Posts by BenWilson
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Not so, Ben. You don't need to eat a lot of food to become obese. Obesity has a number of different factors, not just eating a lot of food; it's quite a complex medical condition.
Whilst that may be true in some cases, I have to say that every obese person I know (and I know a few) stuffs their face a lot. They are very duplicitous about how much they are eating, both to others and to themselves. I have a very poignant teen memory of one guy who was forever on this diet or that, seeking endless reasons for his steadily increasing fatness. But one night when he stayed over at my place, I was woken in the middle of the night by the crunching sound of him munching his way through 2 family sized bags of chips which he had secreted in his bag.
This guy was actually pretty athletic, extremely strong from a lot of weight training, fit from ridiculous amounts of swim training that we were both doing, and yet still fat then, and much fatter now. It really was about how much was passing through him, much more than it was about what kind of things.
Having said that, you are quite right in observing that in olden times, the food of the poor (little meat, little oil, no sugar, a lot of pulses, legumes and vegetables) make a healthy diet. But in modern times fat and sugar are not expensive items.
Sure, but neither are the healthy foods. Especially not if consumed in healthy quantities.
But I get your point, and hope you realize I was joking to a certain extent about the depression being healthy, since I think food shortages are incredibly unlikely. I would rather say (and should have said) that the depression carries, along with the hardship that many will have to endure, the potential for a reboot of our attitudes to consumption, which I see as a large part of the cause of obesity. Consuming for comfort may simply become less of an option, and having rid ourselves of the habit, we may find ourselves happier, healthier, and not missing it at all.
I've said on other threads that my only remaining eye-witness to the last depression, my Grandmother, says that her memories of the time were that there was hardship, but that it was actually mostly a happy time, and this was not just because she was young - she did not remember the times just before it as being happy - quite the contrary, everyone was stressed out. But when the Depression came it was like a sudden externalization of what had been eating everyone up before - the fear of poverty turned out to be worse than the poverty itself.
The Pollyanna in me sees the coming hardship as a massive, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reevaluate our entire attitude to the economics of consumption, particularly in light of the obvious fact that those economics led us to where we are now.
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(srsly, ties, WTF?)
Absolutely. I can't bear them. A more convenient way of being choked to death would be hard to find. Perhaps that's part of the attraction, the symbolism. They're saying "I'm tied to X by the neck, quite literally". Where X is whatever made them wear the tie.
Personally I've always been more interested in what's not shown, than having it all out there.
I think you're making my point rather than opposing it. You're looking past the clothes with your mind. But then again, maybe not? Perhaps you're looking at what you'd like to see under there, rather than trying to see what is actually under there?
And sure, clothes can still be sexy. Particularly the symbolism of them, what they say about the state of mind of the wearer at the time.
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My near death experiences have typically crushed all vocalizations out of my mind with the simple immediacy of doing my utmost to survive. At those times, wasting one single neuron in my brain on attempting to form into verbal thoughts what's happening, or how I feel about it, just isn't an option my subconscious will allow. It's very hard to describe what is going on in my mind other than "100% focus on living". It's a pity that I can't tap this experience more often - I think it's part of the attraction of Xtreme sports.
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Heh, guys do it too, that's for sure. Does that make me unsexist?
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I struggled to think of a way to say something without coming across as horribly sexist. But there's just no way. I tried several approaches, but they all came across terribly. End of the day, women will always choose to maximize their beauty with whatever means come to hand, and men like me, will always do their damnedest to see through every disguise to the core, what the woman looks like naked. Never the twain shall meet in this discussion.
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Um, jon, yeah. For starters the blatantly obvious fact that you have to eat a lot of food to get really fat. Without that, it can't be done. Then there's all the countries which actually do have food shortages which sort of corroborate that theory.
But I don't actually think we're going to enter a time of real food scarcity anyway . That was really my point, from the start. Whatever the economic climate, the physical climate of NZ is conducive to a massive overabundance of the raw materials of food. We'd only need to divert a tiny fraction of what goes overseas back home and we'd be fine.
Which does, ironically, play into your hands. We could, instead, go through a time when the nicest and best food that can be got with almost no effort will slip beyond the reach of some people, and then they'll turn to the not-so-nice not-so-good food. Not because they have to, though. They might just do it anyway because they don't want to put any effort into finding better alternatives, and will stick to McDonalds and fish-and-chips.
But there is nothing 'necessary' about this outcome. Believe it or not, there's a lot cheaper than both of those food sources, and a lot healthier too. People who are genuinely impoverished could find them.
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andin, I'm all for participatory democracy. Never been a fan of representative, except when I'm feeling lazy. But it's the system we've got, and it's better than it could be, that's for sure.
However, representative or participatory, one thing's for sure. The baby-boomers would still get a massive say. And I don't have a problem with that. They don't vote as a bloc, being all individuals, and amongst them are the wisest and the stupidest people. Like every other demographic. They're just people.
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On food + recession. I'm sure people can still eat a load of crap. But here's the rub. They already do.
I don't buy that it's a poverty thing to eat in a way that tends to obesity. It's a cultural thing, and one thing that a depression can do is change culture. Sometimes for the better.
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dyan, I wasn't accusing you of talking crap, just pointing out a different experience in a different part of the building. NICU is not ICU. NICU impressed me enormously both in the staff and also in the facilities.
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I most remember him from countless TheatreSports shows. He was magic. It's an artform where it's easy, if you are brilliant, as he was, to steal the limelight, and cast the other performers into shadow. But that was not his style. He sought always to cast limelight all around him, to build on the efforts of the others and show them in as good a light as possible. The players would love to have him on their team, not because they could slack back and watch him pwn, but because he drew them together and made them do things they didn't think they could. That even went as far as the 'opposition' teams, because he inherently grasped that it was an entertainment much more than it was a competitive sport. Any night Kevin performed, you knew you'd have fun.
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