Where in the World is Tony?

This is a new section of my blog, devoted to bad eating. Or more precisely, it is devoted to eating bad unintentionally. I feel this is much more damning then intention, deliberate and AWARE consumption of foods that are bad for you, because you do not know how to rationally offset what you are consuming.

For example, if you eat a delicious bowl of Hagen-Daaz ice cream, you know what you are doing to your body, and most likely will modify behaviour to absorb the resulting consumption. However, if you didn’t know that something was bad for you, how would you offset?

The latest example is canned-Tuna. Ignoring such issues as PCB concentrations, and sustainability issues, a can of chunky-tuna in water is around 120 cal, a very healthy and fulfilling snack. A can in sauce, is closer to 500. Now, there are several different concentrations/blends of sauce/tuna, but they consistently clock in between 400 and 500. So my question is: would you rather eat one of those chili tuna cans, or an entire sandwich, which you could easily do for 500 cal. For example, how about 16 pieces of generic sushi California roles http://www.thedailyplate.com/nutrition-calories/food/generic/sushi-california-roll

One is a big meal, one a tiny snack….your body doesn’t know the difference…

I am stealing this whole thing, but I think it is great!

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=22277

This is my response to an interesting thread over at Marginal Revolutions regarding how Americans are now seeing themselves as skinnier, despite not having lost any actual weight.

This being a Marginal Revolutions post, there are the inevitable conservatives, and below is my response towards one who bemoaned the typical ‘leftist’ response of blaiming a restaurant on your obesity.

My riposte:

Of course people are responsible for eating that extra cheeseburger. Yet, the same purveyors of said food always fight tooth and nail against disclosure about how bad their product is. (usually comically…the health of their product, not the efforts to hide said information)

I honestly don’t know what you think, so here is a legit question:

Is it better that smokers know the dangers of cigarettes now, or was it better before the flood of health data came out?

If Mad Men is to be believed at some point between now and then people got more information and were able to make their best rational choice based on a cost-benefit analysis)

Do you feel current consumers of the ubiquitous ‘fast-food’, are rationally making purchasing decisions more akin to current smoking patterns, or Mad Men smoking patterns?

Either Krugman is getting less wonkish, his writing is getting better, or my basic knowledge of econ is expanding, but I actually understand why current fiscal expansion is not ‘crowding out’ private investment, a standard current conservative complaint of Obama’s policy…

At least I think I get it

For a quick, and somewhat trite answer, it is because it is not capitalism, the system we have. Now, like most debates about a binary choice, the ‘grass is greener’ nature/motivation/neural imperative of humanity comes into play, but even this conservative bastion noted something funny….

I think most people alive would agree that college graduates, 27% of Americans as of a few years ago would be considered the ‘winners’ of society. Well, all would at least agree they tend to be the winners relative to those without a degree…but now if you are a winner, according to the WSJ, your post-inflation earning ‘only’ fell by 4.5%

Wow, what a deal! Assuming this trend extrapolated out, in 25 more years those with college degrees could be earning 25% less than they are now, which is a contraction from 5 years before. A trite extrapolation to be sure, but 5% is fairly significant.

I always hate it when someone is pissing on me, and then gets offended that I don’t think it is rain, which is basically how I feel towards the raft of recent conservatives who saw the poll numbers showing a rise in support for socialism vis-a-vis capitalism, and launched their typical teeth-gnashing …shocking isn’t it that one might not be satisfied with a system where being a ‘winner’ means only loosing 1% of your inflation-adjusted income a year.

When I was reading ‘Supercrunchers’, there came a short section detailing the standard deviations among IQ and the associated bell curve distribution. Based on what I tentatively know about my IQ, an this chart, I am between 2 and three 3 standard deviations above normal. (I offered more than 3 but Andi firmly informed me of where I was. (She would know because she is probably more than 3 above) At two standard deviations above normal I have a higher IQ than all but 2.5% of people. Since I am between 2 and 3, I would put this as less than 1%, but I really have no idea. But I wonder if I am smart enough? this link on the future of neural enhancements points to a new world where people take loads of drugs to enhance neural outputs, which just sounds so appealing to me……also very scary since the pre-cursor world of professional sports shows what happens to those who drop out of the arms (steroids, HGH, GBH). Either you opt in, or loose. As the article hinted at, if 25% of people start taking these neural enhancers, everyone else would be defined based on them….

Really though the article just made me think….I don’t think I am smart enough at better than all than.5%. I think this is still not smart enough for anything really interesting….I think my IQ just puts me at the level to make me aware of others’ staggering limitations. more painfully aware of my own limitations (based on higher contextual standards) and my painful awareness of both these facts.

Is my only option to get in this arms race before everyone else…certainly not in the EFL world….no great need here

I love reading and storing information like this guy

What can I say….diet really seems the best word here. I feel like those who don’t have much intellectual curiosity must be starving.

I was at a crowded Subway yesterday. As I was standing in line, a large group of Asians got up and left, leaving their table in a revolting shamble. Since the people behind the counter were hardly lounging about, the odds of the table getting cleaned any time soon seemed unlikely….and sure enough, by the time I got there, I had to remove the refuse myself. Hardly a mission, but then again I certainly didn’t sterilize the table to the point that a new customer wouldn’t be offended.

Interestingly, the table in question was quote large, so at the other end, several more Asians sat down….amid the filth…and proceded to sit there…eating among the filth. It just seemed very interesting to me, the passivity on display. Believe me, I know a lot of Americans wouldn’t clean up someone elses mess, but I doubt many would passively sit in someone elses squalor.

Oh yeah, the Germna family at the table next to ours…when they did leave…..spotless…as was mine

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/04/fiscal-responsibility.html

Mankiw is right to comment on the stupidity of the Obama admin spending time f^%$ing around with a tiny fraction of the budget….it is a game…a stupid one…just like every time a Republican opens his mouth regarding the seriousness of Earmarks, which make up a tiny fraction of a percent of the national budget….stop wasting our time!

I just listened to your Klosterman dialogue, (between him and Simmons) and I felt that he missed a critical issue in the relative nature of your ESPN position “the box” versus a columnist for a paper, and that would be the threshold. What I mean, specifically, is the level of difficulty needed to find an alternative. On the internet, you are displayed prominently, which is good for me because I specifically remember searching for your column. But, save for the truly technologically illiterate, this was not a terrible challenge. In the same sense, it isn’t hard for me to find someone else. It is the ease of finding someone else that makes all the difference in the world. Chuck even commented on this on how he often quickly clicks on a ‘most mailed’ link, finds out he isn’t interested, and moves on. But he could easily stay. If it was interesting he could stay, and what did it take him to find out…..5 seconds perhaps?

Can you do that with a newspaper? Lets say there are 5 newspapers in your area. You buy one…you don’t love it….and now your going to buy another? Really? See the threshold is too difficult.

This goes back to how all these talented writers left the newspapers. The internet lets you throw them all up on ESPN, granted some more prominently featured, but they are all there, and can be accessed. The newspapers have a finite space…they all aren’t there…and it is much harder to actually get to an alternative if you are dissatisfied…the finger click verse the acquisition of a second newspaper. That’s the difference.

This is not to say the writers at the Boston newspapers (never read any B.T.W.) never once made it on merit…but once they did…that was it….you (and others on ESPN) have to make it over and over again…because your competition is only a click away

I like Unions for giving you a good wage for good work. That is why I support them, but there needs to be a fine line between making living wages possible, and allowing people who don’t deserve to, to keep their job.