Posts by Peter Ashby
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@Blair Macca
The 'probably' was put in there at the insistence of the lawyers who told them that without it a complaint to the advertising standards authority would likely be successful. That is why it was there, not because the organisers were in any way very much doubtful.
Hope that cleared things up for you.
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@JustThinking
Door to door missionaries are not be seen as nuisances, instead you should see them as prey, just as they see you. By knocking at your door in an attempt to proselytise you they open themselves to a counter proselytisation effort from you. I specialise in this. No religious door knocker (unless simply collecting donations) is spared my counter attempt to convert them to the light of reason and knowledge and my offer to free them from superstition and delusion. They often leave quite shellshocked looking.
Back in the (northern) summer I was accosted in the street by two young Mormons who barely got a word in before I launched my spiel. You can tell you have discomforted them when they offer to refer you to someone more senior at the temple. The aim is not to convert them on the spot, it is to plant the seed of doubt in their minds as well as show them that if they persist in bothering people they risk getting thrown back at them.
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You missed out that the baby boomers had free university education for a greater number than for their forebears. They then, once they had achieved positions of power decided that such 'luxuries' could not be afforded for the younger generation. I am lucky that I, just, managed my tertiary education before loans and big fees came in. Despite that I think it iniquitous that the previous generation had the benefits of expanded university places yet still expected not to pay for it and indeed agitated for a bigger grant yet have pulled that ladder up after them and closed the trapdoor.
Now they have decided that our average income is too large to make our children eligible for any help, so we have to scrimp and defer our retirements to help them, lest they starve or have to work too much to study.
Bastards.
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@Lucy
You are assuming that there is only way, one set of circumstances that can lead to a particular climate set point. We do not know that, so for you to rely on that is without any evidence at all.
I should perhaps have said, a younger Dryas type event but you would have to be fairly obtuse not to think of that option I feel.
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Dyan is right about conventional sport alone not making you fit. I gave up playing soccer at 14 (I was the goalkeeper btw) partly because I was clearly the fittest member of the team. When at training the coach would say '3times round the field to warm up', I would be finished and only puffing slightly while the rest were still on lap 2 (I don't exaggerate) with my fullbacks at the back of the pack. Then i would repeatedly find myself in 1 on 1 or even 2/3 on 1 situations because said backs couldn't be arsed to run AND I would be blamed for not saving those goals.
Which is why I threw it in and took up running.
I take it fresh foods will be cheaper?
Food doesn't have to be fresh to be good for you. Frozen veg are often more full of nutrients than their fresh equivalents as they are frozen very soon after harvest. You have to go to home grown veg to match it. Also tinned chick peas and beans in water are both cheap and good for you*. I do a mean, and fruity, chicky pea curry even when there's no (low fat) coconut milk available.
*not as cheap as dried versions of course, but they are more convenient and require less advance preparation. I eat both sorts.
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@Lucy
In this week's New Scientist they examine Extreme Oil, all the sources of oil we have, until recently, ignored because they are too difficult or expensive to access. Largely tar sands and oil shales. They have a nice graphic showing world deposits. They point out that they consist of more fossil carbon than mankind has ever burnt over history. Considering we are fucked if we burn all the easy oil we know about except at a very slow rate, if we burn that lot, bearing in mind it costs energy to get the oil out of those sources, then a younger Dryas is well within our technological capability.
Are you feeling lucky?
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As Ben Wilson says from the icy centre of his control (I shudder at the thought of walking a mile in your shoes) volition is all very well, but. WRT diet and thank you Ben for making me think of it, what is available for us to eat when we can't resist eating makes a big difference. You can engineer a situation, we have done it, where there are no bad options available. No easy ones anyway. There are no bags of chips on our house, few chocolate biscuits (and I can't eat them, gluten), no white bread and my wife gives me the chocolate to squirrel away so she has to ask, but lots of fresh fruit and veg and low GI crackers. Want to chomp something? peel a carrot.
We eat a takeaway once in a blue moon and the high fat content means my wife will suffer if we do. So we choose not to. And I find I don't miss it. A treat is a proper home made rice pudding. I make my own gluten free muesli and it is absolutely delicious. I've cracked delicious, low GI gluten free bread and I can cook a low salt, low fat, utterly delicious lasagne for my wife (lots and lots of herbs and quark for the cheese sauce).
So we have both lost weight and kept it off and we consider we eat well. My wife does not exercise either. The problem is it is not cheap to eat this way and you do have to cook, and bake and I have a large herb garden that is well used (keeps down the cost of fresh herbs). And you do have to turn a blind eye to many of the special offers in the supermarket. We also interrogate labels minutely (no trans fats).
We are also fortunate in having strong scientific backgrounds to understand all this and be able to remember it without carrying crib sheets around. It is not easy. Which is the point, why is it not easy? This is what we need to solve, why eating badly is so cheap and easy. Until we solve that one people will continue to find the wrong options too easily to hand when that moment of weakness arrives.
@Ben
I have done an exclusion diet (down to pork, pears and rice, then add things back). It doesn't take much time, its just deathly boring to eat and cheating invalidates the whole thing. At the start of mine I would have put money on dairy so I was surprised when gluten was fingered, then confirmed. If your trigger is dietary it does sound like it must be a pretty universal element, like gluten. It is the only way to find out.If it turns out to be gluten I have a pile of good, tested recipes I can fling your way.
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Sigh, Danielle I'll say it again. I do not deny any of what you say. I am only pointing out that some people have managed to lose significant amounts AND keep it off. I make no claims for this for universality, as I make clear. Neither do I say it makes it easy, which I also make clear. The one and only thing which it says, is what I claim for it: that there is no biological imperative against it per se. To be crude how many obese corpses do you see on the piles and pits on the footage from the liberation of Belsen? Or do you deny that no obese people were ever sent there? Now can we stop being silly?
I have been at this for over two years now and I have not put the weight back on. Granted I was not obese, but reading you I get the impression that nobody ever successfully lost weight on their own. Peddling this myth just infantilises people and removes their sense of agency, which is not helpful.
You will also find me out on the net opining that weight is not the issue, fitness and not being insulin resistant are more important. Both of these are possible for the overweight. You cannot get morbidly obese people to exercise for the sake of their health though. They have to lose some weight first until it is safe for them to exercise.
Because numbers are small we do not know that it is, or always is, unhealthy to be significantly overweight providing you also exercise. Plenty of overweight people exercise by cycling or swimming (for obvious reasons they prefer non weight bearing exercise) and they maintain their weight by eating lots. I have talked online to people who fit that category who undertake epic cycle journeys for eg.
The problem is that for the majority of people who are overweight they are also deeply sedentary so the dogma that it is overweight that leads to insulin resistance has taken hold and we actually know no such thing.
When the muscles have too much lipid in them they actively refuse to take up glucose when signalled to do so by insulin. Thus it is lipid in muscle that underlies insulin resistance, not subcutaneous fat. So if people are regularly burning the lipid in the muscles through sustained aerobic exercise the muscles will be glucose sinks and insulin resistance will be averted. None of that is incompatible with overweight.
Now can we stop with the PC manning of hysterical barricades for political reasons and talk about reality, please?
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@TracyMac
You are right about basic BMI scores which is why they should by now be modified by the hip/waist ratio correction factor. I am overweight on strict BMI since I have big muscles and dense bones yet I have very little body fat.
However you say you are 'fit enough', does that mean you take regular exercise or not? By that I mean more than a brisk walk as walking is insufficient, you need to get breathless for at least half an hour several times a week. If you are not doing that and you have some subcutaneous fat then chances are you have internal fat packed around your viscera and it is this which is not helping your gastric condition.
The good news is that internal fat is the first deposit to go when you lose weight by exercise. This is one reason why it takes time to perceive a weight loss in terms of loss of girth after starting exercise. In men the last deposit to go is spare tyre, even on my exercise regime I still have my remnant and it is proving stubborn. There's a six pack under it, I'm sure ;-) For women the last deposit to go is usually the hips and the bust.
So it might help if you take your doctor's advice and get some proper exercise while watching your diet. It fixed my problems and they have not returned. I have a half tube of bisodol that has sat unused beside the bed for months now, just in case. Must check if they are still in date.
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@Kracklite
Thanks for the back up. If once found a dead dragonfly in a gutter in Titirangi that was 30cm long if it was 6 inches. Big enough for you?
Remember though that when the O2 levels were that high there were also giant scorpions. They seem somehow less cuddly than big dragonflies.
I think that the worst case long term scenarios are in fat unhelpful as a general message. But as a response to those who claim that 3-4C of average temperature rises would be nice and balmy not so much.
I apologise if my reading of Lucy's post did not reflect her views, but I can only go on what you actually write Lucy and you were coming across as very unrealistic about the biosphere's carrying capacity which is why I thought some nasty reality was an appropriate response. Nothing and nobody will come to our aid if we push too hard, our descendants will just have to suck it up, if they can.