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CDC: Americans Getting Heavier, Average Woman Weighs As Much As 1960s Man
schwit1 writes: New statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the average American has packed on the pounds in the past 50 years. Both men and women have gained a considerable amount of weight since 1960, with the average American woman now weighing 166.2 pounds — nearly identical to what American men weighed in the 1960s. U.S. men have been getting bigger too, gaining nearly 30 pounds from the 1960s to 2010 — 166.3 pounds to 195.5 pounds today. The good news is that both sexes have gained almost an inch in height since then, so that accounts for some of the overall weight gain.
I call bullshit again.
It should be noted that the average US male (5'10" vs. 5'8") and female (5'5" vs. 5'3") in 2015 are both two inches taller than their 1960 counterparts. Based on the cube law, you'd expact the average female weight to have increased almost 10% as a result ((65/63)^3 = 1.098).
Increased height accounts for more than half of the weight gain noted in the study.
the corn subsidies and the silly food pyramid.
We eat too much, we exercise too little, and we eat the wrong things.
More fruits, veg, and yes meat... and less starchy food.
As to getting people to move their fat asses every so often... good luck with that.
My ultimate solution to all this is massive genetic engineering.
First there's no reason we couldn't make our staple crops more nutritious. If we can put beta carotene in the rice of third world farmers just imagine what we could do with our OWN food. You could turn your staple crop of choice into a fucking multivitamin.... shift the resources in it to fats and proteins. And that is just the ONE crop.
A more reeasonable way to do it would be to have about 20 different breeds of wheat etc and have each one have its own special characteristics. THEN you just blend them together in the desired ratios at the flour mill. The health nuts will blend their own and most people will be happy with a standard blend.
We can also do stuff like change gultin to something else that people aren't sometimes allergic to.
Then of course there is the human body. The body does not NEED exercise to build muscle. It is TRIGGERED to build muscle by exercise. Those triggers can be adjusted. Ideally you want them to be related to food intake. If in some future we go into famine, the body must not keep assuming it has access to our 21st century food supply. It has to adapt. And of course, if you're getting lots of food, the body shouldn't stock pile excessive amounts of fat but rather build up some healthy muscle.
On top of that, we should awaken the portions of our genes that permit regeneration. Currently we have only a few parts of our bodies that regenerate. The intestines for example still regenerate. But there is no reason it couldn't grow new internal organs, grow new limbs, grow new eyes, new ears, regenerate nerves, etc.All of that is latent in our biology.
And while we're doing that... how about raise the standard human IQ to something less obnoxiously pitiful. Because boy oh boy are there are a lot of morons.
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Honestly 90% of what we consumer is not food but just piles of sugar coated shit.
Stop eating at any restaurants, Stop eating anything that comes in a box or Bag. Hell even our bread is so sweet that most europeans call it cake.
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The summary mentioned a height increase but only of an inch and only account for 10% of the gain, not two inches and half of the gain as the person you were responding to noting. If nothing else he was correcting a bad summary.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
World Health Organization (WHO) global data by country
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
How much is that 50% reduced once they find out you live in your parents basement?
If her name was Caitlyn and she had big manly hands, it's likely your average woman WAS a 1960s man.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Total bodyweight is misleading and I'm a little dismayed that we're still discussing things in those terms. I'm ~195 pounds, but I have 10% or less bodyfat percentage. Could we please get some statistics in here with regards to average bodyfat percentage instead of just bodyweight? It's much more significant than just bodyweight.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
you shouldn't date any girl weighting above 80% of your own weight... which pretty much render the pool of available girl pretty damn thin...
Obesity is most common with the working poor. It's not too surprising. Cheap junk food and TV is about the only pleasure they have left what with smoking being a no-no
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The one-inch gain in height was dwarfed (so to speak) by the six-inch gain in heights listed on online dating sites.
Well, weight training "adds weight" (muscle), but in most normal cases (other than low fat people who train very hard), i.e., overweight/obese people, it helps lowering their weight since the muscle they build burns fat even while not exercising (just by existing at rest).
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
As to the sort of proof... I mean for any kind of firm scientific position you need to have some empirical evidence. My position is admittedly my own guess as to the issue. But your point about temperature, some new chemical in our environment. or a virus is possible.
I question the virus... I think we'd find that. I'm not sure about the chemical.
I think what you'd want to do is feed the mouse some food that is linked to the conventional human food supply chain. And then feed another group of rats something that is specially grown under very controlled circumstances.
As to your hostility, my views aren't actually debunked until you've proven them wrong.
Your point could be irrelevant. You don't know. It could all be a coincidence. You don't know.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Don't worry, continentals. You'll be catching up to us soon: http://qz.com/89553/europeans-...
Well, at least your wine, beer and cheese is better... oh wait, it's not.
http://www.worldbeercup.org/wi...
Does heavier necessarily mean fatter?
On that note, fasting can be good for you.
well, it wouldn't mr. other random guy on the internet; see obese mothers tend to have heavier babies. If a fetus is being marinated in insulin, there's a good chance that baby will grow up to be obese. Please try to contradict that.
I'd also have to counter, the rise in obesity tracks very, very, very well to the rise in carbohydrate consumption.
The anti gene lobby is about as reasonable as the anti nuclear lobby and I don't have a lot of patience for either.
As to the idea of just fixing everything through education... that's a stop gap at best. Long term we're going to genetically engineer ourselves and our food.
We stand at the cusp of the third revolution evolution on this planet.
First we had random mutation.
Second we had sexual selection.
Third we're going to have intelligent design.
Its happening. All you can do is slow it down a little. That's it. Nothing more.
I don't see the point. I'd just assume embrace it especially since it is the only hope most of us have for much expanded lifetimes. Yes, I want to live longer. Its in my blood. I make no apologies and offer no excuses for it.
As to IQ not being interesting, you're not understanding the impact that stupid people have on society or the benefits of having a society of geniuses.
As to more wisdom etc, don't talk to me about not wanting more technology on an internet forum. Go form a drum circle somewhere if you want to sell that.
Again, I just have very little patience for this new age hippy dippy Luddite stuff. Possibly you don't see yourself that way. Well, I don't see the genetics issue the way you do either. You're suggesting it is unwise. I disagree. I think it is extremely wise. I see not doing it as unwise.
Wise and unwise is often used as a code word for ideological dogma. hold this arbitrary code and you're wise. Don't do it and you're unwise. Its totally unlinked to any empirical measure of wisdom.
Lets look at what our society has accomplished with my mentality. You see risks. You're worried about things. But look at what we've done. We wouldn't have this without that boldness.
So if you want to preach the virtues of your philosophy, please show me what your philosophy has ever accomplished? Because I don't see it.
My intention is not to be rude or hurt your feelings. My point is rather to be brutally honest because frankly this is too important for that nonsense.
Again, it is going to happen. You cannot stop it. All you can do is slow it down. That's it. Nothing more. What is that worth? Not a whole lot. You might as well embrace it. Its going to happen regardless.
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Modern obesity has nothing to do with diet, exercise, or lifestyle.
So it's all genetics then?
If you eat too much, don't exercise, and don't sleep enough, of course a person will get obese. Perhaps not when you are young, but most people do not maintain the metabolism of their youth all of their life.
The portions of food we eat in the US are ridiculous. And the quality of food, particularly for the poor, is nutritionally abysmal. More jobs than ever before entail sitting on our ass for extended periods of time and for longer hours than in the past. Our entertainment also tends to consist of sitting on our ass even more. So it's probably a combination of the three.
Not saying the US doesn't have good beer, but that "award" is clearly bullshit if COORS is considered the best "large brewery" in the world. IMO it's the worst in the *US*, and there are a lot of bad large US breweries.
Anyway, at the high end anyone can make good wine, beer, and cheese. Where Europe really smacks down the US is in the high quality of the basic, low cost items.
I thought BMI was actually a good measure for large populations, which is was it was designed for.
Because people you* average out against the rest of the population
It's a poor measure for individuals. Always has been and was never designed to apply to.
* or what you claim to be you.
The BMI is only valid even for a subset of Northern Europeans. For people that are taller it's invalid. It's also invalid for other ethnic groups.
Peformance is a far more useful metric. It also separates out the anorexics from those that are genuinely fit.
Those BMI numbers also originally arose from a time of global economic catastrophe. Their value should be doubted simply for that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"Then of course there is the human body. The body does not NEED exercise to build muscle..."
If you're going the gene mod route with regard the human body, why not just genetically engineer humans to want to eat less? Should be simpler than turning us all into Arnold Schwarzenegger and save a couple of million of cows and chickens from the endless cycle of rebirth (after we butcher them for one final barbeque).
There is no such thing as "good weight". People like Michael Clarke Duncan still die "young" from heart problems. The strain on the heart for pumping blood is related to the mass pumped through, not the percentage of it that's "fat". Arterial constriction/hardening through lipid action is a separate issue, but for general heart failure, and a variety of heart diseases, there's nothing that indicates there's "good" weight, just that any added is harder.
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coors owns a LOT of beers now adays. Im not saying you are wrong, but i think you are thinking of only COORS and not the 100 other beers they put out
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Americans didn't worry about fitness until JFK started talking about it, and it took years to catch on. Today's adults are far more fit than their parents were and have more muscle mass. That's going to make them heavier, but not fatter. Yes, there are probably more tubs of lard out there now, but the fitness freaks and body builders are helping bring the average up as well. (And, as the BMI doesn't take muscle mass into account, most of them are considered obese even though they have very little body fat.)
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Why are they only telling us now of this isolated increase in gravitational pull? Can they even grasp the consequences!?!? How is this even possible!?!?
Nevermind. Finally read the summary.
There is being overweight from being muscular built, then there is being hulking huge.
The BMI metric for ideal weight doesn't factor in people who are more built, so it is a healthy weight as the strength is more than adequate to handle the body. But yes if you bulk up, chances are you do this at the trade off of doing cardio work, also bulking up is a lot of low weight reps, so you are not as strong as someone with a more leaner strength build.
But being 25 lbs heavier in muscle then some one who is just skinny is healthier. Being 100lbs... No so much.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Let's for a second turn off the censor and cut strait to what the BMI is all about. It's about telling fat people that they're fat. A healthy person, particularly athletic persons knows that BMI is not applicable to them and generally ignore it. Could we come up with a metric that accommodates healthy people with above average muscle mass? Sure. But there's no point, and it would be over complicated, more difficult to apply by lay persons, and detract from the original objective.
The funny bit that doesn't make much sense is that fat people generally already know that they're fat. Why do we need a "scientific" method to call them out on it? I assume the point is to get them to do something about it. Trouble is, we've been groomed to consume large quantities of what I can only consider to be "feed" and shun actual food, nutritionally balanced, healthful food. We've been groomed to prefer extra ordinarily sweet, fatty, pre-digested calories. Of course since it's pre-digested, we have to eat more of the stuff since we feel hungry two minutes later if we don't. It's been tailored to hit all the right buttons in our brain's pleasure/reward centers so we become addicted to it. Even when people want to eat "healthy" the manufactured food companies deceive everyone with misinformation. They convince everyone that their candy bars are healthy by calling them "energy" bars. Their bowls of flake shaped sugar must be good for you since they use "whole" grains, never mind the fact that a serving contains less than 1 gram of fiber, and 25 grams of sugar. It's a treadmill, and fat people are meant to stay on it. The calorie companies prefer it that way. Don't like it? Tough, you're in the minority, you're not a shareholder and you don't get a vote.
Now can we please get back to geek subjects and allow us to stuff our face with Cheetos in peace.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I've worked with quite a few different measurement systems. As far as the Napoleonic system goes, a French explorer called Barrallier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... used lineal Napoleonic measurements for distance, however most of his map work and diaries were useless as he measured up and down hills instead of proper cartographic methods from point to point. So the height of a mountain was how far it took him to walk it, rather than the height above sea level.
Austro-Hungarian measures called Vienna Measurement (pre 1876) was supposedly standardised across the Empire, except it wasn't especially on the Hungarian parts which (for example) measured most goods as 'Barrels'. This was ok but were these Pozsony (Pressburg/Bratislava) barrels or the barrel sizes used by other parts of the country? As for area, a 'Hold' could be anything from 1 acre to more than 2 hectares. A Mertfold was exactly 1 (English) mile or around 8 km depending on who you were speaking to. So standardisation and how to use it was a godsend.
King Sobieski of Poland who came with his army of winged hussars to defeat the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1687 had to use medieval maps of the surrounding area which were quite inaccurate. He still managed to surprise the Turks and drive them off, but this was a turning point in cartography, thereafter proper 'modern' techniques were used.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
In the age of cheap body fat % measuring devices, why not make body fat % the standard? I'm tall and borderline overweight according to BMI, but I have about 14% body fat percentage. It's much easier to compare across body types with that metric than BMI. Yet I've never had a doctor record my body fat %, only height and weight.
Sure, they have a bunch of labels, but they are all pretty poor to average at best:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And of course Coors and Coors Light are still their signature brands. Just because they have a few decent niche brands doesn't mean they should be given a pass for the rest.
I still use the Hellenic system:
finger, palm, span, foot, forearm, cubit, pace, fathom, stadion, milion, league, and stage.
A World Beer Cup where only a fraction of breweries outside of the USA participate in?
Look at the list of participants, for instance for Belgium only 27 breweries (some of which are owned by the same company) are listed, that's like one sixth of the Belgian breweries only.
no argument, My favorite brewery is a toss up between lagunitas and rogue. maybe saranac in the summer months
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
If you ask a typical Republican if they think THE ARNOLD is a real Republican, most would say no and not listen to him.
"U.S. men have been getting bigger too, gaining nearly 30 pounds from the 1960s to 2010"
Pfftph! I've gained 30 pounds in the last 2 years.
It could also mean that the mothers are just too goddamn fat, eating foods filled with artificial hormones and other shit out of a Monsanto scientist's fever dream.
People are getting fatter, so let's see...what's the biggest change in our food supply over the past twenty years? What is the biggest change in the provenance of the food that people buy in stores since say, 1994? How has farming changed over the past 20 years and how has that change been reflected in the most popular foods?
Let's all act like it's not a coincidence that people have gotten fatter while factory-raised cattle have gotten fatter and chickens have gotten fatter and pigs have gotten fatter and even motherfucking farm-raised fish have gotten fatter.
Think about this tomorrow when you take a shower and look down and realize your tits have gotten as big as your moms. So big in fact, that you can no longer see your pecker.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And do that over the course of thirty years. Oh wait...mice don't live thirty years and they don't reproduce when they're thirty years old.
Lab mice live maybe 6 months. How much are you going to learn about what happens to people who eat the same shit for 30 years from creatures that live six months?
You are welcome on my lawn.
For USA specifically try this (no historic data i am afraid, but you can have them by state and some other critiria), plus this nice "Overweight and Obesity (BMI) - 2013" by state table
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
Nope.
Modern mouse right now fed food linked to the human food chain RIGHT NOW... versus some hermetically sealed mouse eating hydroponically grown whatever.
And while you're at it, have some of the mice in one temperature environment and some others in another temperature environment.
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Seriously, stop eating all the cake. (For various definitions of "cake" which basically all boil down to much the same stuff - starch+fat+sugar).
I am sorry, from what i understand you want "USA overweight/obesity historic data" (other than CDC compilations) - i know very well that they do exist (in various forms, both for male AND female *adults*), for example you should try searching US military sources if you have access (i am Greek, i can't help in that!).
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
if im not drinking GOOD beer (anything that doesnt have a commercial in the US it seems is good, if it has one, its not) im drinking whiskey on the rocks. but thats me
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
It's inaccurate for most people. If you're tall then it doesn't scale correctly. I'm 6'2", should I weigh 145 pounds? The BMI calculation would say that was normal weight! I'm 225 with a 36" waist, which almost makes me obese. I exercise and try to eat right, most of the time. If I trimmed down to 200 pounds I would still be considered overweight!
Using a bad formula that doesn't take into account body fat% is ridiculous.
.
Ok fine, let's sum up: a mathematician (!), a political science professor (!!) and somebody from a restaurant industry association (!!!) don't like an indicator that is used worldwide by physicians to measure obesity, and that is used to rank countries' obesity by the World Health Organization and the OECD in their annual papers. Thanks, very useful. To guess what the BMIs of those 3 guys might be.
It's pretty ironic that you point out that a mathematician(!) is against BMI when it was a mathematician(!) that created BMI.
I've not seen anything that supports that. The people who are underweight, but not malnutritioned are healthier than those who are "average", so long as they have the same cardio capacity. The underweight marathon runner will be better off than the power lifter who never burns a single calorie aerobically, and the professional football player will be better off than the underweight hacker who walks to the fridge and back as his only exercise. But for the same level of general activity, more weight is *always* worse for you. At least from the studies I've seen. The problem is that getting groups to adequately study is hard, so the studies in general lump people together, and you get the "more muscle is better" because those people do more, not because "muscle" accounts for any of the improvement.
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I am afraid that you would not find good quality historic data my friend!
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
Women have become softer and more pleasurable to cuddle with!! Who in their right mind would want to snuggle with a bag of bones!!
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
We have been feeling the fallout of Redit drama for a while now. How many articles on how we need more women in STEM have we had in the last 6 months?
My wife has a bachelors in mechanical engineering from MIT and works in a field that uses her degree. She has told me that she's tired of hearing "STEM" as it always seems to come from people that do not hold any degree in the hard sciences, or in technology, or in engineering, or in mathematics. If they want to push for people to get degrees in these fields, then they should put their money, time, and energy where their mouth is and go back and get a degree from among those kinds, then start advocating for it once they really know what they're advocating for.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You can date her, just remember the three words that will save your life: "I'm on top"
> But being 25 lbs heavier in muscle then some one who is just skinny is healthier
The definition of "skinny" and "healthier" aren't well defined here. Your major surgical survival rate is better, the more muscle weight that you have (body recovers better with active stores, anesthesia is easier to regulate, and more) . No I don't have a link to a study, but it's the Germans or English or Finnish that posted the data back in the 90's iirc.
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I completely stopped consumption of sweets, though I could not reduce significantely the consumption of starch sugar. I lost 2 pounds over a year without even trying to diet. Maybe in 20 years I'll got an ideal weight ;). But I took up on eating vegetables to attempt to fill my stomach with stuff and fill "full and satieted". When I tasted carrots I was like WTF it tasted sweet like a fruit. I looked it up online and there is a lot of sugars in carrots.
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In other words, they actually know what they are talking about and you are too full of yourself to see that?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
There is no such thing as "good weight".
Indeed that is correct. It ultimately doesn't matter if you're 18 stone of muscle or fat. It's still the same strain on the heart. That said, it's an awful lot easier to put on fat than muscle. When I use the gym frequently, my overall weight drops even though I put on muscle. That of course is much better overall.
Also, if you're putting on a lot of muscle,you're almost certainly improving your cardiovascular health by exercising.
The way in which muscle weight is good in that it stops one from getting much larger amount of non muscle weight in most cases.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The trouble with rocks is they remove the flavour and you end up with a glass ofdiluted whisky at the end.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It's not?
News to me. I looked at the list of participants, in the UK of course. There are some good breweries on the list, but it's a rather short list. CAMRA (the campaign for real ale) runs the Cambridge Beer Festival which has something like 300 beers on tap. And they only get the breweries big enough to go and do a festival. My local offie (it's a posh offie alright?) has a shelf full of local beers, and by local, I mean new breweries within London of which there are now about 15 at the last count.
I also noticed that the winners seemed to be rather US dominant. I'm not a snob about US beer and there are very many rather good smaller breweries. However, the style is quite distinct from the UK style of beer. The US dominance rather implies that the judges simply prefer the American style.
They're also rather selective in the styles of beer they award for. For example, they have several different porter styles but are rather astonishingly missing "London Porter". I've also never heard of "Mild" being called "Mild ale" before today.
Ooo arr I'll be having a pint o' proper job, me love.
(St Austell was on but didn't win anything)
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Haha, is that the same kind of world cup as the baseball world series?
I like beer (but i'm from Europe). Also whiskey. But why on earth would you ruin a good whiskey with ice!? I drink mainly single malts, neat, at room temperature - so it has the most flavour. Do you also drink cognac on rocks?
Americans are used to eating shitty food, and lots of it. But there is also the issue of .. tobacco smoking. Every time I go to Europe, I see that nearly every second person, men and women, smoke all the time. Tobacco is a great appetite inhibitor. I recall that when I myself quit smoking, I might have gained something like 15-20 pounds of weight, real fast. I have some friends from eastern Europe, and they're skinny as hell, and they also smoke. They're doctors, and whenever I start discussion the effect of smoking on health with them, they tell me they only smoke in the evening, yet the over the top filled ashtrays everywhere in their homes suggest otherwise. Despite some of the bad health/eating habits, the war on smoking is something that Americans are 10-20 years ahead of most Europe, depending on where you live, and that could possibly have some effect on the weight Americans.
And while we're doing that... how about raise the standard human IQ to something less obnoxiously pitiful. Because boy oh boy are there are a lot of morons.
I agree, although unfortunately a good chunk of your post exemplifies this. Corn and "starches" are bad, but fruit is good.... because the fructose in fruit is magically awesome but the fructose in corn is somehow tainted. And everyone knows that white rice is the most fatten of all foods, just ask the 3+ billion asians. Oh, wait.
There is certainly evidence that carbs were pushed way too hard in the 80s and 90s, but that doesn't mean that everything that comes out of the mouths of neo-Atkins/paleo/anti-corn/anti-gluten/anti-aspartame nutjobs should be believed. At the end of the day, it's about too many calories. While it's possible to alter one's metabolism a bit and/or feel fuller by eating different sorts of foods, any argument re: obesity that doesn't mention calories can be safely ignored as faddish nonsense.
I must live a sheltered oblivious life. I never noticed it had gotten so bad.
But i went to walmart the other day as they had a specific item i needed asap.
Went at the worst time i guess. A saturday during the day, place was packed.
I can not recall seeing so many fat people in one place ever before.
These were not just a little overweight either. These were land mobile lard monsters.
And if that wasn't bad enough. they don't seem to have any shame or decency and COVER UP YOUR FAT ROLLS YOU DISGUSTING BLOBS!
- A "ton of people" is now 5 people.
You must be using a different BMI calculator. At 6' 1", it said my 180 pounds was normal. It does break down for people who actually exercise, as it doesn't tell the difference between 200 pounds of muscle and 200 pounds of flab.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
When it comes to online discussions regarding obesity, ~50% of commenters are unfairly evaluated hulking muscular athletic edge cases.
Or maybe someone spilled Coors on you. It can be hard to tell the difference.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As to what you didn't know and now know... now you know. :)
As to things happening because I say so... no... The sun is going to rise in the east because if you understand the forces at play you know it will. You also know it will set in the west.
It doesn't do it because I say so. It does it because if you know what you're talking about you know it is inevitable.
There is an advantage to doing it. You're afraid of new technologies that likely were in scifi horror movies that spooked you. And so you and people like you will be afraid of it. Just like the people that thought atom bombs would ignite the atmosphere.
You're wrong. The tech will be exploited and employed. The only thing slowing it down is people like you and you can't stop it. You can only slow it down. And will the next generation that comes after have the same fears? Probably not. Which means when you die... it will accelerate in its exploitation and employment.
You cannot stop it. Not because I say but because YOU CANNOT STOP IT.
As to us being done, yes... you're not rational so I have no opportunity to reason with you. Your position is based on ideology and dogma. I don't respect it and give it no quarter.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Oh really? Funny.. I used to eat like shit and do zero exercise and ballooned up to 350lbs. in the past 9 months I ate less, exercised more, and lost 85lbs. So how exactly was my lifestyle, exercise, and diet not the cause of my obesity? (mind you I am still obese, but if I keep on track within 6 or so months I should be down to overweight instead of obese) 3 of my friends who used to be overweight/obese lost weight the same way I did.
A lot of kids seem to stay inside and play videogames instead of playing out doors. A lot of people have way more sedentary jobs then they did 60 years ago. Portion sizes are a lot bigger than they did 60 years ago. My parents never seen a "big gulp"/super big gulp/ double big gulp growing up. Seriously, who drinks over 1L of pop in a sitting??? They also would have a soda drink as a treat on special occasions, not every single day or heaven forbid, multiple servings per day.
You go to a theatre and one person will be eating a bucket of popcorn that should be enough for a family of five. Probably extra artificial butter on it too. People will order a large pizza and eat the entire thing themselves, when it used to feed a family of four.
I think you're missing his point about IQ. Even though we humans may be the only animal capable of rational thought, we actually aren't all that rational. People with high IQs do stupid shit as frequently as those with low IQs. They just have more complex, convoluted arguments to convince themselves they're right in situations where their motivations are actually irrational. It takes a bit of wisdom to step back and see the difference.
Very rapid change in a short amount of time. Some of it very good, some of it very bad. Throwing them together in the same category and considering anyone who questions if all of them are wise as Luddites who belong in drum circles is more than a little disingenuous.
What you consider inevitablilities are insanely speculative. Life on this planet has been around about 3.5 billion years. Us humans have been around for 250,000 years of it. And just 10,000 years of that since the agricultural revolution. Can the rate of technological advances continue at the same pace as it has since, what, a few hundred years ago? Who knows. Can stable civilizations stay in place at the current pace? Will we find technological solutions to pollutants that are causing a rapid decrease in biodiversity? Will the rapid decline in biodiversity later affect us in ways our civilizations cannot recover from? Who knows. Who knows. Who knows. What you are proposing depends on a long period of human civilizations capable of such advancements that just might not be there.
If you are concerned about "ideological dogma", you might want to step back from what you've been writing, take a deep breath, and re-read it sometime.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Modern obesity has nothing to do with diet, exercise, or lifestyle.
Ah, I see we have a Fat Ass - er, Fat Accceptance proponent. Anyone can lose weight by eating fewer calories than they burn, people like you just like to make excuses for why you're too lazy to do it. Also, I was fat myself (just about to cross into obese-land) and I've lose over 25% of my body weight - so yes, I know exactly what it takes to lose weight.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
More like muscles are high upkeep so you have to exercise to keep them, if you just asked a muscular guy to not exercise he wouldn't lose much weight. In fact unless he adjusted his eating habits he'd be a lot more likely to gain weight. And if you reward yourself with junk food and snacks after exercise it won't do you any good at all. There's three very good effects though:
1) If you're already on a healthy diet it's easier to exercise more than reduce intake even further.
2) The ratio of muscles to fat is improved, giving you more strength to carry less.
3) Muscle is denser, even if you're not lighter you'll be slimmer with less flopping around.
The first one is as simple that the body needs a good fuel mix, it doesn't work well on pure fat. So you have to eat a minimum and if you eat more and exercise you can burn away the fat portion without undernourishing yourself. The second and third basically makes you feel and look better, which is probably just as much the point as the number on a scale.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You're conflating being purely logical with being more intelligent. I didn't say that.
As to innovation and drum circles. That is your opinion. My opinion is a matter of record and it is not disingenuous. You you say we've done bad things? What? I assume this is environmental stuff? That's massively over hyped. To the contrary, the most technologically advanced societies have superior environmental conditions than do more primitive societies. The deforestation in Africa for example is driven by a lack of fertilizer and fuel. If they had an electrical grid and could afford fertilizer, they'd not need to do that.
As to your theory that humans will suddenly stagnate before we do the things you don't like or all kill ourselves. Does that not seem just a little convenient to you? Why didn't we do it earlier?
I'm sure we will stagnate at times. Possibly for thousands of years. Its happened before and it will happen again. We will know dark ages. And the legends, surviving records, pockets of civilization, etc will seed the next golden age. Progress will continue.
You want to believe we're all going to kill ourselves because we're "unclean" and don't abide by your little religion? Believe what you like.
Every religion has their judgement day, their Ragnarok, their whatever. Yours is little more than the same old tired boogyman supposed to cow the peasants into submission and fear.
I am not afraid your fantasies. I don't take your religion any more seriously than I take any other. In fact, religions are often useful. They're good for controlling people. The pity with your little faith is that it is largely controlled by a group of genocidal maniacs. I've listened to the environmental lectures that end with "oh yeah and we have 5 billion too many humans and here is how we get rid of them." And I'm supposed to hear that and find it reasonable.
Yours is the faith of doom and self destruction. Have no patience or respect for it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Climate change is responsible for some weight gain.
If its cold you burn more calories just to keep warm
If its hot, then its too hot to exercise (unless you have an air conditioned gym.)
If its hot you drink more, and the calories in the drinks add up.
It was also noted that the breast size of men is now on average as large as that of women in the 1960s.
you're quoting a chart based on BMI.. BMI is wrong, stop using it.
At least ask for permission first, otherwise you might get sued.
Well we are in the middle of an extinction event that is largely believed to be caused by humans. This might be notable, yes? Many of the technologically advanced societies have superior environmental conditions because they depend on societies with less stringent regulations so that they can buy stuff on the cheap. You ever wonder what would happen to our economy if all the countries providing materials and services we depended on had the same restrictions we did?
You assumed very very much about what I'm saying and my beliefs based on very very little. Do you think it's even possible that someone can disagree with you without being deluded or insane? I don't believe in the supernatural myself. Not what most would consider "religious". We may or may not stagnate. It is you who are making the assumption that we will continue to progress on a scale that we could genetically engineer all of our problems away. I'm just saying it's a big assumption.
All I'm saying is that it's sometimes a good idea to step back and ask where are we going, what are we doing what's useful, what are we doing that's harmful. Just having a battle cry of "Progress!" (progress to what?) just because it seems really really cool might not be enough. Hardly "the faith of doom and destruction." LOL
Happy people make bad consumers.
In opposite land that would be a very firm argument.
Since we're not in opposite land, that comment means nothing.
Make a complete and falsifiable argument please.
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Unless he means actual rocks.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
The culprit is probably sugar, although there may be other confounding factors. Whatever the cause, metabolic disorder is going to cost more and more each year if nothing is done about it. Subsidizing the medical consequences of eating lots of refined sugar is perhaps the biggest negative externality in the economy ever.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
There is no such thing as "good weight". People like Michael Clarke Duncan still die "young" from heart problems. The strain on the heart for pumping blood is related to the mass pumped through, not the percentage of it that's "fat". Arterial constriction/hardening through lipid action is a separate issue, but for general heart failure, and a variety of heart diseases, there's nothing that indicates there's "good" weight, just that any added is harder.
There is certainly good weight. As with many things, it is a matter of degree. Michael Clarke Duncan was a bit of an extreme case, at 6' 5" and 315 lbs. The thing about muscle weight is that you have to work to get it, as opposed to fat weight where you just have to eat. Building muscle also strengthens the cardiovascular system while eating pie does not. So I would still agree that everyone should do some sort of weight training. You don't have to get huge, just put some muscle on your frame. It strengthens your joints and bones as well.
Having a decent baseline of strength makes life easier, helps prevent injury and will carry you into old age as a healthier person. You don't need or want to get as big a Dwayne Johnson or whomever. You can't get that big without a huge commitment, and steroids and hormones anyway. What I'm talking about are people like Jack Lalanne. He was strong and fit his whole life and lived well into his 90's. He wasn't a bodybuilder, but he was strong and healthy. He was also an extreme case, but he set an example that people would do well to follow.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Well, this past winter was colder than any I remember in the Eastern US...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
That's at best speculative. We have a better knowledge of extinction rates today then we can possibly extrapolate from the fossil record. Not all species for example are captured in the fossil record and even if they were we haven't found them all.
So you don't know with great accuracy how great the background excintinction rate is until you look at this period in the fossil record of a few million years in the future. Then you can compare the detectable species from the record that no longer exist with previous eras.
The other issue with your theory is that it is based on Drake Equation.
This is drake's equation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The basic concept is that you take take the you take the current number of stars in your area of the galaxy and extrapolate that by comparing density and volume to the rest of the galaxy to get the number of stars.
Then you assume a probability for planets
Then you assume probability for the number of planets.
Then you assume a probability for the number of worlds with liquid water.
Then you assume a probability of the right chemistry for life.
Then you assume a probability for whether life will evolve.
Then you assume a probability for whether that life will become complex.
Then you assume a probability for if the life will be intelligent.
Then you assume a probability for if the intelligent life will form some kind of civilization.
Then you assume a probability for the life to form a starfaring interstellar civilization.
Did you see what happened about a million times in there?
Anyway, Drake's equation is not valid science but it is frequently used by environmental activists. What they'll do is they'll pick an acre of land... often one under development... they're building a parking lot on it or something. And then they'll cite every species that doesn't live there anymore after the parking lot to be extinct IN THAT AREA. Then they'll assume how much of that happens, then they'll assume how many species die out because of X Y and Z, etc. It's Drake's equation and its bullshit.
Because I'm sure you're going to call bullshit on me... allow me to name drop someone respectable that agrees with me:
http://www.s8int.com/crichton....
Its a fun speech. Whether you agree or not you should be entertained.
The point is that you're relying largely on the opinion of lobbyists and activists for your information. They're not reliable because they're inherently biased.
So the whole extinction thing is one I don't especially buy. Are some species going extinct? Sure, welcome to planet earth. That's what the world calls Tuesday. It happens all the time. Niches close and open and species either adapt or die.
There are a lot of species that are interacting with humanity for example because we create a lot of niches. Our cities are full of pigeons and rats and various insects that feed upon our leavings. And while you probably don't think these species are cute and cuddly, they are adaptable. Don't see nature the way a child sees it. Look at nature the way that NATURE looks at it. All nature cares about is whether you propagate your genes. The dodo was a loser. The spectrum of pathogens that are the common cold are winners.
Now maybe you'll say "I don't like the kinds of life that are adapting and I'd like to make them less gross, filthy, and generally nasty. Okay. How do we do that?
The first thing we have to appreciate is that these are species that WANT to integrate with humanity. These guys as unwanted as they are... are the animals that wish to sign on with humanity. They want into our supply network. Okay, lets make that symbiotic instead of parasitic. Just as people integrated dogs, cats, cows, chickens, etc into our world we can integrate pigeons, rats, crows, cockroaches, etc into the system as well. And in some cases that might mean some genet
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One person who failed statistics classes does not prove that nuclear power is inherently dangerous.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
That the more advice the government gives us for health and nutrition, the fatter and unhealthier we get?
Decades, people. For decades we were told things like "salt causes high blood pressure" - even though that was one study in the 1950's now discredited, yet I still get that advice over and over. "New" research - now years old - shows you need a certain rare gene to have anything like a direct causal relation between salt intake and BP, and most Americans DON'T have it.
For decades we were told to beware eating saturated fats. Following government guidelines we switched to high-carb diet to avoid these fats. What does recent research show NOW? High saturated fats in blood come from high-carb diets, NOT high protein, even when that protein comes with saturated fats!
There are now dozens and dozens of examples of this sort of stuff. The real fact of the matter is that the government "guidelines" aren't based on "science," and never were, they were written by lobbiests for various food groups. Black people are far more likely to be lactose-intolerant than whites, yet the government, heavily lobbied by the dairy industry, still features lots of dairy, and no word of warning or advice for an entire population that will certainly have trouble if they heed the gov't's "advice."
It is certainly arguable at this point whether the government ever uses actual science in its' endeavors. We've all been thoroughly brainwashed about global warming, yet we still set low temperature records in the US and Europe this past winter. We are still being told about the plight of the poor polar bears, even though satellites clearly show more ice coverage at both poles than ever before in the satellite era. The GW alarmists now earnestly explain that this is because of global warming. Warming is proof of global warming. Cooling is proof of global warming. Even if the temperature does nothing it's still proof of global warming! THAT is what passes for "science" when the government just wants an excuse to do something it just plain wants to do - like regulate energy use.
We are long past the time when we should have begun paring back everything the government should be allowed to do, but instead it has grown like a cancer, sticking it's bureaucratic nose into business it should have no business being in. Michelle Obama should not be deciding what the nation's schoolchildren eat for lunch. She should pick out the White House china and keep her mouth shut, the only Constitutional role the First Lady ever had. And the rest of government should do likewise.
When the government actually shows competence in doing something, THEN and ONLY then should we think about expanding its' role. But so long as government continues shenanigans like intrusive and unconstitutional nation-wide spying that doesn't stop terrorists, or a bunch of TSA clowns who don't stop terrorists, or a nitwit president who doesn't even think terrorists need to be stopped, America should treat the government like the gigantic, bureaucratic, poorly-managed, travesty that it really is.
I see this with many of the older light airplanes. Types like the Cessna 150 and Piper Cub were designed when people weighed less, and it's difficult to get two 2015-size people plus a usable fuel load in either. There have been commercial plane crashes due to portly passengers (e.g. Air Midwest 5481).
I can fly a Cessna 152 solo with full fuel tanks, but if I have anybody in the plane with me I have to calculate how much fuel I can carry without being overweight. I can't do anything meaningful with a 150, and I'm not that heavy.
...laura
If you have an alternate explanation, I'd like to hear it. Otherwise, stop shouting debunked views and commonly-held myths.
I lost 50lbs in the past year by switching to the low-carb lifestyle, after listening to several engineers come to the same conclusion. Mostly meat, eggs, nuts/seeds, and veggies now. I'm not eating the average 100lbs of sugar and gods-know how many pounds of pasta the average American is, but I have added back in small amounts of rice and potato after getting to my target weight.
I'm probably eating more like an 1899 person than a 1999 person. Maybe a 999 person too (who had a food supply to speak of). The middle of the grocery store is a wasteland, and forget about eating from a convenience store. The nature of the food supply has changed dramatically and that appears to be a sufficient explanation.
I've also stopped watching commercial TV shows, which might help, but I do waste time on social media so my couch time is only reduced slightly.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I wish the report would relate it to *height*.
I mean, height of men going into the US army:
WWI: 5'6"
WWII: 5'8"
Vietnam: 5'10"
Though I will say that a high percentage of folks *are* a lot heavier than when I was younger.
mark
thats why you get whiskey stones ;)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I like my whiskey chilled, but i like it to warm as i drink it to get a wider range. I dont use ice but whiskey stones
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Errrr... no. When I read up on what effects us human have on the environment I keep it to people who study such things for a living, with supporting degrees and hard facts to back up their claims. No need to go on tangents on the Drake Equation or what have you. Just read more into the link I provided with the references to back the claims. No need to judge whether this is a good, bad, or indifferent thing at first. Just get an objective view of what the situation is.
Sorry, but I can't see the person you linked to as a "respectable" authority on the subject. The times I'd find him respectable is when he's giving advice on writing entertaining thrillers, some of which involve dinosaurs.
You're correct that species go instinct all the time, and have been far before we ever arrived on the scene. However all the evidence points to us accelerating the process by our actions. The question then becomes, could we be killing off things making our survival more difficult. Whether we're killing off all of the non-gross, filthy and nasty things isn't a huge concern of mine. But I wouldn't discount the attitude completely. We tend to evolve to see beauty in the things that are beneficial to us.
I don't see how later in your post what you're saying is supposed to raise hair on the back of my neck. Life adapts, and we've bred life to be beneficial to us. It's not exactly a secret. *shrug* If you want to read an excellent account of how life adapts and what impact we've had on the world, try reading The World Without Us sometime. You can see a pretty good excerpt here.
I'm afraid you've highly over-estimated the adaptability of the human race. We really aren't. Our high intelligent may have origins that go back as far as 2 million years. We live among species that have remain unchanged for HUNDREDS OF MILLION OF YEARS. Don't be so uncertain we're here to last. Our timeline is way too short to have any proven track-record, no matter how shiny our gizmos may appear. You want an adaptable life-form? Look to bacteria. Those suckers were the first to appear on this planet, and they'll be the last to leave when it's burnt up by the sun.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Change my "be so uncertain" above to "be so certain". Grrrrr...
Happy people make bad consumers.
I see I touched a nerve though, didn't I? Feel free to go on ignoring the advantages of wealth and the disadvantages of poverty. The rest of us living in the real world will read this comic and keep trying to do something about poverty besides make ourselves feel better about ignoring it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Your extinction prediction is based on Drake's equation.
Anyone using Drake's equation seriously is a quack.
As to evidence pointing to an accelerating of the process, no it doesn't. The evidence as you put it is Drake's equation.
As to talk of a world without humans... Not going to happen. We'll out live the cockroaches. Get used to us.
I have no doubt that marginal populations are going to die occasionally in large numbers. Look at what happens in a third world country every time there is a flood or a heat wave or a tough winter or a fucking earthquake. They die in absurd numbers. The same things hit the first world and we shrug it off. Death tolls tend to be minimal, clean up is fairly rapid, and damage to our nation states tends to be negligible even in the moment.
A strong civilization can weather hard times. Weak civilizations struggle to survive on the good days. So on the bad they tend to just die.
I don't know what to tell you with all this doom talk. Its irrational.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
But anyway... thanks for getting in to the trouble of "warning the new kid on the block"!
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
I'm with you. Lagunitas and Rogue are two of my top 5... add Stone, Speakeasy, Firestone, Mendocino, Bear Republic... apparently I can't even pick 5, and those are just my tops on the West Coast, heh.
Anyway, as you can see I'm not going to argue that the American microbrewery movement doesn't blow away anywhere else in the world. Just that US MACRObreweries are ironically also the worst in the world :)
So you basically say that a person responsible for a design of several nuclear reactors, working for AEG, former director of nuclear department of AEG, General Dynamics and Siemens, knows less about them than a random nuclear wanker on Slashdot? That is Dunning-Kruger at its best.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I'd actually pick wines from places like Chile or New Zealand over most of the US ones, but it really depends on what you're looking for in a wine honestly.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
I like proper job (my local has it on a tilted firkin at the moment) but I think there are more than 15 microbreweries in London; Aspach & Hobday, Gypsy Hill, Cronx, The Kernel, Partizan, Belleville, Weird Beard, Hackney Brewery, Earls, Islington Brewhouse, One Mile End, Bexley, Redchurch, Essex Street Brewing, London Fields, Solvay Society, Southwark Brewing, Bullfinch, Brew By Numbers, Hammerton, Howling Hops, 5 points, Pressure Drop, Signature, Fourpure, Orbit Beers, Camden Town, Strawman, Tap East, East London Brewing, Brick Brewery, Meantime, Brixton, Brockley, Brodies, Beavertown, Canopy Beer Co..
Ok, I'm tired of typing, but there are about 25+ more.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Yes, as he feels nuclear is more dangerous than other technologies, yet the actual figures disprove that.
http://www.greenpeace.org/inte...
As we were talking about Anti-GMO though, it should be pointed out that GMO has been being practiced for 1000s of years with no ill effects, but suddenly we're all going to get cancer from it. No study has shown negative health effects except for farmers who mishandle the herbacide, and that is likely true of any chemical in the concentrations that study was done with.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Have you read this text? It even explained in the text that the way these statistics are counted are flawed. They are even more flawed because they don't take dangers of uranium mining into account. There is a reason why uranium mining used to be a forced labour kind of job. Besides, how many reactors have you personally designed to judge how safe they are? We have a very nice idiom here in Germany: gefaehrliches Halbwissen. It translates to "dangerous superficial knowledge", something akin to dangerous half-truth, but not quite the same. And this is what most of atomic fanbois have.
And no, GMO has not been practiced for thousands of years. Selective breeding is not the same as genetic modification - it selects for a certain phenotype. Even making hybrids isn't, because hybrids can only be achieved across closely related species (which, therefore, were a single species recently enough and share the same genes).
Genetic engineering, on the other hand, inserts completely foreign genes or completely removes genes from a genome.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The portions of food we eat in the US are ridiculous. And the quality of food, particularly for the poor, is nutritionally abysmal. More jobs than ever before entail sitting on our ass for extended periods of time and for longer hours than in the past. Our entertainment also tends to consist of sitting on our ass even more. So it's probably a combination of the three.
I still don't get why portion size is so big, considering that 40 percent of our food is thrown in the fucking trash.
If we are taking into account the dangers of Uranium mining, are we also taking into account the dangers of coal mining or rare earth mining? Are we also taking into account the dangers of radioactive contamination from coal smoke/fly ash? The dangers of nuclear accidents are also way blown out of proportion as it assumes linear relationships, the more radioactivity released the more deaths, even though through dispersion/dilution, but I guess maybe you believe in homeopathy as well? Right now Germany is very anti nuclear, and so they are building many coal plants to balance the power (as well as buying a crap ton of power from nuclear France), but what is missing there is the fact that Coal plants cause more deaths per unit power than nuclear. The safety of your power infrastructure has gone down significantly, not gone up.
What you describe as GMO also happens in nature. Viruses/bacteria can transfer genes between species. Also, mitochondria are a foreign body that was transferred into our cells, so even whole organisms are inserted into other organisms by nature.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The solution is to heavily invest in public transit. People will walk more when riding the bus or local train is much better/faster/cheaper/convenient than driving a car. At the same time, start adding sidewalks to streets that are wide enough to be shared between pedestrians and bikes. Further, drop the average work time down from 40 hours to 35 hours and give people more mandatory vacation. That gives them more time to spend on living a healthy life rather than being constantly under stress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_%28wine%29