I apologize for my lack of recent blogging, but I've got some things to catch up on. I'll get back at it soon. In the meantime, this was sort of nifty.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
One Day I'll Be a Cosmolifestyleorangebeltwaytarian Too!
I think Douchebagatarian has a nice ring to it.
To Be Clear....
From the reactions I got it seems I may have been misunderstood. To be clear, the point of yesterday's post is not "people should diet" or "health conscious people are somehow morally better". The point was it's ridiculous to get self defensive and hostile in response to someone's eating habits. Especially when they are not trying to influence your own.
To be sure, if I really wanted to eat an entire pizza I would bet that I could. It doesn't necessarily mean I should or will. If you want to eat an entire pizza that's your prerogative, and I'd say bon appetit. Just like if you want to eat vegetables, that would also be your prerogative. You have a 'God given right' to eat however you want, and that goes for both sides.
What I don't understand is how it came to be that the subject of healthy lifestyles is now taboo, and people are faced with disincentives from those they associate with, and what I mean by this is the economic concept of reward and punishment. Anyway, I'm done on this topic. I hope that cleared some stuff up.
To be sure, if I really wanted to eat an entire pizza I would bet that I could. It doesn't necessarily mean I should or will. If you want to eat an entire pizza that's your prerogative, and I'd say bon appetit. Just like if you want to eat vegetables, that would also be your prerogative. You have a 'God given right' to eat however you want, and that goes for both sides.
What I don't understand is how it came to be that the subject of healthy lifestyles is now taboo, and people are faced with disincentives from those they associate with, and what I mean by this is the economic concept of reward and punishment. Anyway, I'm done on this topic. I hope that cleared some stuff up.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The "Ya know what I hate?" Rant
My office has a very informal and functional exercise of venting our hostility. In the less hectic days, it was a daily occurrence. Now that we're headed full steam into our busiest time of the year, we don't have as much time for it. This practice was the "Ya know what I hate?" rant. Every rant would start with "Ya know what I hate?" and you just vent. About pretty much anything... bad drivers, office politics, figures of speech that just don't resonant well with you... anything. Because everyone seems pretty absorbed in their work right now, I'm not going to break their flow. Instead, I'll rant now. Here goes.
Ya know what I hate? When people upbraid others for leading (or wanting to lead) a healthy lifestyle. I think this is an element of America's "obesity crisis" that doesn't get a lot of attention. It may not effect people to the magnitude as the availability and cost factors of unhealthy foods do, but I can see how it manipulates a person's behavior. People don't need to be alienated for being healthy and responsible. Being on a diet, avoiding unhealthy behavior, exercising and the like are not pretentious unless you go about it in an evangelistic way. Recognizing that gorging yourself with pizza isn't a healthy practice and should be a limited occurrence, or eating fruit and salads should not warrant implications of eating disorders. The assimilation of someone who is health conscious to someone with a serious and unhealthy problem is especially repugnant to me. How does anyone rationalize such a blatant contradiction in their mind? Even people who aren't especially thin are assaulted with roundly accusations when trying to improve their eating habits, regardless whether their reason may be high blood pressure running in the family or wanting to shed a few pounds.
It's an odd phenomenon in my mind. I've witnessed this with others and experienced it myself. I try to be at least somewhat health conscious for a number of reasons. In terms of weight I'm rather average. I'm certainly not heavy, I may even be on the thin side, but I by no means look emaciated. My behavior doesn't betoken me having some kind of problem, and yet I still find myself having to defend my lifestyle choices, especially when it comes to what I eat and how often I exercise. It doesn't leave a lot of incentive for people to try to lead a healthier life when faced with constant alienation and ridicule from their peers. It's a contrary thing to demoralize someone for being conscientious of their own well-being. It's senseless to mock a thin person for choosing vegetables over cookies, last I knew, thin people can have heart attacks too.
I will leave you with my utterly untested, unscientific rational for this phenomenon. If you are one who is so obtusely offended by healthy choices and the people who make them, maybe it's a personal problem... try insecurity or perhaps a flagrant lack of understanding of health and nutrition.
Ya know what I hate? When people upbraid others for leading (or wanting to lead) a healthy lifestyle. I think this is an element of America's "obesity crisis" that doesn't get a lot of attention. It may not effect people to the magnitude as the availability and cost factors of unhealthy foods do, but I can see how it manipulates a person's behavior. People don't need to be alienated for being healthy and responsible. Being on a diet, avoiding unhealthy behavior, exercising and the like are not pretentious unless you go about it in an evangelistic way. Recognizing that gorging yourself with pizza isn't a healthy practice and should be a limited occurrence, or eating fruit and salads should not warrant implications of eating disorders. The assimilation of someone who is health conscious to someone with a serious and unhealthy problem is especially repugnant to me. How does anyone rationalize such a blatant contradiction in their mind? Even people who aren't especially thin are assaulted with roundly accusations when trying to improve their eating habits, regardless whether their reason may be high blood pressure running in the family or wanting to shed a few pounds.
It's an odd phenomenon in my mind. I've witnessed this with others and experienced it myself. I try to be at least somewhat health conscious for a number of reasons. In terms of weight I'm rather average. I'm certainly not heavy, I may even be on the thin side, but I by no means look emaciated. My behavior doesn't betoken me having some kind of problem, and yet I still find myself having to defend my lifestyle choices, especially when it comes to what I eat and how often I exercise. It doesn't leave a lot of incentive for people to try to lead a healthier life when faced with constant alienation and ridicule from their peers. It's a contrary thing to demoralize someone for being conscientious of their own well-being. It's senseless to mock a thin person for choosing vegetables over cookies, last I knew, thin people can have heart attacks too.
I will leave you with my utterly untested, unscientific rational for this phenomenon. If you are one who is so obtusely offended by healthy choices and the people who make them, maybe it's a personal problem... try insecurity or perhaps a flagrant lack of understanding of health and nutrition.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
More From Slate's Undercover Economist
A new take on New Year Resolutions. Keep it, or lose your money. I think it'd work for me.
Check it out.
Check it out.
Beautiful
More wisdom from Will Wilkinson regarding Libertarianism.
He goes on to say:
Read the whole article here.
"One of the embarrassments of the American libertarian movement is its failure to sufficiently acknowledge how collective bias against blacks, women, gays, immigrants etc. deprives blacks, women, gays, immigrants, etc. of their freedom. To my mind, serious forms of structural discrimination are much worse for liberty than certain kinds of coercion. Libertarians make themselves look ridiculous when they claim that everyone is fully and equally free as long as no one is coercing anyone."
He goes on to say:
"In my opinion, it is the responsibility of decent people concerned with liberty to at least denounce, if not actively work to tear down, the racist beliefs and norms that enable liberty-killing structural discrimination. If you don’t think ending discrimination is the government’s job–that this is the sort of thing that should be done by persuasion, not force—then you should take this responsibility extra seriously. It’s your job to persuade. If you think the government should do nothing but stay out of the way, but you are indifferent to racism and people who publish racist newsletters for financial and political gain, then it is not unreasonable to conclude either that you don’t really care about other people’s liberty, or think racism has nothing to do with it. In either case, you would be wrong."
Read the whole article here.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Bear With Me For a Moment...
The site may be under construction for a bit, blogging will be light.
In the meantime, enjoy this.
In the meantime, enjoy this.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Thank Goodness!
I think this is an excellent article to address some of the fundamental misconceptions about what libertarians actually believe. Will Wilkinson hopes to make a series of posts on his blogs about some of the key elements of Ron Paul's appeal, which should be interesting. He states:
In particular, the following passage nearly made me squeal with glee. The vast majority of people I meet seem to mistakenly see all libertarians as anarcho-capital rightists.
Very well said. I can only hope that it being said by someone with greater prestige than myself will have a further reaching impact on the way people view what it means to be a libertarian. I'd strongly urge anyone who reads this to take the time to check Will Wilkinson's blog over the next couple of weeks and see what he has to say on the issue. Here's the link.
"I want to say something about why flag-waving “libertarianism in one country” types are ultimately no friends of liberty."
In particular, the following passage nearly made me squeal with glee. The vast majority of people I meet seem to mistakenly see all libertarians as anarcho-capital rightists.
"I had hoped Paul would do more good than harm for libertarianism, inspiring lots of college kids to get interested in the ideas of liberty. But now I’m pretty certain that he’s done a lot of harm, causing many people to associate libertarianism with racist cranks. I think it’s pretty important then to publicize the fact that there are genuinely liberal versions of libertarianism out there. The young people who got interested in libertarian ideas through Paul need to be able to find Cato, Reason, the IHS, and other places where one can learn about classical liberalism, which isn’t about keeping the Mexicans out, deploring the abolition of slavery, or hoarding gold."
Very well said. I can only hope that it being said by someone with greater prestige than myself will have a further reaching impact on the way people view what it means to be a libertarian. I'd strongly urge anyone who reads this to take the time to check Will Wilkinson's blog over the next couple of weeks and see what he has to say on the issue. Here's the link.
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