… because, in the words of David Thompson, they care so very, very much.
The prime minister must act decisively on unhealthy eating and poor nutrition.
Because it is Government’s job to police your every mouthful. And those unhelpful government members who believe in such quaint concepts as liberty and ::::shudder::: personal responsibility?
Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, prefers to address the country’s profound problems of bad diet via a voluntary “responsibility deal” with the food industry, rather than through legislation. It is a naive response, and one which the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the most influential medical body in the land, described last week as “inherently flawed” and doomed to fail.
The experts have spoken, top experts. It’s not like we haven’t had your best interest at heart before …
Jamie Oliver, interviewed in today’s Observer Food Monthly, laments the lack of government action on obesity. His judgment is a harsh one, but difficult to dispute, given the coalition’s lack of effective action. Professor Terence Stephenson, the doctor leading the academy’s new inquiry into obesity, has floated possible measures, including “fat taxes”, limits on fast-food outlets near schools and an end to “irresponsible” marketing of unhealthy foodstuffs. He believes the history of public health, on issues such as seatbelts, drink-driving and smoking, shows that sometimes government action is needed, and that obesity’s worsening effects – as a cause of illness, a drain on the NHS and a drag on people’s self-esteem – make this another such moment.
Shut up, we say …
[I]f the answers, whatever they are, involve challenging corporate power and practices, legislating to improve the content of food or even limiting individuals’ freedom to consume junk, then so be it.
A sensible rancher carefully manges the health of his cattle.
Jamie Oliver is a twit and has gotten rather fattish himself in the last few years. He’s touchy about it, too.
Projection much, Jamie?
pssst! hey buddy! I got some grade A of the yellow gold here. It’s good stuff. It’s Wisconsin. You slap this on your toast and you’re in heaven.
I got connections too. I can get you some dynamite cheddar or gouda and if you’re into the hard stuff I got a friend who can score me some Florida crystal white. Stuff’s so pure it’ll make your teeth ache.
I keep hearing about restaurant critics in New York coming down with serious health issues from eating at high end restaurants every day, yet somehow this all gets blamed on the likes of McDonald’s. People are fat because they’re either stupid, lazy or they just don’t care. Keep your hands of my Doritos, you damned dirty apes.
… OFF my Doritos.
I think your links have gone all jubbly wubbly there Mrs. Click
Save the cupcake ATM machines!
this makes me suspect that the UK is a shit place to go on holiday really
white people countries are beginning to uniformly suck ass in this respect
sprinkles says they’re gonna open a vending machine in chicago next
the health secretary, prefers to address the country’s profound problems of bad diet via a voluntary “responsibility deal” with the food industry, rather than through legislation. It is a naive response…
He’s saying it’s naive because it won’t force other citizens to do what he wants them to do (for their own good, of course). That’s a disgusting attitude.
That’s all you need to know about public health insurance.
Abe, I’m not surprised that the food critics in NYC are having health issues. All the shit that they eat at the high-end restaurants; short ribs, pork belly, beef cheeks, fatback, polenta, gnocchi, risotto, cheese plates, etc. With the exception of the cheese plates, it sounds like the food of the poor for many many moons. Fatty, starchy, filling.
Not only that, as a result of trying to be trendy, these characters like Mario Battali and his merry band of high end chefs have made cheap(er) cuts of meat too pricey for the poor. As my German grandpa said, “How many chowls has von hog?”
opps …. links fixed.
The thing is, no one is going to be able to stop people from baking chocolate chip cookies or making potato chips at home.
So the next step to save us from ourselves is the Government (though nationalized healthcare) to monitor our BMI and legally sanction anyone outside what the Gov has decided is healthy.
Got a kid going through a plump stage? (usually just before a growth spurt) … count on the kid being seized and sent to foster care.
While we’re backsliding from citizens to subjects, the British have devolved to livestock.
And just where do you think you’re going to get chocolate and brown sugar? Or enough oil for deep-frying?
I wouldn’t worry about it, the forced marches should shed those extra inches right off.
“And just where do you think you’re going to get chocolate and brown sugar?”
No worries, comrade, the ration has just been increased from 25 grams to 15 grams per week…
via jeff g twitter
REVEALED! MICHELLE OBAMA MASTERMINDED ANN ROMNEY MOM SMEAR!
I put that article in a different thread a couple hours ago. I don’t get no respect.
And just where do you think you’re going to get chocolate and brown sugar? Or enough oil for deep-frying?
Dealers, of course. The same people you can buy smokes with no tax stamps and booze in dry counties. Free enterprise, it’s a force.
Toughest four years of her life.
…like Mario Battali…
I noticed he’s not an Iron Chef anymore.
Possibly his Sous Chef & Cooks could no longer move around him in the…wh’adda they call it?…uh, “Kitchen STADIUM.”
Too small. To small.
Or maybe his girth attained sufficient gravity to spin off the Earth and launch into space and compete with the Moon (which is why it’s snowing in New York in late April).
Thank god I’m not alone in my dislike of Mario.
I was watching his old show “Molto Mario” back in the day and he was making some kind of tomato sauce or salad while blabbing with his “guests” who were swilling wine and asking scripted questions. Anyway, he sliced the living crap out of his hand and proceeded to stick them in the bowl of tomatoes and toss them. Tomatoes dressed with Blood of Mario? No thanks.
I hope it burned like hell.
Didn’t know Mario had left the stable LYBD. Maybe, on the other hand, he’s been too busy with Hank Haney to keep to the Iron C schedule?
Mario left IC about a year ago. Geoffrey Zakarian is the new Iron Chef.
Hmm. One would think Mario would need all the work he could get to pay this fine.
Hmm. One would think Mario would need all the work he could get to pay this fine.
Especially considering how the fat retard likes to insult his primary customers.
I blame the idiots with the microphones more than idiots like Mario.
He is a stoner that learned to cook. Good for him. How does that qualify him to sit on a panel debating economics?
Tomatoes dressed with Blood of Mario? No Thanks.
Meh. His blood is probably mostly olive oil, red wine, and bits of prosciutto.
If I were stuck in the Donner Party, I’m eatin’ that fat bastard first.
All the reruns, sdferr, it’s hard to tell who’s got the blue uni’s now.
“Behind the scenes, Michelle has vented that she worked hard as a lawyer…”
Mish could’ve easily had the ‘luxury’ of being a stay-at-home-mom — Barry’s salary was certainly enough to feed a family of four — but she chose to sacrifice the raising of her children because she was driven by greed. Couldn’t bear to live without that fat six-figure salary, and the $2000 dresses that went along with it. Kids be damned.
Or is it only White Folks that can be driven by greed?
Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong about her choice, but it’d be nice if she’d be honest enough to admit that it was a choice. Then again, it’d also be nice if my dick could, in fact, suck itself. I won’t exactly hold my breath waiting for either.
Michelle only had a law license for about 4 years. “Voluntarily surrendered” it and still managed to make $400k/yr as a legal consultant.
I doubt she even had to show up.
Michelle had that money coming to her, racists!
She was owed.
She was owed.
Good grief.
If barbecue is OUTLAWED, only OUTLAWS will barbecue!
I will give up my spare ribs when they are pried from my greasy-sticky dead hands!
I blame the idiots with the microphones more than idiots like Mario.
Mario and Joe Bastianich are crooks who got caught. Just like the E-vil banksters in the article Abe linked.
Mario gets rich serving Hitler and Stalin. Therefore, Mario is a Nazi.
Awesome good news, and a spectacularly winning argument to boot. Though winning for whom, we’ll leave to the electorate to decide. Meantime, keep up the showy work, trade unionists! Long may you bay at the moon.
Up is down.
We have always been at war with EastAsia.
If they could just do something about the state of Szechuan restaurants in the southwest. Oy!
Holy shit, sdferr, that is fucking nuts.
They are going to have to try to outlaw dictionaries eventually, you know.
they’re hoping to find a retarded judge what hates America
I wouldn’t bet against them finding one
It’d be easier if they were in the Ninth Circuit.
” We have always been at war with EastAsia.”
Now we haven’t. There is no war. It’s not even a police action. It’s just an international peace keeping effort and humanitarian aid mission. We are there to help. And they want us there.
We have never been at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Gondwanaland.
snow billie speaks
link
Jeff Goldstein. Emmanuel Goldstein.
Coincidence? I think not. I’m late for the two minutes hate.
(Hypothetically) we haven’t been at war with Gondwanaland for over 180 million years. On account of it breaking up.
I remember them talking about the light at the end of the tunnel when Gondwanaland broke up due to our glorious military and a populous willing to sacrifice. We had them on the ropes I tell ya. And then the stupid politicians figured now was a good time to do a troop draw down.
OK, Finished Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century. Not bad; a lot to think about. Six essays of varying points of view and validity. Common themes: The Constitution is a contract that can be broken by a party, e.g., a State; Jefferson and others saw secession as a way to grow the republics of America as more of the continent was explored and civilized; Lincoln decided that the Constitution was a “more perfect Union” than the Articles of Confederation, thereby making the Union indivisible; Republics, by their nature, should be much smaller (on the order of 10s of thousands, not 305 million); many currently existing successful nations are smaller than many of our States; prior to Lincoln’s “war to abolish secesssion”, many States believed that they had the right to secede (three of which States incorporated that right in their Constitutions); the Tenth Amendment was specifically incorporated to limit the role of national government; the role of “judicial review” by the Supreme Court is a farce since it is a part of the national government and is not a neutral arbiter of the adjudication of States’ rights; and finally, that as a nation grows, it invariably incorporates centralized power in a national government, together with the commensurate bloated government, corruption, taxation, conscription and over-bearing infringement on States’ rights.
So?
Personal takeaways: I have a better feeling for the phrase,”History is written by the victors.” Reading contemporary ante-and post-bellum works magnifies the intense discusssions of the times, none of which were taught in my history classes.
Growing up, I was always taught of the magnificence and power of the federal government to solve problems; I now appreciate the power of that indoctrination.
None of my readings of the past decade plus lead me to believe that the American Republic is on the ascendancy; quite the contrary, I equate the rise and fall of many empires.
Totalitarianism probably wouldn’t be so bad if the government weren’t so utterly, completely fucking stupid.
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/17/11249907-what-to-do-with-frozen-cows-stuck-in-cabin-at-11200-feet?lite
In the odd chance a Federal employee might be reading this:
They are frozen solid. Take a demo saw up there, cut them into bits and carry them into the woods.
B, I think the point is that, when a government reaches a certain size, it becomes “utterly, completely fucking stupid.”
A representative republic only works when the representatives represent a small portion of the populace, not hundreds of thousands. Like Switzerland.
The reason we’re at war with Gondwanaland is its regime has been brutally suppressing our allies of the Pangaea Reunification Front.
I thought it was for the oil
RI Red, the very contingency of the idea “written by the victors” has long caused the more philosophically minded among us human b-n’s to look askance at historicism in general, as a source of political philosophy anyhow. To say nothing of the crackpot schemes something akin to historicism has generated for near the last two centuries. On the other hand, there are a multitude of cases where we see imports from defeated peoples — even ideological such imports — creeping in to rule the day in the land of the victors (see for instance, Allan Bloom’s thesis in Closing). Or as Firesign Theater put it in a Japanese accented English a few years back: “Who won aseconda World War you think you so smart?”
Nowadays we could use the help of one-time totalitarian dominated people, like Russian emigres we hear now and again, among others, warning against the dangers of socialism. Too few of us Americans listen to their vivid and well understood experiences, I fear.
Ayn Rand was one of the better heralds, and came closest to a pulling off an early warning. If only she’d been taken just a bit more seriously, early enough.
Ayn Rand wasn’t a ‘community organizer’, though. She practiced in the realm of the academe.
If only she’d been more…tactical.
Or had an editor.
Not while she was a mother.
It probably would have helped if Rand had taken herself less seriously.
Never mind Ayn Rand (relatively). The whole thing was laid out in advance, in detail by George Orwell in “1984”. The excerpts from Goldstein’s book lay out the motivations, the methods, and the results of the Progressive movement. The totalitarian regime in “1984” was institued via INGSOC, English Socialism, not evil conservatives and mean-spirited Republicans.
“Animal Farm” is an easier read, but tells a similar story about how fairness is promised to the citizenry to get their support for what became their own enslavement by their new masters (the pigs) who were far harsher than the Farmer (capitalism).
So, even with two explicit, very well known novels that lay out the dangers of Socialism, not to mention a century’s worth of spectacular failure when actually tried, the siren song of free money and the desire for a life without risk (or reward), of being “cared for” by a benevolent government continues to hold sway. Bread and circuses, and the easy life as a member of the herd awaiting the big day when they, too, get on the big truck bound for their happy retirement at the slaughterhouse.
Somewhat relevant, and likely linked here before. A short story from 1978, “Lipidleggin’” by F. Paul Wilson.
Basic idea is, the gummint has outlawed fatty food, so the protagonist bootlegs butter and eggs. Good read.
I remember reading that story in a magazine (I think) when it came out. It was written around the same time that “Future Shock” was a big best seller.
George Orwell had this to say a few threads back:
Just yesterday and on other occasions I’ve heard severely conservative nice guy Ed Morrissey say the Secret Service’s hookers and blow outreach program isn’t Obama’s fault. You can’t blame the President. This habit of making excuses for Barry isn’t isolated to these particular “conservative” pundocrats, although let us name some names as is fit.
Here’s one name: George Will. Here is Will on the GSA scandal and other bureaucratic malfeasance within the federal government:
“It is unfair to blame Barack Obama for the GSA or any of these things because although people think he controls the Executive Branch, no one controls the Executive Branch, that’s part of the problem with big government.”
So are we to believe by this statement that George Will believes that President Obama is attempting to make the federal government smaller? Because if Will is half the thinker we are led to believe he is, we would have to conclude this. Wouldn’t we? I mean, if you do not believe the bureaucracy you preside over is too big, and it’s bigness is causing problems, wouldn’t you be responsible for these problems, at least in part?
It’s not about responsibility, it’s about plausible deniability.
Two things bother me in this regard (well, lots more, but that’s another story):
It’s taken years of education, experience and self-deprogramming to get me to where I realize how much I don’t know about history, great thinkers, political thought, etc. And that bothers me, although pw does a lot to shine a light on things I should investigate.
Second, if it’s taken me this long to get here, what chance do the several generations of poorly educated and pc-educated have to understand where we came from and what we are losing?
“Second, if it’s taken me this long to get here, what chance do the several generations of poorly educated and pc-educated have to understand where we came from and what we are losing?”
Very little, save in the few cases where the individuals are driven by forces of curiosity even they cannot account for (so while this happens, the real world effects are limited and uncertain — kid could turn out to be another Machiavelli sort, or pick your historical example: Abe Lincoln, say). But obviously that’s a crap shoot. Which is why I’ve never been able to understand the rationale behind the notion of “electives” in education. How in hell are the ignorant (by definition) students supposed to know what it is they ought to pursue if they don’t resort to the experiences of longer lived students (know colloquially as “teachers”) and wider, of the experiences of excellence in learning of generations stretching back centuries?
That’s the Republican version of cheap grace, Stranger we’re not rush-to-judgement based on false/unfair allegations —unlike those lefty haterz!.
The problem is the Left doesn’t give a shit what those on the right think of them, while all too many on the right care entirely too much.
Will
vs Romney
So who is throwing who “under the bus”/”out the window”? Is it a mutual defenestration society, just that “everybody lies”?
” Which is why I’ve never been able to understand the rationale behind the notion of “electives” in education. ”
Electives are transparent bundling to get you to purchase more credit hours than you actually need in the name of giving you a ” broader” education beyond your chosen field.
Sure, you may be studying materials science but you totally need to go see three Tennessee Williams plays, talk to a professor about them, and write short reviews of them. Otherwise you’ll never figure out how to buy play tickets or socialize or something.
And what’s another $800 – $2500 between friends?
It’s also spreading the costs between those who want a particular program and those who do not. If you let people go “no frills” or “a la carte” with their course work, then much like Cable TV most channels(professors/departments) would go broke in a couple of years for lack of interest (lack of career value).
College majors are more of a pay structure that benefits the institution providing the service rather than a professional adherence to high quality standards and maintenance of actual educational requirements.
Useless. Or worse. Misleading.
I don’t recall taking any electives in college. Of course, I went to school when we studied by oil-lamp and used slates.
Defenestration is what you do just before you install Linux on your computer.
When you throw something out the window, that’s exfenestration.
Depressing. Maybe it’s best that things collapse and that a cadre of pw monks preserve the knowledge for a time when it will be of use again.
And Jeff is going on hiatus. Bad day in Blackrock.
A Canticle for Liebowitz, revisited.
Well, the baby will be here shortly, so I’ll be back in time for the next fundraiser!
(That’s for Daleyrocks or ericpwjohnson, et al; and of course for you all, who pay to hear my lies and character assassinations, which I put out there for no good reason)
To be fair, a proper education used to consist of the trivium and the quadrivium, these being the foundation of an educated man’s intellectual training. To the extent that universities desire to offer a full education, as opposed to serving as glorified trade schools, I can support the requirements for learning outside one’s specific major.
The problem with the current system, as with everything else, is that the offerings have been watered down to the point of absurdity. Basket-weaving and Angry Studies are poor substitutes for classical logic and rhetoric.
It’s sad that where once, a student was expected to master logic and rhetoric before moving to other studies, today he is expected to accept his professor’s ostensible logic and rhetoric without ever applying his own.
DEATH THREAT!!!
And pay upwards of a quarter million $ for the privilege.
It gets worse: I’m having a boy.
God, how I hope I never have to call him when he’s within ear shot of an old angry black man.
“The problem with the current system, as with everything else, is that the offerings have been watered down to the point of absurdity.”
Though this is indeed a problem Squid, it may turn out to be merely one among many, some of which lay at the foundation of the system itself. Bloom speaks to some of these problems in The Student and the University, the last chapter of The Closing of the American Mind, and in particular in the sub-chapter labeled The Disciplines.
We need only think to some of the theorists who established said system, political men, one and all. If, for instance, their theory of politics was defective, how not then their organization of the world of knowledge?
You’re always going to have problems with teachers more interested in promoting a particular “truth” than in searching for the truth. Still, I maintain that once upon a time, universities thought that logic and critical thinking were bedrock skills, and that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“Still, I maintain that once upon a time, universities thought that logic and critical thinking were bedrock skills, and that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
Oh, I absolutely agree with you about that Squid. But for the most part, I believe that orientation was precisely what was overthrown, intentionally, by the system and systematizers we now criticize.
As I recall, Animal Farm was meant to be an allegorical history of the Soviet Union, or communism as George Orwell had seen it actually develop.
Mr. LaRoche, indeed. A Canticle for Liebowitz has an awful lot of painful truth buried in it.
The reason we’re at war with Gondwanaland is its regime has been brutally suppressing our allies of the Pangaea Reunification Front.
Thread winner!