The Glade 4.0

I agree that's the rationale, but I'm not so sure it's the reason. I think Bloomberg is just one of those people who thinks it's ok for government to coerce people into doing something "for their own good". The anti-obesity movement has a lot in common with the temperance movement, the anti-drug warriors, the anti-condom/pro-abstinence crowd, etc. Often, people like that point to the supposed externalities of the regulated behavior as justification for the restrictions, but their actual motivation is just to prevent the behavior they disapprove of and/or "save" those who would otherwise engage in it from the supposedly self-destructive effects of doing so.

The thing with that, however, is that every one of those other movements can point to problems those things create for other people. Drunken or high people often do engage in behavior that's hazardous to others. Having unwanted babies often ends up badly for the baby. Another example would be the gun control crowd; people do sometimes get shot.

The problem with every one of those movements is that they fixate on a solution that intuitively seems like it should work (ban alcohol, ban marijuana, ban guns) and then try to fit the reality to that solution by just repeating the logic of why it "should" work over and over again. For them, the solution is not the solution to a problem, rather the problem is that the solution that seems intuitively correct to them is not the one being implemented. Banning guns, banning booze (or even the silly .000 BAC limit some people advocate for driving), banning birth control, or banning marijuana are the goal, and the problem they purport to solve really is just a justification. The solution is searching for a problem rather than the other way around.

In the case of the anti-obesity people, it's somewhat similar but the difference is that there's no direct harm to society that can possibly be articulated without sounding like a raving lunatic. It's not like fat people regularly crush others to death. Fat people are an inconvenience for others, but that's it. The societal cost is in medical costs, but it's very hard to say exactly how much medical costs are directly attributed to obesity, how much are related to but not caused by obesity, and how much would exist regardless.

In this case it's literally "for your own good" (we're going to try to make it more inconvenient to consume the same number of calories) and justified as a public health problem. the thing is, a public health problem is something that threatens the health of the public in and of itself, not a health problem large portions of the public happens to have. Undisposed trash is a public health problem. A flu epidemic is a public health problem. Water contamination is a public health problem; obesity is not.

That's the worst aspect of this. The actual soda size ban is a minor inconvenience. The problem is the underlying mentality. The mentality is that people being fat is everyone's problem, and more importantly, that being fat is something someone else did to you. There's also the perpetuating of the idea that ham-handed intuitive solutions should actually be implemented but that's another issue.

If NYC really wanted to curb obesity, they'd ban electric shopping scooters unless you had a perscription for them based on some other condition that meant you couldn't walk. They'd ban any sort of handicapped benefit based on obesity or medical problems directly attributable to it. They don't. People want to believe obesity is a disease, and that its someone else's fault.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This should be done anyway. **** those things.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I don't mind it when it's some elderly person that is hard-pressed to come to the store themself in the first place, but nothing pisses me off more than some 40-ish fatass huffing and wheezing and using one of the damn things, usually without so much as a thought as to how they position it in the aisle. Elderly folks are so much more polite with them.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Finally something we can all agree on.

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I respectfully disagree. Up until 3 weeks ago I was walking just fine. I've had to use a cane to walk any distance these past 3 weeks in order not to fall down. At the grocery store this morning I'd have gladly used a scooter if one had been available. It's not the scooter's fault that the idiot driving it has no consideration for others and blocks the aisles...even people capable of walking block the aisles with their carts because they are inconsiderate of others.

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

My motivation for working out everyday is reading fat acceptance blogs

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Was it unavailable because otherwise healthy fat people were cruising the aisles?

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I felt the same way until I broke my right tibia and femur and dislocated my ankle back in July. Grocery shopping was pretty tough when I was still learning to use crutches...

Gah...

That's an absolutely brutal injury. How the hell did you manage that, and how is your recovery coming along?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I fell about 4' and landed badly, rolled the ankle until my heel touched the inside of my leg. 9 screws and a couple plates later recovery is going OK, my surgeon says I might be able to start running in another month or two. It's just really stiff and swollen now, and swells up like a cantaloupe if I walk too far or abuse it too much.

Being 37 and not fat sure made it feel weird riding those scooters around, though. Every time I passed a fatty on theirs I felt like a lazy slob for some reason

Or because I possess more than a rudimentary understanding of human body health.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

The government in general does not know its *** from a hole in the ground on body fat. A lot of it is driven by simple attractiveness. For example, one of the stated reasons for military weight standards is "a soldierly appearance". This is why the military is perfectly willing to revise standards of acceptable body fat content upwards as it did in 2005 when it needs more people. Being overweight flags you so that you can't re-enlist, or get awards or promotions, but it does not stop them from sending you to combat. That makes sense, since we don't want people getting fat to get out of their obligations, but it also reveals that the weight standards are actually lower than what's really necessary to safely do one's job. It's particularly telling that the PT test is independent of weight/fat standards. You can get 300/300 on your PT test and still be considered overweight.

It's also telling that they are cutting again the acceptable standard for males, but not for females, even when they have the same MOS. Females generally have a higher body fat percentage to begin with, but the message essentially is that a females who have lower strength and less lung capacity (reflected in an easier PT test) can also have more body fat and still do the same job as a male.

Of course, the fact is that females usually can do most military jobs, and the ones they really can't do they aren't permitted to do anyhow (infantry, armor, artillery crewman). The female standards are not too lenient; the male standards are too strict, and too focused on an apeparance ideal. Something tells me other government standards are also.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

In the Air Force it isn't. It's actually 20% of your score and determined by a waist measurement that is height independant (a five foot tall person receives the same score for a 36 inch waist as a seven foot tall person).

It's actually worth as much as push ups and sit ups combined, if you can believe that...

Wow, that's not only ass-backwards (PT score should go into weight measurement, not the other way) but the height-independent thing is asinine.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Another problem with this mess is the government doesn't exactly have a good track record advising people on what foods are healthy and what isn't. We can thank them for telling us to eat more refined carbohydrates for decades. They also told us to switch from butter to margarine, which turned out to be much worse for you.

The science of nutrition is already complicated enough without the government trying to "interpret" everything in its own framework (which includes making sure nothing disagrees with any special interests). Thanks to them, the entire country has a remarkably warped view on nutrition and healthy eating. It's just staggering the amount of misinformation that's out there. And now they have the gall to say they know what's best for us and ban unhealthy foods? No **** thanks. Get the **** out of my kitchen.

That said, soda is an easy target in that it's probably the most obvious unhealthy food out there... but I don't trust them to start this trend.

This has almost nothing to do with the government trying to "interpret" everything so much as it has to do with the government being influenced by corporations.

http://www.anh-usa.org/usda-sued-over-d ... uidelines/

Is the end result different Aizle?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Aizle, that's exactly what I meant when I said "interpret." And now they want to tell us what to eat. **** them.