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Go ahead, eat that pie. A few extra pounds aren't going to kill you.
Now that the researchers have done their analysis, Dr. Williamson said, the message, as he sees it, is that perhaps people should take other factors into consideration when deciding whether to worry about the health risks of their weight.
Dr. Williamson, who is overweight, said that "if I had a family history - a father who had a heart attack at 52 or a brother who developed diabetes - I would actively lose weight."
But "if my father died at 94 and my mother at 97 and I had no family history of chronic disease," he said, "maybe I wouldn't be as concerned."
Dr. Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California, had another perspective.
"The take-home message from this study, it seems to me, is unambiguous," Dr. Glassner said. "What is officially deemed overweight these days is actually the optimal weight."
***
So Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner hae written Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Slate has a couple of exerpts from the book about California baby names.
1. A Roshanda By Any Other Name: looks at the effects of 'superblack' names.
Today, more than 40 percent of the black girls born in California in a given year receive a name that not one of the roughly 100,000 baby white girls received that year. Even more remarkably, nearly 30 percent of the black girls are given a name that is unique among every baby, white and black, born that year in California.
2. Trading Up: looks at where names come from - namely, the rich.
There is a clear pattern at play: Once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder. Amber, Heather, and Stephanie started out as high-end names. For every high-end baby given those names, however, another five lower-income girls received those names within 10 years.
***
Sin City, randomly -
Interesting that in a film that's been branded misogynist, the only crime of one of the principle villains is the mistreatment of women and that he is the face of both the Mob and (well, one of two faces) of the corruption of the police. Jackie Boy treats women like crap and when he dies, we all feel that he deserves it.
Jackie Boy is that man who wants to have women and when he gets them, he doesn't play nice. He's a kind of villain that the Old Town prostitutes are well-acquainted with and consequently, well-equipped to deal with. They don't need Dwight's help with him. They do need his help dealing with the consequences of Jackie's death but not because his maleness in some way has better prepared him to deal with systemic evil - no, they just need every hand that can aim a gun that's available.
Jackie is evil, and the cops and mobsters who want to control women, they're unquestionably evil. Every time there's a suggestion of a woman being hurt, victimized or losing control over her life, there is the accompanying suggestion that this is a terrible, horrible no good bad thing.
Dwight. Dwight now, is definitely sexist. But it's a kind of adoring sexism that's worth a good slapping and not much more, because when it comes down to it, he respects Gail and Miho and the others, and fundamentally, he respects women. It's just that he wants to take care of them too. Dwight is that kind of confused modern male who wants to be Galahad but doesn't mind in the least if his lover is a Valkyrie who rips out people's necks with her teeth. He doesn't have a problem calling a bunch of hookers his friends, and rushes clear across town in the dead of night, on the off-chance that some asshole is going to fuck a girl up. Dwight is devoted to women and his guts tell him he needs to keep them safe, even when they're holding a semi-automatic. But then, this is Sin City.
Marv? He's in awe of feminine power but he doesn't seem to see women only in terms of that power. His ugliness makes him hyper-aware of that power but he relates to Nancy and his parole officer as people, not as T&A. He doesn't 'get' why his parole officer is a lesbian, because hey she could get any guy she wanted, but he doesn't try to get her. I get no sense that her femaleness is an issue between them, or a barrier to her understanding Marv - hell who could understand him? Marv treats all women like a group of people he doesn't really get, which isn't all that different from how he treats men - another group of people he doesn’t' really get.
- Interesting aside: he doesn't think less of his parole officer breaking down. Paraphrasing "Dames, sometimes they let it out and then they're fine." From a man who deals out pain for fun and money, the lack of condemnation, hell the note of respect in their dealings, might as well be an endorsement. The only other person who's ability to handle pain he comments on, is the freakish Kevin, who he most definitely does not respect or admire.
- And while we're on asides, let's talk about the farm, because Kevin and the Yellow Bastard both commit their worst crimes at the farm.
The city is the province of the prostitutes, corrupt cops and Mob. The farm though, is entirely given over to the destruction of human bodies and minds – home of a particular brand of universally loathed and unlikable evil, and weekend getaway to the brothers who run Sin City. It’s where they come from. The farm is the root of them, and also the root of the city – agriculture to industry, to huge cities and whatever seed of wickedness was in them, in us, has come along for the ride.
It’s grown, not worse, but bigger, systemic – taken on subtler forms. The farm, Kevin, the Yellow Bastard – these are obvious, personal evils. Small scale and easy to hide if you’ve got a dog, a shovel and a determinedly disinterested neighbor. Bury the bodies, feed them to the dog – screams will be put down animals.
A prostitute though, that’s harder to hide and while the hookers in Sin City aren’t themselves evil, there’s a suggestion that the position they’re in might be. And that, I think, is a powerfully feminist statement, though not one that we’d all agree with. In Sin City, the hookers are only dirty insofar as the dirty men they service might rub some corruption off on them.
***
The Amityville Horror, in brief –
Spoiler warning for those who care. I can’t imagine you are, but hey, I respect your desire to remain spoiler-free for one of the dumbest movies OF THE YEAR. Evil House/Batshit Crazy Contractor=True Love. After all, who else could so efficiently release the full power of its so very evil evil. Heck, this house is so evil? It has evil fridge magnets. But it’s been stymied by some do-gooders with a half-assed reno that just managed to shellac over the oh-so-obvious Indian Burial Ground/Torture Chamber located in the basement. Really people, did ya think a wall was going to stop evil?
This was a terrible movie and I forgive it for all its terrible sins. Except one. If you make a point to establish that the boat house is haunted, and that the original evil owner of the evil house left dozens of bodies in the lake, YOU DON’T HAVE YOUR CHARACTERS MAKE AN UNIMPEDED GETAWAY VIA SPEEDBOAT.
Thank you, drive through.
Now that the researchers have done their analysis, Dr. Williamson said, the message, as he sees it, is that perhaps people should take other factors into consideration when deciding whether to worry about the health risks of their weight.
Dr. Williamson, who is overweight, said that "if I had a family history - a father who had a heart attack at 52 or a brother who developed diabetes - I would actively lose weight."
But "if my father died at 94 and my mother at 97 and I had no family history of chronic disease," he said, "maybe I wouldn't be as concerned."
Dr. Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California, had another perspective.
"The take-home message from this study, it seems to me, is unambiguous," Dr. Glassner said. "What is officially deemed overweight these days is actually the optimal weight."
***
So Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner hae written Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Slate has a couple of exerpts from the book about California baby names.
1. A Roshanda By Any Other Name: looks at the effects of 'superblack' names.
Today, more than 40 percent of the black girls born in California in a given year receive a name that not one of the roughly 100,000 baby white girls received that year. Even more remarkably, nearly 30 percent of the black girls are given a name that is unique among every baby, white and black, born that year in California.
2. Trading Up: looks at where names come from - namely, the rich.
There is a clear pattern at play: Once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder. Amber, Heather, and Stephanie started out as high-end names. For every high-end baby given those names, however, another five lower-income girls received those names within 10 years.
***
Sin City, randomly -
Interesting that in a film that's been branded misogynist, the only crime of one of the principle villains is the mistreatment of women and that he is the face of both the Mob and (well, one of two faces) of the corruption of the police. Jackie Boy treats women like crap and when he dies, we all feel that he deserves it.
Jackie Boy is that man who wants to have women and when he gets them, he doesn't play nice. He's a kind of villain that the Old Town prostitutes are well-acquainted with and consequently, well-equipped to deal with. They don't need Dwight's help with him. They do need his help dealing with the consequences of Jackie's death but not because his maleness in some way has better prepared him to deal with systemic evil - no, they just need every hand that can aim a gun that's available.
Jackie is evil, and the cops and mobsters who want to control women, they're unquestionably evil. Every time there's a suggestion of a woman being hurt, victimized or losing control over her life, there is the accompanying suggestion that this is a terrible, horrible no good bad thing.
Dwight. Dwight now, is definitely sexist. But it's a kind of adoring sexism that's worth a good slapping and not much more, because when it comes down to it, he respects Gail and Miho and the others, and fundamentally, he respects women. It's just that he wants to take care of them too. Dwight is that kind of confused modern male who wants to be Galahad but doesn't mind in the least if his lover is a Valkyrie who rips out people's necks with her teeth. He doesn't have a problem calling a bunch of hookers his friends, and rushes clear across town in the dead of night, on the off-chance that some asshole is going to fuck a girl up. Dwight is devoted to women and his guts tell him he needs to keep them safe, even when they're holding a semi-automatic. But then, this is Sin City.
Marv? He's in awe of feminine power but he doesn't seem to see women only in terms of that power. His ugliness makes him hyper-aware of that power but he relates to Nancy and his parole officer as people, not as T&A. He doesn't 'get' why his parole officer is a lesbian, because hey she could get any guy she wanted, but he doesn't try to get her. I get no sense that her femaleness is an issue between them, or a barrier to her understanding Marv - hell who could understand him? Marv treats all women like a group of people he doesn't really get, which isn't all that different from how he treats men - another group of people he doesn’t' really get.
- Interesting aside: he doesn't think less of his parole officer breaking down. Paraphrasing "Dames, sometimes they let it out and then they're fine." From a man who deals out pain for fun and money, the lack of condemnation, hell the note of respect in their dealings, might as well be an endorsement. The only other person who's ability to handle pain he comments on, is the freakish Kevin, who he most definitely does not respect or admire.
- And while we're on asides, let's talk about the farm, because Kevin and the Yellow Bastard both commit their worst crimes at the farm.
The city is the province of the prostitutes, corrupt cops and Mob. The farm though, is entirely given over to the destruction of human bodies and minds – home of a particular brand of universally loathed and unlikable evil, and weekend getaway to the brothers who run Sin City. It’s where they come from. The farm is the root of them, and also the root of the city – agriculture to industry, to huge cities and whatever seed of wickedness was in them, in us, has come along for the ride.
It’s grown, not worse, but bigger, systemic – taken on subtler forms. The farm, Kevin, the Yellow Bastard – these are obvious, personal evils. Small scale and easy to hide if you’ve got a dog, a shovel and a determinedly disinterested neighbor. Bury the bodies, feed them to the dog – screams will be put down animals.
A prostitute though, that’s harder to hide and while the hookers in Sin City aren’t themselves evil, there’s a suggestion that the position they’re in might be. And that, I think, is a powerfully feminist statement, though not one that we’d all agree with. In Sin City, the hookers are only dirty insofar as the dirty men they service might rub some corruption off on them.
***
The Amityville Horror, in brief –
Spoiler warning for those who care. I can’t imagine you are, but hey, I respect your desire to remain spoiler-free for one of the dumbest movies OF THE YEAR. Evil House/Batshit Crazy Contractor=True Love. After all, who else could so efficiently release the full power of its so very evil evil. Heck, this house is so evil? It has evil fridge magnets. But it’s been stymied by some do-gooders with a half-assed reno that just managed to shellac over the oh-so-obvious Indian Burial Ground/Torture Chamber located in the basement. Really people, did ya think a wall was going to stop evil?
This was a terrible movie and I forgive it for all its terrible sins. Except one. If you make a point to establish that the boat house is haunted, and that the original evil owner of the evil house left dozens of bodies in the lake, YOU DON’T HAVE YOUR CHARACTERS MAKE AN UNIMPEDED GETAWAY VIA SPEEDBOAT.
Thank you, drive through.
no subject
The hell?
Okay, they have gotten so far away from the original hoax story that I'm not sure they should even be using 'based on' anymore, let alone 'a true story'.
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Makes me wish I had a set. Ooh! Or evil magnetic poetry!
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The other one that bugs me is the thing male reviewers keep saying--that it's a movie that could only be enjoyed by the 18-24 male demographic and never by girls. The IMDb rating breakdown shoots that down, though, given that women rate it about .2 percent lower than men. I'd say that's a fair bit of enjoyment. I certainly enjoyed the shit out of it.
(Hi again, btw. I unfriended you just because I thought you'd stopped updating this journal, in case you'd ever happened to wonder. You're too interesting not to refriend; I hope you don't mind.)
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Also, the collection of links look interesting here. I'll have to investigate *after* my test tomorrow and paper is written.