StrangeSox

lol edit: cross-post but works for both of you

they also have this, unfortunately: that's sorta what I mean by your choices being constrained or at least heavily influenced by culture/markets.

jenks has deep insights to the day-to-day life of poverty

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jan 10, 2013 -> 12:08 PM) I didn't say every day. It's not hard to make sandwiches with buffalo sauce, or tacos with healthy ingredients, or to grab a .99 cent can of black beans and make burgers out of them. A 3 pack of romaine hearts is $2. Eggs are dirt cheap. One onion can be used in meals for multiple days. People just have to venture into the produce area instead of grabbing bags of processed chips and pre-packed expensive meals. Take 15 minutes one day and plan out the week's meals. It's not hard at all. But going to the drive through or ordering dinner is SO MUCH EASIER. People who say they don't have time to eat healthy or can't afford it are f***ing idiots. Same with working out - people choose what they do, and they choose to order in food and watch that extra episode of whatever. I don't want to hear about people with kids, either, because you can exercise at home without any equipment and get your sweat on quite easily. But the issue with food deserts is that they may not have access to a decent produce area with affordable produce, so that doesn't do them much good. There's also the aspect of actually knowing how to prepare and cook different meals and having the stuff to do so. Yeah, processed food is easier, there's a whole lot of time and stress issues you face when in poverty. The parent working two jobs and raising two or three kids might not actually have time to exercise that much or they might be exhausted at the end of a long day. This applies to some people in some circumstances, not everybody, obviously.

you going to feed your family nothing but salads every day? you going to be able to find fresh greens and whatever else to throw into it? afford half a dozen eggs or more for every salad if it's feeding four people? There's obviously things people can do, but you can't just ignore the different challenges people face. eta: I made that comment in the context of the "food desert" discussion and the class divides in life expectancy.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 10, 2013 -> 11:29 AM) It's called a bus. It's called "being poor" which is the issue with food deserts in the first place.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/r...udies.html?_r=0 eh, "within a couple miles of an urban neighborhood" is a huge radius.

It wasn't doubt that they exist but on what the impacts were. Time for google.

There was a thought about "food deserts" in the US, urban areas that essentially have no grocery store and no access to fresh foods, but IIRC some research a year or two ago cast some doubt on that idea. There's a "time to prepare a meal" aspect, too. Making processed foods or picking up fast foods is quick and easy. Making a big meal from scratch, a little more difficult and requires more resources.

I've also read that it's important psychologically to focus on good diets and exercise for their own sake, not as part of some weight loss goal or ideal. Some people are going to be naturally heavier or skinnier than others at the exact same levels, and someone who's overweight can be perfectly healthy still. When you make diets and exercise tied to weight loss, if someone isn't losing as much as they'd like, they become discouraged and stop. Or they reach their goal weight and then start slipping back into unhealthy diets and reduced activity. Some studies have found that heavily promoting nutritional and exercise programs as weight loss programs can end up having the opposite effect and discouraging obese people from following them. As for the class split, I'd put my money on health care access, not diet or weight issues. Also, the types of jobs worked and the daily stress and struggle of life.

There's a cultural and economic/market aspect to your own diet, too. Ultimately, yes, you do control what you actually put into your mouth, but your desires for what you want to eat are going to be shaped by the culture around you (advertising, what others are eating, what you were raised on, etc.) and what's available (can't eat what you can't buy).

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 10, 2013 -> 09:09 AM) You're right. The government should provide meal pills to everyone with the proper amount of nutrition. People don't need choice, they need healthy diets mandated by the suits! If people are dumb enough to die from being a fat tub of lard, so be it. People in this country need to start letting individuals clean out the gene pool a little. (edit: and nicely done ) There was just a study released a week or two ago that found that mortality rates for slightly obese people were actually lower than underweight or normal weight. But the "gene pool" can't be "cleaned out" like that. You're talking about massive dietary changes resulting mainly from the industrialization of food in only a generation or two at the most. That's nothing something selection pressures can really adjust to, nor would we expect them to, because you're not dying until well after your prime reproductive years. Nor is being overweight a moral failing that we need to "clean out" from our gene pool.

let's not forget that life expectancy is split by class too

Normal people turned a blind eye at best to chattel slavery for generations. Normal people turned a blind eye or actively bought into Nazi propaganda. The Stanford Prison Experiment showed that otherwise normal people are capable of f***ed up things, given the right situation. That doesn't mean any one of us is ready to go out and rape, though, just that we can't pretend that these sorts of terrible acts don't have a long and broad history in humanity.

Being "down the middle" isn't necessarily what makes Politico terrible, though faux DC media centrism is a problem.

I think it's dangerous to assign these horrible acts to some form of mental illness. It serves to innoculate us against the idea that otherwise normal people sometimes do, support or turn a blind eye to awful things.

Absolutely, but I don't know that they could be accurately diagnosed with an actual psychological disorder.

oh, politico

I meant more in general, like his "n***** n***** n*****" post a few weeks ago.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jan 8, 2013 -> 09:45 PM) Again it's a matter of where the crime is on the spectrum. Would someone get the same sentence for "greenies" as for cocaine? Almost all MLB players used greenies up until 5 years ago. That doesn't mean that it is the same offense that steriods are. One helps you to fight off fatigue, keeps you alert and helps you focus so you can perform at your best level. The other actually improves what your best level is. Now they get scripts for ADHD medication instead!

he's really gone off the deep-end, hasn't he?

They didn't used to. You had to pay them to unlock that feature. Then they got slapped with a fine or a lawsuit. I've had no problem rooting, flashing and restoring my Verizon Droid X2, though.

The United States had the warmest year on record last year. Australia had to come up with new colors for its temperature history map

Big money donors are constituents, too!

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jan 8, 2013 -> 06:07 PM) Verizon might have the best service in the U.S., but my god are they a pain in the ass. Not only do they lock their bootloaders so you can't flash your own ROMs on Android phones, but they don't even allow you to return your phone to stock that easily when you realize that you need to unlock your bootloader first (doh). And here I am, waiting for their OTA update to finish downloading so I can flash this phone back to stock with ODIN. I get that they do it because they don't want people tethering without a plan for it, but a lot of carriers detect that no matter what software you're running. Did I also mention how slow Verizon is with updates and how they force you to update your software after you download an OTA (accidentally or intentionally) after 5 days? Awful. I thought they lost an anti-trust suit over that tethering stuff?