but what can we expect from slashdot? unless you're wearing a t-shirt that says 'micro$oft is teh gay!!!1111!!oneone' with a tux tattoo and taken a vowel of poverty as an it professional you get labeled as a shill and a fucktard. fuck that. it's the most fucked up form of zealotry that i've ever seen.
Which vowel of poverty? There are two (three if you count the 'y'.)
Of course it's the "Y!" Google and Microsoft both have more money than God.
after a computer coding error was corrected, their ratings should have been up to four HUNDREDnotches lower.
There. Fixed it for ya.
Seriously, they wilfully looked the other way. There is NO way that hundreds of these "new investment vehicles" could have been expected to receive AAA credit ratings when there are only a handful of corporations that have that rating.
This was a case of "don't ask, don't tell - because then the game is over". Everyone knew it was bogus, but nobody was going to be the first to blow the whistle - not when their continuing to make the big bucks depended on them not rocking the boat.
No, but don't you think it would have been less work to type in "hfcs obesity" and click "search" than it was to cut-n-paste, enter tags, then type "citation please"?
Portions are key. Studies have shown that most people can't gauge the size of a portion. I think part of that is the switch to mostly prepared food, as opposed to made-from-scratch. When you're cooking it yourself, you have to measure at least some of the ingredients, and you get a feel for what's what.
If the oatmeal is the "real deal", there shouldn't be any HFCS in it... though you might be right for that "instant" oatmeal. I tried that stuff years ago - I really prefer the regular oatmeal. Funny thing - I used to make it every morning when I was a kid, and it was only years later that I found out that oatmeal is one of those "It's good for you" foods:-)
One of the benefits of spreading out your eating over the day is that it takes a certain amount of energy to start up the digestive process, so starting and stopping multiple times, while consuming the same amount of food overall, means less net calorie gain. For example, eating 2 boiled eggs at one sitting will result in more net gain than eating one, waiting 2 hours, and eating the other.
Also, your stomach won't get so distended. When the hormonal "I'm full" signal is depressed, people fall back on the "My stomach could burst" signal to stop eating. Taking smaller portions, your stomach eventually will send that "One more bite and I'll puke" message earlier.
Hopefully, higher gas prices will do something about cars. People will move closer to work, (or change jobs so they work closer to home), car pool, drive smaller cars, drive slower, etc. Nothing like a hit in the wallet or purse to "incentivize" people.
Thanks, but it's almost impossible to avoid HFCS. You'll be surprised where it pops up. "I think I'll have some canned fruit for breakfast" HFCS. "Why not some Welches Grape Juice instead of OJ" HFCS. Bread. HFCS. A side order of beans. HFCS. Ketchup? HFCS. A muffin... HFCS. Spaghetti sauce... HFCS. SPAGHETTI SAUCE??? WTF!
Ah, now you're pressed on the actual addictiveness of nicotine, now you are suddenly making very clear distinctions in addiction and habituation. But if a smoker says he's not addicted, you sneer and jeer. You're a fucking weasel, you know that?
Addiction takes both forms - physical and psychological. I have NEVER used the word "habituation" in my life until this very sentence. People who try to say "it's just a habit" are ignoring that they are in fact addicted, either physically, psychologically, or both.
So don't say I'm making any sort of distinction between your so-called "habituation" and addiction. I never did, and to imply that I do is, to use your words, being a "fucking weasel".
Sorry, it's just that, when I disagree with what someone writes, I don't just "pull a wiki" and say "citation, please" - I do a bit of research. It only took a couple of minutes to find that reference, as well as several others. I figure if someone is going to argue a point, the least they can do is type a few words in a search box. After all, maybe I'm cherry-picking my citations...;-)
The vast majority of fat people didn't set out to be fat, and its really bad that much of the food out there is bad for you if you're trying to maintain a normal weight.
Popeye's creators chose spinach -- instead of, say, brussels sprouts or broccoli -- because of an 1870 German study that claimed spinach contained about as much iron as there is in red meat!
In reality, this was nothing more than an accounting error. The scientists put the decimal point in the wrong place!
The iron content of spinach is actually one-tenth of what was reported. The mistake was corrected in 1937. It was too late for Popeye, though. Hed already been getting strong on spinach for almost 10 years!
Spinach does contain iron, but no more than other leafy vegetables.
In fact, the iron in spinach is not easily absorbed by the body unless its combined with an acid, such as a squirt of lemon juice.
Spinach took another hit in the early 90s when research into nutrition refined what we know about iron absorbtion. To quote the Innvista website:
Although much lauded as a nutritional vegetable, spinach has a drawback in that, while containing high levels of iron and calcium, the rate of absorption is almost nil. The oxalic acid binds calcium into an insoluble salt (calcium oxalate), which cannot be absorbed by the body. The same applies to the iron, as it is bound, leaving only 2-5% of the seemingly plentiful supply actually available for absorption.
The spinach iron myth suffered two big falls. Cut to 1/10th and then further cut to 2-5% of that 1/10th. A pretty big data drop. I did a blog search of the spinach / iron combination and found a lot of entries from people taking spinach for the iron content who had never heard the correction to the myth. It is better to try and get iron from a range of foods rather then spinach along. Spinach has a lot of positive things going for it but iron is not one them.
The authors are, George A Bray, Samara Joy Nielsen and Barry M Popkin,
Or are Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA and the Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill too "touchy-feely" for you?
If you bother searching the thread, I've said that smoking is addictive on both the physical and social level; combatting the physical addiction without addressing the psychological and social factors accounts for the high relapse rates. I've seen people goad their co-workers, who are trying to quit, into continuing, telling them "come on, one won't make a difference" and crap like that. Or spouses telling the spouse who's trying to quit "You're so f*cking crabby - just smoke a cigarette, already!"
Here's one stat that you don't see too often any more - asbestos workers who smoked were 900 times more likely to get cancer. That's one reason for the restrictions on asbestos, and the lawsuits bankrupting companies like Federal Mogul
There's a synergistc effect going on here that is really nasty. Smoking doesn't just harm you directly - it also makes it much easier for other environmental toxins to harm you.
Since you agree that there is no right to smoke, there should be no need for a right not to be exposed to second-hand smoke. Same as there's no right to steal, there is no need for a "right not to be stolen from."
I'd say "suck it up", but that's the problem - smokers are already doing to much indiscriminate "sucking it up".
Your "counter-argument" fails in the face of the fact that smokers don't have a "right to smoke", never did, and never will. While it has been tolerated due to ignorance, lethargy, and the inertia provided by having a great mass of people who are clearly addicted, that tolerance is fading fast. Previous generations might have had some excuse - they didn't know better. We know better now, and for once, the "tyrany of the majority" happens to be aligned with what's best for everyone, smokers included.
We regulate other environmental toxins; tobacco smoke is no different. Long regarded as just a nuisance, and something that should be "tolerated" (note - tolerated, not espoused), it is one of the leading causes of preventable deaths, as well as ruining the quality of life, not only of smokers, but of those around them.
But forget the health issues for a moment.
Smokers stink. You really do. Smokers just don't notice it, even though their car windows are grey, the paint in their house is yellow, and even their fingers are stained like they had jaundice. Even if you never smoked, you leave a smokers' house with it in your hair, on your clothes, it's really disgusting.
You can't smell it for the same reason you can't taste your food - smoking has dulled your senses.
I have friends and family who smoke - they ALL want to quit. They used to say they smoked because they "enjoyed it." Not any more. It's a monkey on their back, but they can't shake the habit^Waddiction. One day, a doctor is going to tell them "quit or die", and one way or another, they'll quit. Either by breaking the addiction, or dying. Some of the smokers I've talked to would like to beat up the person who got them started (and some would like to go further than just a beating).
The tobacco companies are indeed merchants of death in pin-stripe suits. If their product weren't addictive, they would have gone out of business long ago (or they would never have gotten so big in the first place). There is no justification for smoking, unless you're a cancer patient toking some weed to control nausea, or similar medical marijuana cases. Tobacco? Nicotine makes a great rat poison.
While it's true that eating less is the way to lose weight, people are being actively sabotaged by the use of HFCS as a sweetener in almost everything. HFCS depresses production of the hormone that says "I'm full", so the more HFCS-sweetened stuff you eat, the hungrier you feel. It's a vicious circle.
The switch to HFCS was made for 2 reasons - increased profits (it's cheaper) and to help depress the demand for cane sugar worldwide (to attack Cubas' economy).
You really can't lay all the blame on someone for over-eating if the stuff they eat is tailor-made to keep them feeling hungry. A ban on HFCS in soda pop would go a long way to reducing the obesity epidemic - people who are drinking up to 8 two-litre bottles a day would drink a lot less, Of course that will hurt the bottlers, but do they really need to make a living "off the fat of the land", or rather, off the health of the nation?
The simple fact is that smokers have lost their "battle." There's no such thing as a "right to smoke" despite all the attempts to rally people under the "smoker's rights" banner. The "right" just doesn't exist.
Schools used to have "teacher's lounges" where the teachers would get their nic fix. Students could smell it on them during class. So much for healthy role models...
At least now most places have banned smoking on school grounds... but that wasn't always the case. Some teachers used to think it was "cool" to light up with the older high-school kids, be seen as a "with-it, hop" teacher. Fuckheads, but that was the way it was. It's STILL like that in juvenile detention centers. Heck, the kids get a "cigarette allowance" as a way to reward good behaviour. What sort of fucked-up message does THAT send?
Actually, the government is in a contradictory position. In many places, they're the only legal gambling around, and yet the economic benefits don't outweigh the problems. So sure, while we're at it, lets close down the government bookies, lotteries, etc.
If the Earth had more CO2, crops would grow faster.
If the temperature was a few degrees warmer, there would be massive increase in crop lands in Canada, and Russia.
More fat people would increase food production.
Not exactly. It will take time for those lands to become productive - decades at least. There's not much you can do with tundra that's turned into swamp, and the deerflies have knives and forks.
(and 1000th post in this journal entry... woot!;-)
Perhaps for the same reason we don't let businesses choose what the minimum wage should be. Sometimes the greater good comes into the calculus, especially since if tobacco were a new discovery, it would probably be illegal to grow, posess, or use. Seriously, do you want your kids to smoke? How about smoke-friendly grade schools and kindergartens?
You have to draw the line somewhere, especially with a product that is only legal because it's been around so long. The public has decided to draw the line at... the public.
...growing with GM crops is akin to drowning yourself slowly in debt. It's not a sustainable solution.
Most people with even a passing familiarity with farming would disagree. GM crops, depending on what they were developed for, have higher yields, are more reliable and use fewer resources. For most farmers the premium for the GM seed is a small price to pay.
It isn't sustainable - there are already roundup-resistant weeds in several countries.
Fortunately, I don't know anyone in any biker gangs. Not my thing.
When I mentioned heart transplants, I was referring to one of the sought-after organs of motorcycle accident veggie-mates. Heart, lungs, corneas, kidney, liver, bone, dura mater, (oops - scratch that last one...)
Wang said patients who are at the end stages of heart failure and do not have any contraindications will generally be placed on a heart transplant waiting list. Some common contraindications include a smoking habit, a drug or alcohol addiction, excess weight, or a mental disease, Wang said.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course it's the "Y!" Google and Microsoft both have more money than God.
There. Fixed it for ya.
Seriously, they wilfully looked the other way. There is NO way that hundreds of these "new investment vehicles" could have been expected to receive AAA credit ratings when there are only a handful of corporations that have that rating.
This was a case of "don't ask, don't tell - because then the game is over". Everyone knew it was bogus, but nobody was going to be the first to blow the whistle - not when their continuing to make the big bucks depended on them not rocking the boat.
Several restaurants banned smoking a year before the ban kicked in here - their sales went UP.
Of course, they didn't let the cat out of the bag until just before the total ban kicked in, so they could get a bit more free publicity.
No, but don't you think it would have been less work to type in "hfcs obesity" and click "search" than it was to cut-n-paste, enter tags, then type "citation please"?
Just a thought after a long day ...
Okay :-) It definitely IS hard to follow, though. To malign the NAACP slogan, "A waist is a terrible thing to mind."
And all this talk about food makes me hungry ...
Portions are key. Studies have shown that most people can't gauge the size of a portion. I think part of that is the switch to mostly prepared food, as opposed to made-from-scratch. When you're cooking it yourself, you have to measure at least some of the ingredients, and you get a feel for what's what.
If the oatmeal is the "real deal", there shouldn't be any HFCS in it ... though you might be right for that "instant" oatmeal. I tried that stuff years ago - I really prefer the regular oatmeal. Funny thing - I used to make it every morning when I was a kid, and it was only years later that I found out that oatmeal is one of those "It's good for you" foods :-)
One of the benefits of spreading out your eating over the day is that it takes a certain amount of energy to start up the digestive process, so starting and stopping multiple times, while consuming the same amount of food overall, means less net calorie gain. For example, eating 2 boiled eggs at one sitting will result in more net gain than eating one, waiting 2 hours, and eating the other.
Also, your stomach won't get so distended. When the hormonal "I'm full" signal is depressed, people fall back on the "My stomach could burst" signal to stop eating. Taking smaller portions, your stomach eventually will send that "One more bite and I'll puke" message earlier.
Hopefully, higher gas prices will do something about cars. People will move closer to work, (or change jobs so they work closer to home), car pool, drive smaller cars, drive slower, etc. Nothing like a hit in the wallet or purse to "incentivize" people.
I don't believe most people want to be fat. And no, I'm not fat.
Thanks, but it's almost impossible to avoid HFCS. You'll be surprised where it pops up. "I think I'll have some canned fruit for breakfast" HFCS. "Why not some Welches Grape Juice instead of OJ" HFCS. Bread. HFCS. A side order of beans. HFCS. Ketchup? HFCS. A muffin ... HFCS. Spaghetti sauce ... HFCS. SPAGHETTI SAUCE??? WTF!
It's not fair.
And writing about it is making me HUNGRY!!!!! :-)
Addiction takes both forms - physical and psychological. I have NEVER used the word "habituation" in my life until this very sentence. People who try to say "it's just a habit" are ignoring that they are in fact addicted, either physically, psychologically, or both.
So don't say I'm making any sort of distinction between your so-called "habituation" and addiction. I never did, and to imply that I do is, to use your words, being a "fucking weasel".
Sorry, it's just that, when I disagree with what someone writes, I don't just "pull a wiki" and say "citation, please" - I do a bit of research. It only took a couple of minutes to find that reference, as well as several others. I figure if someone is going to argue a point, the least they can do is type a few words in a search box. After all, maybe I'm cherry-picking my citations ... ;-)
The vast majority of fat people didn't set out to be fat, and its really bad that much of the food out there is bad for you if you're trying to maintain a normal weight.
Spinach has almost no iron content. Popeye was wrong.
http://soundmedicine.iu.edu/segment.php4?seg=238
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/bi/websphere/archives/spinach-10166
The only smokers who don't experience cognitive dissonance are suicidal ... :-)
Come to think of it, aren't all smokers suicidal, at least if you go by their actions?
Most schizophrenics smoke. When asked why, they said "I'm of two minds on the subject ..."
The authors are, George A Bray, Samara Joy Nielsen and Barry M Popkin,
Or are Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA and the Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill too "touchy-feely" for you?
Where's the BS in that?
Here's one stat that you don't see too often any more - asbestos workers who smoked were 900 times more likely to get cancer. That's one reason for the restrictions on asbestos, and the lawsuits bankrupting companies like Federal Mogul
There's a synergistc effect going on here that is really nasty. Smoking doesn't just harm you directly - it also makes it much easier for other environmental toxins to harm you.
Since you agree that there is no right to smoke, there should be no need for a right not to be exposed to second-hand smoke. Same as there's no right to steal, there is no need for a "right not to be stolen from."
I'd say "suck it up", but that's the problem - smokers are already doing to much indiscriminate "sucking it up".
Your "counter-argument" fails in the face of the fact that smokers don't have a "right to smoke", never did, and never will. While it has been tolerated due to ignorance, lethargy, and the inertia provided by having a great mass of people who are clearly addicted, that tolerance is fading fast. Previous generations might have had some excuse - they didn't know better. We know better now, and for once, the "tyrany of the majority" happens to be aligned with what's best for everyone, smokers included.
We regulate other environmental toxins; tobacco smoke is no different. Long regarded as just a nuisance, and something that should be "tolerated" (note - tolerated, not espoused), it is one of the leading causes of preventable deaths, as well as ruining the quality of life, not only of smokers, but of those around them.
But forget the health issues for a moment.
Smokers stink. You really do. Smokers just don't notice it, even though their car windows are grey, the paint in their house is yellow, and even their fingers are stained like they had jaundice. Even if you never smoked, you leave a smokers' house with it in your hair, on your clothes, it's really disgusting.
You can't smell it for the same reason you can't taste your food - smoking has dulled your senses.
I have friends and family who smoke - they ALL want to quit. They used to say they smoked because they "enjoyed it." Not any more. It's a monkey on their back, but they can't shake the habit^Waddiction. One day, a doctor is going to tell them "quit or die", and one way or another, they'll quit. Either by breaking the addiction, or dying. Some of the smokers I've talked to would like to beat up the person who got them started (and some would like to go further than just a beating).
The tobacco companies are indeed merchants of death in pin-stripe suits. If their product weren't addictive, they would have gone out of business long ago (or they would never have gotten so big in the first place). There is no justification for smoking, unless you're a cancer patient toking some weed to control nausea, or similar medical marijuana cases. Tobacco? Nicotine makes a great rat poison.
While it's true that eating less is the way to lose weight, people are being actively sabotaged by the use of HFCS as a sweetener in almost everything. HFCS depresses production of the hormone that says "I'm full", so the more HFCS-sweetened stuff you eat, the hungrier you feel. It's a vicious circle.
The switch to HFCS was made for 2 reasons - increased profits (it's cheaper) and to help depress the demand for cane sugar worldwide (to attack Cubas' economy).
You really can't lay all the blame on someone for over-eating if the stuff they eat is tailor-made to keep them feeling hungry. A ban on HFCS in soda pop would go a long way to reducing the obesity epidemic - people who are drinking up to 8 two-litre bottles a day would drink a lot less, Of course that will hurt the bottlers, but do they really need to make a living "off the fat of the land", or rather, off the health of the nation?
The simple fact is that smokers have lost their "battle." There's no such thing as a "right to smoke" despite all the attempts to rally people under the "smoker's rights" banner. The "right" just doesn't exist.
Schools used to have "teacher's lounges" where the teachers would get their nic fix. Students could smell it on them during class. So much for healthy role models ...
At least now most places have banned smoking on school grounds ... but that wasn't always the case. Some teachers used to think it was "cool" to light up with the older high-school kids, be seen as a "with-it, hop" teacher. Fuckheads, but that was the way it was. It's STILL like that in juvenile detention centers. Heck, the kids get a "cigarette allowance" as a way to reward good behaviour. What sort of fucked-up message does THAT send?
Actually, the government is in a contradictory position. In many places, they're the only legal gambling around, and yet the economic benefits don't outweigh the problems. So sure, while we're at it, lets close down the government bookies, lotteries, etc.
Not exactly. It will take time for those lands to become productive - decades at least. There's not much you can do with tundra that's turned into swamp, and the deerflies have knives and forks.
(and 1000th post in this journal entry ... woot! ;-)
Perhaps for the same reason we don't let businesses choose what the minimum wage should be. Sometimes the greater good comes into the calculus, especially since if tobacco were a new discovery, it would probably be illegal to grow, posess, or use. Seriously, do you want your kids to smoke? How about smoke-friendly grade schools and kindergartens?
You have to draw the line somewhere, especially with a product that is only legal because it's been around so long. The public has decided to draw the line at ... the public.
It isn't sustainable - there are already roundup-resistant weeds in several countries.
Fortunately, I don't know anyone in any biker gangs. Not my thing.
When I mentioned heart transplants, I was referring to one of the sought-after organs of motorcycle accident veggie-mates. Heart, lungs, corneas, kidney, liver, bone, dura mater, (oops - scratch that last one ...)
As for heart transplants, yes, smoking and obesity get you the boot: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/20066.php