Yes I am for real. You could have found a citation regarding avian flu in less time then it took you to write a borderline ad hominem rant. I wasn't asking you to prove food addiction as a disease. I was asking for a citation that proved or supported your assertion that fast or snack food companies cynically alter their products to create or encourage a dependency.
Thirty seconds of research turned up a BBC article about a study at Princeton that after feeding rats a very high sugar diet they developed tremors and anxiety after it was removed. The scientist involved commented that he believed a similar reaction might occur with fats, but he hadn't tested it. The article then had comments from several other scientists that pointed out this is a well known phenomena that has nothing to do with addition and everything to do with low blood sugar.
As far as fiddling with flavors and ingredients to get a specific neurochemical reaction all chefs, cooks, and food scientists do that. It's called trying to make food taste good. Food that tastes good does so because it is (or, more often, was in the case of h. sapiens) in the interest of the creature to eat said food because of it's nutritional content. Food scientists and nutritionists are often employed to evoke those same response regardless of the actual content of the food, but that shift of neurochemicals does not make the food addictive. It makes sense that people would derive pleasure from consuming something like a cheese burger due to it's high fat, carbohydrate, and protein content. It appears logical that there is an evolutionary advantage for h. sapiens to like food with lots of energy and proteins in it.
Food addiction is a real disorder, properly referred to as compulsive overeating, which is an emotional disorder, not a physical or psychological dependency.
I admit to never having seen Mr. Spurlock's documentary, but based on his own descriptions, it seems to be more the documentary of a stunt then an experiment. Doubly so considering that a number of people have repeated it under much more realistic and sane conditions and actually lost weight and often lowered their cholesterol. I also found no information regarding adjusting the nature of the processed food to make it 'addictive', to alter neurochemisty, or anything remotely similar.
The two main books I found that are listed as discussing fast food in America are radically different in nature. One appears to be a reasoned, rational piece of journalism (Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation) which is critical of the industry but does not seem to support your assertion. The other is Mr. Spurlock's Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America which has a vested interest in supporting the claims put forward in the author's movie, which also does not, on the surface, seem to support your claim.
It was once street or common knowledge that man could not fly, that the Earth was flat, and that the weird old spinster who lived on the edge of town with a herb garden and a lot of cats was in league with the devil. I personally have heard ludicrous pieces of street knowledge such as that a penny under the tongue will let a drunk person pass a breathalyzer test or that sugar in the gas tank will ruin a car or that scrapple (a type of savory mush) is made of entrails. It is also apparently street knowledge in parts of Africa that AIDS is caused by using condoms and can be cured by raping a virgin. In general, street knowledge is worthless without evidence.
Carl Sagan once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You made a mildly extraordinary claim that McDonald's et al deliberately altered their foods chemical composition to nurture a dependency, rather then to make exceptionally cheap food that has been processed to last almost indefinitely with proper storage taste 'good'. You provided no evidence to back these claims up. Rather you attacked me for making a reasonable request for evidence.
Can you provide actual sources and citations for this? Any evidence at all? Primary sources only, scientific preferred. A McDonald's exec admitting this to the Wall Street Journal or Money or such counts as a smoking gun.
Anything at all? I'll even take something legitimate that suggests your thesis that McDonald's is researching addictive food.
I think you'd find much more supportable and reasonable explanations by looking at the changes in US (and to varying lesser extents the rest of the First World) society, instead of looking for a conspiracy between the government and fast or snack food producers.
I don't have the statistical or anthropological background to make authoritative statements, but I think that a lot of the rising obesity problem can be attributed to two elements.
First, there's the old chestnut that "it's always been like this, only now we're seeing it". To some degree this probably has an effect. Both from all the media coverage and from a greater understanding that obesity appears to be linked with a large number of ultimately fatal conditions.
Second, there's the current trends in American culture and economics that lead to little to no time to actually cook or sit down at a proper restaurant anymore, so people turn to fast food restaurants. In many ways it's a continuation of culinary trends that started in the 1950s with frozen diners and cream of X soup based casseroles and what not. Convenience over nutrition. I'm not saying that people don't cook at home anymore, but just that the fast food restaurants profits suggest that we aren't doing it as much.
As an aside, I'm both obese and I smoke. While both of these can be traced to numerous causes -- my mother's delicious (yeah, yeah... but only those who have eaten it get a vote so be quiet:) ) and plentiful cooking, genetics from both sides of the family, and a sedentary lifestyle filled with reading and computer work for the first and being surrounded by smokers in college for the second -- at their root I am responsible for both. Neither my Mother, Ronald McDonald or R.J. Reynolds made me consume their products.
I don't know about that. I have a number of books I've bought and read on my Palm from two different companies. Those I bought from Baen Publishing don't have any DRM that I can recognize, and those from Palm Digital Media just want the credit card number that bought them originally. Based on what I've seen, I think that book publishers think that the motion picture and music companies are as insane as your average/.er does. They've delt with similar problems (in not on the same potential scale) for years and while they get peeved about people violating their copyrights and file lawsuits over it, they generally don't seem to view their customers as potential infingers.
They actually started in the 1700s in Boston as mutual aid groups. A bunch of people got together and formed a club where they pledged to help each other put out fires in their homes or buisnesses.
Franklin proposed a similar system in Philadelphia in 1736 which took off, leading to a sort of ad-hoc voluenteer system, despite the fact that clubs were under no obligation to put out fires on non-member's property.
I'm not disputing that Cincinati was the first public FDP, just stating that they didn't start as insurance companies tools in the 19th century. In fact it was the other way around as the first fire insurance company in the American Colonies, the Philadelphia Contributionship, was started by Franklin's Union Fire Company in 1752.
Of course, human greed messes up alot of idealistic schemes, and intra-company sabotage, competition, turf wars, protection rackets, etc became the norm. That was most likely the main reason public companies came about. So the Firemen would start fighting fires again, instead of each other.
That's a rather vague law. I can think of three interpretations that will result in a canceled or disconnected line not being able to dial 911.
1) We can't make people put $0.50 in the pay phone when they dial 911.
2) We can't charge people the aforementioned $0.50 or any local or long-distance charges to dial 911.
3) We disconnected their line (or they canceled it) so they can't place any calls. Therefore, they can't be a caller and we don't have to provide 911 to them.
Looking them over the second is really just an extension of the first, and the third one is playing word games. Then again, alot of legal arguments are based on silly word games.
Now, IANAL, but barring any additional statutes or regulations derived from or supporting this law, I'd assume the phone company has to provide free 911 calls to anyone who has phone service via billed service or a payphone, and to be on the safe side to anyone they disconnect for non-payment or whatever. People who cancel their line aren't their responsibility.
Because, after all, opperating a powerful unliscensed radio transmiter with the sole intention of disrupting liscensed transmissions is civil and socially acceptable.
I am not a lawyer, but being given code by the consultant you hired to whack out said coded does not constitute distribution. Hence you don't have to distribute those changes, because they're in house only and not being distributed. Your contract with the consultant should specify that his derived code is work for hire and that it belongs to you if you're truly worried.
Also, communication difficulties (language barriers, prima-donnas refusing to accept constructive criticism, etc), unnecessary duplication of effort (both within and across projects), etc
Are you talking about open or closed source games here? I lost track.
And I highly doubt US Employers are required to pay you for that time. And anyone who doubts that you asking for time off to vote will not have a potentially negative impact come review time is a little naive. There are probably millions of folks out there who can't afford to loose that money. Not "I can't go to the movies this week" can't afford, but "I can't feed my family" or "I can't pay my gas bill" can't afford.
I'll admit I might be wrong and they have to pay you, but I'd be surprised. I still stand by the negative attitude modifier on your review though.
As others have mentioned, APC makes good ones from what I've seen in both home, office, and server room.
There's something else to look at. Go talk to you insurance agent, ask about adding a rider to your home-owners/renters insurance. (There's a similar type for people like dorm living college students, but I can't think what it's called.) Granted this will likely increase your premiums and it will add an additional level of complexity to your insurance plan and bill, but it will also allow you to claim things like modem,s PCs, stereos, PDA's etc when lightning or accident claims them.
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Yes I am for real. You could have found a citation regarding avian flu in less time then it took you to write a borderline ad hominem rant. I wasn't asking you to prove food addiction as a disease. I was asking for a citation that proved or supported your assertion that fast or snack food companies cynically alter their products to create or encourage a dependency.
Thirty seconds of research turned up a BBC article about a study at Princeton that after feeding rats a very high sugar diet they developed tremors and anxiety after it was removed. The scientist involved commented that he believed a similar reaction might occur with fats, but he hadn't tested it. The article then had comments from several other scientists that pointed out this is a well known phenomena that has nothing to do with addition and everything to do with low blood sugar.
As far as fiddling with flavors and ingredients to get a specific neurochemical reaction all chefs, cooks, and food scientists do that. It's called trying to make food taste good. Food that tastes good does so because it is (or, more often, was in the case of h. sapiens) in the interest of the creature to eat said food because of it's nutritional content. Food scientists and nutritionists are often employed to evoke those same response regardless of the actual content of the food, but that shift of neurochemicals does not make the food addictive. It makes sense that people would derive pleasure from consuming something like a cheese burger due to it's high fat, carbohydrate, and protein content. It appears logical that there is an evolutionary advantage for h. sapiens to like food with lots of energy and proteins in it.
Food addiction is a real disorder, properly referred to as compulsive overeating, which is an emotional disorder, not a physical or psychological dependency.
I admit to never having seen Mr. Spurlock's documentary, but based on his own descriptions, it seems to be more the documentary of a stunt then an experiment. Doubly so considering that a number of people have repeated it under much more realistic and sane conditions and actually lost weight and often lowered their cholesterol. I also found no information regarding adjusting the nature of the processed food to make it 'addictive', to alter neurochemisty, or anything remotely similar.
The two main books I found that are listed as discussing fast food in America are radically different in nature. One appears to be a reasoned, rational piece of journalism (Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation) which is critical of the industry but does not seem to support your assertion. The other is Mr. Spurlock's Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America which has a vested interest in supporting the claims put forward in the author's movie, which also does not, on the surface, seem to support your claim.
It was once street or common knowledge that man could not fly, that the Earth was flat, and that the weird old spinster who lived on the edge of town with a herb garden and a lot of cats was in league with the devil. I personally have heard ludicrous pieces of street knowledge such as that a penny under the tongue will let a drunk person pass a breathalyzer test or that sugar in the gas tank will ruin a car or that scrapple (a type of savory mush) is made of entrails. It is also apparently street knowledge in parts of Africa that AIDS is caused by using condoms and can be cured by raping a virgin. In general, street knowledge is worthless without evidence.
Carl Sagan once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You made a mildly extraordinary claim that McDonald's et al deliberately altered their foods chemical composition to nurture a dependency, rather then to make exceptionally cheap food that has been processed to last almost indefinitely with proper storage taste 'good'. You provided no evidence to back these claims up. Rather you attacked me for making a reasonable request for evidence.
Can you provide actual sources and citations for this? Any evidence at all? Primary sources only, scientific preferred. A McDonald's exec admitting this to the Wall Street Journal or Money or such counts as a smoking gun.
Anything at all? I'll even take something legitimate that suggests your thesis that McDonald's is researching addictive food.
I think you'd find much more supportable and reasonable explanations by looking at the changes in US (and to varying lesser extents the rest of the First World) society, instead of looking for a conspiracy between the government and fast or snack food producers.
:) ) and plentiful cooking, genetics from both sides of the family, and a sedentary lifestyle filled with reading and computer work for the first and being surrounded by smokers in college for the second -- at their root I am responsible for both. Neither my Mother, Ronald McDonald or R.J. Reynolds made me consume their products.
I don't have the statistical or anthropological background to make authoritative statements, but I think that a lot of the rising obesity problem can be attributed to two elements.
First, there's the old chestnut that "it's always been like this, only now we're seeing it". To some degree this probably has an effect. Both from all the media coverage and from a greater understanding that obesity appears to be linked with a large number of ultimately fatal conditions.
Second, there's the current trends in American culture and economics that lead to little to no time to actually cook or sit down at a proper restaurant anymore, so people turn to fast food restaurants. In many ways it's a continuation of culinary trends that started in the 1950s with frozen diners and cream of X soup based casseroles and what not. Convenience over nutrition. I'm not saying that people don't cook at home anymore, but just that the fast food restaurants profits suggest that we aren't doing it as much.
As an aside, I'm both obese and I smoke. While both of these can be traced to numerous causes -- my mother's delicious (yeah, yeah... but only those who have eaten it get a vote so be quiet
I don't know about that. I have a number of books I've bought and read on my Palm from two different companies. Those I bought from Baen Publishing don't have any DRM that I can recognize, and those from Palm Digital Media just want the credit card number that bought them originally. Based on what I've seen, I think that book publishers think that the motion picture and music companies are as insane as your average /.er does. They've delt with similar problems (in not on the same potential scale) for years and while they get peeved about people violating their copyrights and file lawsuits over it, they generally don't seem to view their customers as potential infingers.
They actually started in the 1700s in Boston as mutual aid groups. A bunch of people got together and formed a club where they pledged to help each other put out fires in their homes or buisnesses.
Franklin proposed a similar system in Philadelphia in 1736 which took off, leading to a sort of ad-hoc voluenteer system, despite the fact that clubs were under no obligation to put out fires on non-member's property.
I'm not disputing that Cincinati was the first public FDP, just stating that they didn't start as insurance companies tools in the 19th century. In fact it was the other way around as the first fire insurance company in the American Colonies, the Philadelphia Contributionship, was started by Franklin's Union Fire Company in 1752.
Of course, human greed messes up alot of idealistic schemes, and intra-company sabotage, competition, turf wars, protection rackets, etc became the norm. That was most likely the main reason public companies came about. So the Firemen would start fighting fires again, instead of each other.
That's a rather vague law. I can think of three interpretations that will result in a canceled or disconnected line not being able to dial 911.
1) We can't make people put $0.50 in the pay phone when they dial 911.
2) We can't charge people the aforementioned $0.50 or any local or long-distance charges to dial 911.
3) We disconnected their line (or they canceled it) so they can't place any calls. Therefore, they can't be a caller and we don't have to provide 911 to them.
Looking them over the second is really just an extension of the first, and the third one is playing word games. Then again, alot of legal arguments are based on silly word games.
Now, IANAL, but barring any additional statutes or regulations derived from or supporting this law, I'd assume the phone company has to provide free 911 calls to anyone who has phone service via billed service or a payphone, and to be on the safe side to anyone they disconnect for non-payment or whatever. People who cancel their line aren't their responsibility.
Because, after all, opperating a powerful unliscensed radio transmiter with the sole intention of disrupting liscensed transmissions is civil and socially acceptable.
I am not a lawyer, but being given code by the consultant you hired to whack out said coded does not constitute distribution. Hence you don't have to distribute those changes, because they're in house only and not being distributed. Your contract with the consultant should specify that his derived code is work for hire and that it belongs to you if you're truly worried.
Also, communication difficulties (language barriers, prima-donnas refusing to accept constructive criticism, etc), unnecessary duplication of effort (both within and across projects), etc
Are you talking about open or closed source games here? I lost track.
And I highly doubt US Employers are required to pay you for that time. And anyone who doubts that you asking for time off to vote will not have a potentially negative impact come review time is a little naive. There are probably millions of folks out there who can't afford to loose that money. Not "I can't go to the movies this week" can't afford, but "I can't feed my family" or "I can't pay my gas bill" can't afford.
I'll admit I might be wrong and they have to pay you, but I'd be surprised. I still stand by the negative attitude modifier on your review though.
As others have mentioned, APC makes good ones from what I've seen in both home, office, and server room.
There's something else to look at. Go talk to you insurance agent, ask about adding a rider to your home-owners/renters insurance. (There's a similar type for people like dorm living college students, but I can't think what it's called.) Granted this will likely increase your premiums and it will add an additional level of complexity to your insurance plan and bill, but it will also allow you to claim things like modem,s PCs, stereos, PDA's etc when lightning or accident claims them.