonment. Lawsuits and lobbyists will fight over whether Twitter and Facebook qualify as a "media" company and thus whether said legislation applies to all users who have created an account on those services. The Department of Health and Human Services will decline a waiver for employees of organizations affiliated with religious groups who have religious dietary restrictions.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The problem is not that these body images are harmful, but that girls are trained to think that their appearance is their most important attribute.
This is not improving, this shallow culture is being promoted to men and boys as well, perhaps in order to stave off charges of sexism, but more likely it's just a realisation within these cosmetic and fashion industries that they are missing out on a potential market.
Why is this article here?
Does it include neato new technology?
Does it review some new CPU or video card?
Does it discuss a new or old computer game?
Does it include high-energy physics or cosmology?
Does it include something about programming languages?
Does it include cryptography or security breaches?
Does it include anything at all about computers?
Hell, does it talk about Bitcoin?
Might as well just post scans from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue that's out right now.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Or they may be skinny because they couldn't afford health insurance and broke a limb in a mugging. Oh shoot, medical bills in the $12,000 region. I guess they can't afford to feed themselves anymore.
Universal healthcare is not just the mark of a civilized society, it's cheaper than commercial healthcare, because you don't have to pay for all those claims adjusters and billing administrators.
Nixon was opposed to the idea, by the way. He really liked the idea of HMOs though.
While I'm trivially opposed to legislation like this, I will point out that imagery doesn't really change what men want in a woman- that's coded deep or something- but it DOES change what WOMEN try to look like to compete with each other. Most men don't prefer the super skinny models. It's fashion designers who force that on us, and I think it's fair to point out that most men don't follow such fashion. I think everyone knows that a glamour model can be super hot, and a fashion model is... not. And of course, glamour models, while still often at a level of thinness that would be unachievable for all women, have genuinely feminine shapes to them, and are not some concentration camp throw-away.
Anyway, I don't dispute the findings of the researchers, merely the morality of attacking speech.
My wife is anorexic. She's stable, and she's become a successful practicing MD. Understanding the problem doesn't cure it.
She grew up in a home with two half-sisters under a frequently single mother who went through many marriages. Her (now also anorexic) mother has career success, ridiculously low self esteem, and she married at least two physically abusive men. The worst of them was a churchgoing man who physically abused all his daughters/stepdaughters and repeatedly raped his own daughter (thankfully my wife did not endure that). He hid it from his wife/my mother-in-law and everyone else (except the girls) for several years. When my mother-in-law finally understood it was happening, she divorced him as soon as she felt she could without physical abuse as a repercussion. I don't think that was right away. And because of fear, he was never reported or punished. I don't think he even quit attending church.
My wife had no control of her life in her childhood. She could control her appearance. She became anorexic to give fulfill her need for a sense of control in her life.
Banning the ads would help reduce the draw of that manifestation of the need for control. But the root problem is very commonly associated with domestic abuse and/or unhealthy childhoods like the one my wife grew up in.
Universal healthcare is not just the mark of a civilized society
You're certainly entitled to your opinion.
it's cheaper than commercial healthcare, because you don't have to pay for all those claims adjusters and billing administrators.
Yes, in the same way that communism is the most efficient and beneficial of political systems: "in theory", and as long as you ignore how things actually work out every time it's tried in real life. Real world governments are neverending breeders of corruption and incompetence, and the more you strengthen them, the more incompetent they get. It's naive to expect otherwise.
Let's restrict freedom of speech in order to solve social problems. Sure buddy, whatever. If we're going to do that, let's start with a few other things first, such as Fred Phelps and the KKK. Any American who thinks this is a good idea, please step out back and shoot yourself, thanks.
For example, they may be skinny because the government is spending on healthcare rather than spending on hunger.
Ah, no. Just No.
Anorexia is a mental illnesses, not a poverty issue.
Poor people in the USA aren't wasting away from lack of food.
The majority of them are too fat, because they can only afford cheap fattening foods, and filling a belly of a hungry child is more important than filling it with a weight conscious diet.
This has NOTHING to do with Anorexia which hunger or poverty.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Where I live that theory is a fact, even with commercial healthcare costing only $50 a month. I live in the UK, that figure is through BUPA. I probably pay $600 dollars roughly in National Insurance contributions. I just finished an MA and now work part time. I paid even less during Uni, did you?
As to the second part of your post, the Scandinavians prove you wrong on the corruption front. Norway especially, is considered the least corrupted nation on the planet, followed closely by her neighbours and New Zealand.
Give me more government I say (when it's good), lucky the majority of the best ones are in Europe or part of the Commonwealth.
Jonathanjk.com
Why is it that Euro cosmopolitans have this desire to have that "concentration camp" look.
The more skinny the models are, the more the design of the clothes stands out. If you have a curvy model that takes away the focus from the clothes and distorts the indented shape of the clothes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This blows all the mods I've made, but the shear ignorance here is killing me. People need to get past their misogynist thinking that anorexia just means being lean.
The reason curbing anorexia is a big deal is that it has "the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder" and it's a highly cultural phenomenon, extremely rare in societies before modern advertising. Even with treatment, the prognosis is death most of the time. This is an avoidable danger, like prohibiting the glorification of drugs in kids' shows.
Really... How would regulating this be any different than banning steroids in professional sports?
Ask me about my sig!
It's not like people would stop buying stuff they need.
I'm not sure how great a solution this is. It's incomplete, that's for sure.
Anorexia is typically tied to a need to have control, and the weight issue is where that is manifested. The second part is what we tend to focus on, but the need for control is the root cause. An unhealthy childhood environment is very common among anorexics, which is where the need for control is born.
To me the real research question is, if it were to not focus on unhealthy physical appearance, how would those who would turn to anorexia fulfill their need for control? Some other appearance-based criteria, or through a different venue entirely? If it didn't require enough work to be 'ideal,' the self-deprivation required to 'discipline' oneself would be gone and it may not produce any control-related benefits. I suspect overly rigorous athletic training would be one likely venue, but heavily working in any other person-specific field might be another.
I would like to see results of a study that is able to address that question.
Its not a fucking theory you nitwit.
Canada has a single payer government system. Its a PROVEN PROCESS.
Canadians live longer than Americans, by something like 3-4 years now. Yes the outlier cases of super specialized treatment send people from here south of the border into the US, however that is largely because we just don't have the population to support services for the things that affect 1 in 100,000 people and are pretty damned expensive.
1 in 100,000 people in Canada is 300 people.
1 in 100,000 people in the US is 3000 people.
Now why don't we play with some grade 2 math and guess which country has better centralized care for that sort of condition?
The funny part of it all is that Americans are coming to Canada for health care for some issues. With the population difference that should in no way happen.
efficient and beneficial of political systems: "in theory", and as long as you ignore how things actually work out
Your worthless platitudes don't change the fact that by several measurable metrics, socialized medicine has been shown in practice to work better than the United States' corporate dominated heath care system.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Actually, as I understand it, it doesn't necessarily have to do with the "beauty" of the models, it has to do with how the shape of a skinny person shows off the clothing. Basically, they want walking coat-hangers.
A couple points: (1) the two countries have radically different climates, demographics, lifestyles, etc, and (2) many people would disagree that Canada has better healthcare than the USA. And you know what's another thing that's funny? A lot of Canadians come to the USA for treatment. So you can take your correlation/causation and... feed it to a baby seal or something.
No, just the opinions that are wrong.
Seriously, what kind of fucking moron thinks that the government should ban something just because it "sends the wrong message"? So do action movies, romantic comedies, reality TV shows, and all political advertisements. Do you have to have a particular kind of brain damage to think that A) banning it would work, and B) it would not have harmful consequences to our society to give the government that power?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
No, men aren't off the line either...but from looking on a daily basis at typical people in the US any time I go out.....skinny models causing anorexia is NOT a problem....I can't remember the last time I saw anyone, particularly a chick that looked anywhere or any way too skinny....
Hell, its hard to find anyone out there that looks anywhere close to 'fit'....
I was that way...at least I'm trying with better diet, proper portions...and yes...exercise.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Skinny is fashionable now for the same reason being heavy was hundreds of years ago.
Fat is the opposite of attractive now because it's unhealthy. You don't pick an obese woman to marry these days because you don't want to find her dead at 45.
This problem of glorifying anorexia will go away when we solve the obesity epidemic.
Give me more government I say (when it's good)
That's the real trick, isn't it? If the "more government" turns out to be bad, you typically don't have opportunity to "give it back". :p
it's not difficult to not be affected by what you see
This seems to be a common notion on slashdot, maybe due to a mix of disdain for the softer sciences and some arrogance about the ability of intelligence to triumph over everything else.
I'll just point out that there exists an entire industry dedicated to 'affect you' by what you see (or otherwise sense). It's called 'marketing' and it's extremely effective and therefore extremely profitable. Would we really be so incredibly saturated in advertisements 24/7 if human beings could easily be unaffected by it?
And PS - That bit about letting 'them' die for some sort of evolutionary goal is despicable.
Hey mate, spare a sig?
...it is still better than a government run system, as I at least have choices of carriers and coverage.
Have you ever lived under a government-run healthcare system?
I'm from the US, and I've lived in Japan for years at a stretch. In Virginia, Kaiser Permanente listened to my wife's explanation of her symptoms (chronic sinusitis, excessive post-nasal-drip, resulting digestive issues, among other issues) and decided that the trouble in her gut was actually evidence that she needed her ovaries removed. Um, no.
In Tokyo, the local hospital (as part of the government-run healthcare system) listened to her symptoms, and then also to her lungs, and said "hey, you have light asthma -- here's how you manage it." Problems (mostly) solved.
Just because a healthcare system is government run doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad. Just because a healthcare system is left to run on market dynamics and choices doesn't mean that it's necessarily better.
FWIW, the opposite is also true -- we've also experienced crappy medical care in Japan, and good care in the US. Ultimately, a lot of it comes down to the quality of the doctors themselves.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
It became a right when people forgot what the word right means.
Naturally speaking, rights are something you intrinsically have without the action of others. A right can only be taken away by the positive, proactive action of others. That is, all alone and without interference from other human beings, we automatically have freedom of speech, thought, belief, ownership, &c.. In an allegedly "free" society, it's the government's responsibility to guarantee these rights by not interfering with them. They're supposed to merely protect these rights.
Entitlements or privileges are the opposite: They're something we can only have with the positive, proactive action of others. These things include education, welfare, employment, healthcare, and anything else that some might call a "right" but that they can't have without someone providing it to them. Some people distinguish these things by calling them "positive rights" as opposed to the "negative rights" in the previous paragraph, although I think this terminology is part of the problem---it's easy enough to drop the word "positive" and now we can easily conflate the two concepts.
And that's exactly what has happened. Over the past century, we've seen more and more entitlements gradually moved into the "rights" column by people who want to lend legitimacy to the idea that these things ought to be guaranteed and provided to us by the government. After all, the government "provides" us with freedom of speech, they say, so shouldn't they "provide" us with the freedom from worry about healthcare, unemployment, and so on?
Liberty in your lifetime
Three that I know off the top of my head:
Cost per capita (The U.S spends on average, double what Western nations with socialized systems spend)
Infant mortality rate (The U.S. ranks 34, right behind Cuba)
Life expectancy (The U.S. is again in the 30s and again behind communist Cuba)
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Many people anecdotally agree. Your hospitals in the US are sometimes more lavish than hotels. Who the hell isn't going to say the care is better there?
In canada you get what you need to live. Which is the important bit. The living.
The climate is REALLY fucking reaching because we have a much harsher climate and have many many more people per capita die to exposure than you do.
The demographics and lifestyles are very very very similar. Go to Ontario, then go nearly anywhere in the northeastern US. You can't really tell much difference.
I already mentioned that some Canadians go to the US for treatment, and thats already largely explained. A population that is over 10x ours has a larger need for rarer treatments, thus has more facilities better equipped to deal with it. Its generally a 4-6 hour or less flight to get there. Why would they open a specialized clinic for it here?
As far as correlation =/= causation, its a bullshit strawman in this case. Our lifestyles are slightly different because we are taught differently. Our health care, because its publicly funded, for the public good, deals a LOT in preventative treatment and education on how to avoid things.
Guess what? Preventative treatment and education are extremely effective and extremely cost effective. The fact that we're living longer while spending less than 1/5th of your per patient spending is plenty of evidence of that.
Our improved lifestyle is a direct result of these organizations. The school milk program, the Canada Food Guide that was released in the 60s and continues to this day... etc... all government funded, all related to or directly funded by our universal health care.
Try getting your fucking Insurance company to invest in education.
I apologize for being curt with you but I've had it with people like you touting the virtues of a system that is partially responsible for your country being on the verge of circling the drain for the last 5 years
You also fling communism around... communism isn't the answer, a socialist democracy on the other hand is fan-fucking-tastic. Ask us, or the Norwegians, or the Swedes... or any one of another dozen countries that are thriving in what are for america very troubled times, all thanks to our socialist systems.
I should also point out that at Americas most successful it was damned close to a socialist government anyways.
Really... How would regulating this be any different than banning steroids in professional sports?
Welcome to Slashdot, where a considerable portion of the population support legalizing all drugs.
The reason curbing anorexia is a big deal is that it has "the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder"
So it corrects itself out of the gene pool. We don't seem to have a problem here. We have an incredibly sick attitude in our society toward purely self-destructive behaviors - Allow them to run their course, and they go away. Or as George Carlin put it, "See, somehow, I can't feel sorry for an anorexic, you know? Rich cunt, don't want to eat? Fuck her. Fuck her. Don't eat! I give a shit. Like I'm supposed to be concerned about this. I DON'T WANNA EAT! Go fuck yourself."
I think further education is needed rather than censorship.
Teach people about logic. Teach people to not mindlessly accept everything they hear or see on television.
I don't think we should ever resort to censorship because a minority of people choose to starve themselves. I see this as no different than the "think of the children" or "the terrorists are going to get us" nonsense.
Why not take a step back and say, "Why do these women want to be like these models?". They want the popularity and ego satisfaction that goes along with looking like those models. The fact that their self-worth is based on the opinions of other anonymous people is the problem. It's their parents' job to redirect them to base their self-worth on more objective criteria. In other words the researchers have cause and effect backwards. These women already have low self-worth and think looking like anorexic models will make them better because people with low self-worth always think being popular makes them better. The fact that it's anorexic models is arbitrary. In other places and times it was Rubenesque models. It's a moral problem and as usual people want to find a short-cut to dealing with moral struggle by imposing censorship. Censorship doesn't solve the problem. It just forces the issue to manifest in another way.This research is worthless. Actual it's even worse than that. It's positively harmful.
P.S. You also see the inverse, being anti-popular (i.e. pick your "counter-culture" movement of choice) is seen as giving self-worth. It's all the same. The point is to make being popularity irrelevant to self-worth.
I'm not sure that you are the target audience of the modelling industry. Most of the mens magazines have women in them that seem to be relatively well proportioned. Not necessarily really skinny, but healthy (eg the sort of woman likely to give you healthy kids). It's the magazines targeted at women that have the really skinny girls in them, and women keep buying them.
Like open heart surgeries etc?
Exactly like open heart surgeries.
Do you suppose the wealthiest Canadians needing a bypass put their name on the list and wait patiently... Or fly to Cleveland?
Do you suppose wealthy (elderly) Canadians in need of an organ transplant resign themselves to age-based rationing and just die quietly... Or pull a Steve Jobs and fly to Tennessee for a no-fuss, no-muss, no-waiting-list liver?
Or on the flip side of the equation, as a brilliant young surgeon, would you stay in Canada with its government-capped doctor's salaries... Or "defect" to your neighbor to the South where you can make 10x as much without the hassle of having to treat the masses of unwashed poor as a form of government-imposed forced charity?
You really aughtn't act so defensive about this - As I said, I do think you have the better public health care system, overall. At the upper end, though, of-the-wealthy, by-the-wealthy, and for-the-wealthy, sorry, the US has that market cornered. And I don't say that as a positive!
The problem with Canada is not single payer per se - it's the fact that you can't go to a private hospital for better treatment for stuff that is covered by public insurance - the government actually enforces its monopoly on buying the service (on your behalf) and sets the prices. However, this is not a required component of a public healthcare system - you can have both public hospitals funded by taxes, and private hospitals funded by fees they charge to patients, side by side. In effect, Canada already has that arrangement, being next door to US.
It's usually not about denying treatment, but rather about skipping the queue for extra $$$.
I don't think of the climate in Canada as being much different at all from the climate in my state in the US. I live in Alaska though, so most Americans think I live in a wintry wonderland like they imagine Canada is.
Hmm, maybe you should read the bit you highlighted again. It said the larger their *peers'* (i.e OTHER people they associate with) body mass, the lower their chances of being anorexic. Not even remotely what you paraphrased.
Not that I think regulating pictures of thin people makes any sense at all, it's ridiculous. Might as well ban all food and drink ads to prevent obesity (which would cut out 1/2 of all advertising, it seems).
Alaska still has trees even. Some parts of Canada don't, but where the majority of the population in Canada lives the climate is fairly similar to New York or Vermont.
maybe you have the point confused, if the shape of the clothes are distorted by putting a person in them, then what the fuck are you designing them for?
A couple points: (1) the two countries have radically different climates, demographics, lifestyles, etc,
That's not true. As David Himmelstein said, the differences between Boston and Toronto are less than the differences between Boston and Jackson, Mississippi.
(2) many people would disagree that Canada has better healthcare than the USA.
So what? They're wrong. The evidence says that the outcomes in Canada are at least as good. The costs are about half. That makes it better.
And you know what's another thing that's funny? A lot of Canadians come to the USA for treatment.
So what? The numbers are few. The Canadians have done studies to find out why. Most Canadians who go to the U.S. for health care have relatives in the U.S. that they want to stay with. For example, they will have a knee replacement or open heart surgery and stay with their children in Florida or New York while they're recovering.
For that matter, a lot of Americans come to Canada to buy their medicine, and more Americans them would buy medicine by mail from Canada if our lobbyist-funded government allowed it.
If Americans could get Canadian health care, at Canadian price, quality and service, it would be the most popular health care plan in the U.S.
I think Spock would agree that you don't understand the gravity of the situation.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Universal healthcare is not just the mark of a civilized society, it's cheaper than commercial healthcare, because you don't have to pay for all those claims adjusters and billing administrators.
Actually they don't go away under the currently enacted-but-not-in-effect U.S. system. You are required to purchase insurance from an insurance company under the new system. The costs stay the same, or go up, since you can't opt out because of rising costs.
The U.S. system as enacted is a universal coverage system, not a universal healthcare system. We already have a universal healthcare system, it's just hideously expensive when uninsured people utilize it at a hospital emergency room.
The problems with the system that will be replacing the current system is that it's exactly the same as the current system in the most important respects:
o. You pay an insurance company for health insurance ...looks like a Ponzi scheme to me. The only people who make out are the insurance companies, and they have incredible incentive to drive up costs at some multiplier of their desired margin. And that doesn't change under universal coverage.
o. The insurance company pays the doctor for your visit
o. The doctor pays a portion of the money back to the insurance company for malpractice insurance
o. The insurance company pays for use of equipment like MRI machines
o. The company that manufactures the MRI machines pays a protion to the insurance company for liability insurance
o. The hospital pays an inflated cost for the machines to cover the vendors liability insurance in the cost
o. The hospital pays the insurance company for liability insurance related to the machine
o. The hospital pays malpractice insure related to the machine
If they gave us single payer and tort reform, that would be one thing, but this isn't it.
I'd really rather pay for food for someone than to line the pockets of an insurance company.
-- Terry
Or on the flip side of the equation, as a brilliant young surgeon, would you stay in Canada with its government-capped doctor's salaries... Or "defect" to your neighbor to the South where you can make 10x as much without the hassle of having to treat the masses of unwashed poor as a form of government-imposed forced charity?
I know a bit about that. I've talked to a lot of Canadian doctors, some of whom were good surgeons (the word "brilliant" is overused hype). Many of them went for training in the U.S. (just as many American doctors go for training in Canada).
Most of the best surgeons do want to stay in Canada. They like the idea of being able to treat their patients according to need, not according to whether they can pay for it. They feel that they got a free education, and they like the idea of giving something back to their country. They feel like they're part of their community. They like being Canadians, because, as Canadians say, "we care about each other." They like the idea of practicing scientifically-based medicine, which is very strong in Canada. They like the idea of contributing to medical research, publishing in American and international journals, and reporting their results at international conferences, which they do a lot.
When you talk about the "unwashed poor", you show that you really don't know what's going on. Canadian doctors (and most American doctors, for that matter) don't regard their patients as "unwashed poor." They regard them as people in need of care that they can help. Doctors often say that it is a "privilege" to practice medicine and help others.
Your fundamental problem is your ideological belief in the free market. It doesn't work in health care. Doctors get a comfortable salary, and for most of them it's enough. Greedy doctors give bad medical care. Financial incentives give bad medical care.
That's the real trick, isn't it? If the "more government" turns out to be bad, you typically don't have opportunity to "give it back". :p
In the U.S., "more privatization" turned out to be bad, and we don't have an opportunity to give it back either.
We have the Republican and Democratic parties getting $1 billion apiece from corporations just for the presidential race, by serving the interests of their multi-millionaire campaign contributors, and ignoring the interests of the rest of us.
The wealthy 1% own the country, and we can't get it back.
When people first started philosophizing about natural "rights," they were only referring to various freedoms that they believed deserved to be protected: Life, liberty, property. No positive entitlements were included.
See, that right there is an important clarification - you're talking about natural rights theory. Within its bounds, everything you've said is true.
Thing is, the assertion that those rights are in any way "natural" can and has been disputed. And, no, I'm not talking about feudal rights here. Rather, the idea is that rights are entirely a human construct that simply does not exist outside of human society. In that sense, a lone human out in the wilderness does not have a "right to live" - as, indeed, will be demonstrated by whatever predator he happens to come across. Similarly, a lone human does not have a "right to property", because property itself is an abstract concept - the recognition by other members of the society that some object belongs to someone, endowing him with certain exclusive rights to said object.
"Natural rights" theory makes perfect sense for theists and deists: for them, there is a definite source of all those rights, so they can meaningfully claim the existence of those rights even in the absence of society or other humans. For atheists, it's murky territory - really, more dogma than anything else.
And the other option is, of course, to assume that rights are something that we humans have come up with as our ethics has developed alongside our society. That makes rights more valuable, not less, since they have to be guarded and enforced, otherwise we revert to the "rightless" natural state.
I've gone through these statistics extensively. I've already quoted a couple of studies http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1 here, and I can explain why you're wrong.
Cost per capita -- well, we've got more money than other people do (ha ha, except for being in debt up to our eyeballs), so this is not by itself compelling. And of course, note that socializing medicine is likely to increase our debt even higher than our eyeballs.
As that Guyer paper said, we pay a higher percentage of our GDP on health care than anyone else in the world. When you examine why, you find out that 30-50% of every dollar a customer pays to a private insurance company goes for administrative costs and profits. (Actually the administrative costs cost us more than the profits.) In addition, when government delivers medicine directly, as it does in the Veterans Affairs system, the cost is much lower, and the outcomes are just as good (sometimes better).
You can pay $4,000 a year in taxes as the Canadians do, or $8,000 a year in insurance premiums, as we do.
Of course, if you spend money, and cut taxes until you don't have enough to cover your spending, as the Republicans do, you will increase your debt.
Infant mortality rate -- I read that most comparisons of the USA's infant mortality rate to that of other countries are unfair and misleading, because we have higher standards and report it differently. For example, when many preemie infants are lost, the USA classifies as an infant death where other countries would classify it as an abortion. That kind of thing.
You read wrong. Doctors are pretty smart. They want to compare how well they're doing so they can identify areas of improvement and excellence. The infant mortality rates of all developed countries are based on the same definitions. Even if you did include premature infant deaths, the numbers are so low it wouldn't change the rankings.
When doctors study American infant mortality rates, the most striking statistical pattern is race. Blacks, hispanics and native Americans have much higher infant mortality than whites. The south Bronx has higher infant mortality than many third-world countries.
Race is probably a proxy for income. The U.S. has one of the most unequal societies in the developed world. Our Gini index is about that of Brazil.
Life expectancy -- I grant the statistics, but I question whether socialized medicine is necessarily the causative factor.
All studies find that life expectancy is correlated with income (and race). But in unequal countries, even the wealthy have lower life expectancies than people in more equal countries.
It seems that socialized medicine is part of the whole package of greater equality and better social services for all that leads to longer life expectancy, but it's hard to separate it.
First of all the actual article sucks - it contains no link to the actual published research, nor does it even bother to identify the journal in which the study was published. Christine Hsu, the article's author, contradicts herself on whether Austria or Italy has the lowest female BMI:
Of all the 17 European countries studied, women in Austria were had the lowest average body mass index, a measurement of weight compared to height, at 23.67, which was lower than the European average of 25. Italy had the lowest average BMI for young women at 21.40.
And, predictably, she makes NO mention of the actual survey's contents or methodology, beyond stating how many participants there were. So, we have no way of telling how those participants were selected, what questions they were asked, what the margin of error was calculated to be, and so on.
But the biggest fraud of all, is the conclusion that, based on one survey, European governments are somehow justified in dictating which models advertisers may or may not employ. That's not even a slippery slope - it's a precipice that makes the Matterhorn look like a Dutch tulip field.
Crappy reporting on execrable science. Nothing to see here ...
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Well , to be fair to Europe, in Spain skinny models were/are banned at fashion shows.
Keira Knightley is the actress from the Pirates of the Caribean with rather small breasts. For another role, there exists a rather famous comparison picture in which her breasts are photoshopped to be a couple of sizes bigger. It was done against her will, she agreed to some touching up but not to go from A to C.
Is she pretty? Your tastes might differ but a lot of people would say yes...
So... does this stop all the girls out there from worrying their tits are to small? Hell no. For that matter, most super models got modest chest sizes. Does that stop girls from worrying? No. So WHAT image from the media is telling girls that they need to have big tits? Not a famous movie star, not super models.
Yet the claim stands that thin fashion models influence how girls view their body but not the breast part? No, it is a load of bull.
Some people feel insecure about their image, they then find anything out there to justify themselves in feeling bad about it. For a rather extreme and dangerous example, how many black people claim they are kept down by discrimination when the most powerful man on the planet right now is black? Somehow the fact Obama got elected president of the US does not factor into the claim of racism.
Mind you, things are never black and white, there is racism and the media and society put a lot of expectations on how people should be. This isn't just looks, many a person keeps looking for the magical love where violins suddenly start playing. I have met people who really thought that when they became adults, there lifes would be like that in Friends and other sitcoms, sitting around all day drinking coffee with the occasional visit to work if it suited them. Reality? You want to be able to afford even a single coffee, you work so hard that all you want to do in the evening is sleep.
Does this matter? I don't know if the term loverboy is universally known but these are men who seduce young girls with money and a flash lifestype and then get them into prostitution. The girls affected really believe the movie lifestype. "He always got money" and "He always was ready to have a good time" never makes them question how the two combine. It doesn't matter in sitcoms so why should it in real life that a guy with no job has plenty of girls and all the free time in the world and a lot of spare cash?
People who aren't to smart use the media to justify their insecurities, neuroses and world views, and ignore the bits of media that don't match. Porn girls have big tits so big tits are the norm and all the porn with small tits, every single super model don't exist. In comedy, fat ugly women often have attractive wives... of course the BBC series Miranda doesn't count where a very tall and none to skinny rather plain woman has not one but TWO hunky guys interested in her. And gosh, she NEVER goes after men who are overweight or plain looking or, horror of horror, to short.
Media isn't realistic. Or rather it is but we tend to look only at the bits that offend us. Porn is young girls ignoring all the granny and MILF porn. Super stars have big tits except for the ones who don't.
If we start to censor the media to be realistic... then what about those of us who are naturally skinny? Who are just plain good looking? Should they be subjected to a media showing that only ugly people can be happy?
Silly? It isn't the fat chicks or plain looking ones who tend to suffer from insecurity, it is the pretty girls. After all, the fat chick might not get a lot of boys after her but the one who does is probably really interested in her, the person. Where as the pretty girl only gets the guys after her who see her as a trophy and the ordinary guys do not approach her. Being pretty is no guarantee for happiness. See the lives of many a movie actress ending in misery.
There are a lot of things wrong with ads but the biggest is that so many people take them to serious and lack the capacity to look further then their own insecurity at the real world. Believe on pretty people ca
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.