the Scott Stein
http://scottstein.powerblogs.com/
en-us2008-02-04T15:02+00:00Could it be Pitney?
http://scottstein.powerblogs.com/posts/1202137272.shtml
This has to be a spoof, right? Someone goofing around? I haven't heard of Raw Story. Is it like The Onion? If not, if this story is real, I'm...Scott Stein2008-02-04T15:02+00:00This has to be a spoof, right? Someone goofing around? I haven't heard of Raw Story. Is it like The Onion? If not, if this story is real, I'm worried that there is no future in satire. Really, how do you exaggerate this?
House Bill 282 aims to require dining establishments with seating capacity of five or more to follow guidelines set by the state's health department to determine a prospective customer's obesity, turning away those considered too fat to serve.
And you think Mean Martin Manning is a satire. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's history written before the fact.
Could Alice Pitney be behind this? Could she be Big Dietician?
It must be a joke.
(hat tip Dave Lull)
Update: I see that David Harsanyi has blogged about this. The story is in USA Today. No joke, I guess. The bill is not expected to "garner much support in the statehouse."
]]>Pitney's endorsement
http://scottstein.powerblogs.com/posts/1199634250.shtml
...Scott Stein2008-01-06T15:01+00:00endorses a candidate.]]>The New Majority -- Fat People
http://scottstein.powerblogs.com/posts/1195062589.shtml
John Tickell, a "leading Australian nutritionist," is encouraging airlines to charge fat passengers more money for their seats because it "would highlight his country's obesity crisis and make commercial sense, as...Scott Stein2007-11-14T17:11+00:00I fly Sydney to Perth - five hours - and being totally disadvantaged by some huge person next to me literally flopping over into my seat. Why should I pay the same as them?How does requiring fat people to pay more for their ticket address the issue of them flopping on dear Tickell's seat? It doesn't. Only making seats bigger would address that. But doing so would make life more comfortable for obese people, which would encourage them to remain obese, if I am applying Tickell's logic properly. You see, Tickell thinks we're coddling fat people:
I think we're a bit too nice, we're a bit too precious about minority groups. I think the majority group must have something to say too.
I guess we could visit schoolyards in Australia, if they're anything like the ones in the United States, to find plenty of evidence of coddling of fat people--because, as you surely know, fat people are never teased, mocked, and humiliated by their peers. Construct your own mental list of the degradations and struggles a very heavy person endures every day and ask yourself if "coddling" quite captures it.
Anyway, since "67% of Australian men and over half of women aged over 25 are overweight or obese" and "[e]xperts have warned that by 2030 half of the country's children will be overweight or obese if the problem goes unchecked," maybe Tickell needs to rethink this issue of minority versus majority rights. Fat people are the majority. Just wait until they get organized and realize their political power, John Tickell, leading nutritionist. Sitting next to a fat guy will be the least of your worries.
Source: BBC News via Instapundit.]]>Breakfast Burrito
http://scottstein.powerblogs.com/posts/1192498756.shtml
...Scott Stein2007-10-16T01:10+00:00someone beat me to it.]]>I'm Not Fat -- I'm Eating Incompetent
http://scottstein.powerblogs.com/posts/1190213453.shtml
I just learned of a new phrase, "Eating Competence," which is used in a study by researchers at Penn State....Scott Stein2007-09-19T14:09+00:00study by researchers at Penn State.
Eating competence, as it was defined for the study, is the idea that a person is aware and able to balance their hunger, appetite and eating enjoyment with their body's biological tendency to maintain a preferred and stable weight.
I guess this means that people who know they can eat a cheese steak once in a while without putting on weight, and do so, are going to maintain a "preferred and stable weight." And those who cannot eat a cheese steak without putting on weight, and who don't know this fact about themselves and therefore eat the cheese steak, are not going to maintain a "preferred and stable weight."
I'm not saying there can't be anything to this idea of Eating Competence. We see it with alcohol consumption, anecdotally. Some people know their limits better than do others, and are better at avoiding excess. Maybe thin people do have more Eating Competence and are more in tune with their bodies and what and how much they should eat in order to maintain their weight.
But notice the use of "preferred." By whom? And notice the assumption that it is always best to balance hunger, appetite and eating enjoyment, with maintaining weight as the goal. For me it is, more or less — I enjoy food, just not enough to allow myself to become a fat guy. Then again, that could be because I am Eating Competent. Or because I don't put on weight as easily as some other people do. I can imagine, though, that someone without my metabolism could decide that a life with ice cream is worth the health risks that accompany increased weight. How much increased weight is the ice cream worth? Not much, to me. But not everyone is me. If people place different values on pleasure and health than the researchers do, if people are willing to trade a bit of the second for more of the first, does that make them incompetent?
The researchers believe that, "[g]iven the associated health benefits, education that develops EC [eating competency] appears prudent." Of course they do. I wonder if they'd like to play a role in developing such grant-funded educational programs and related polices. Probably not. Still, if people want to lose weight, and this information can be helpful to them, fine.
I don't know all that the study entailed, only that "[a]s part of the study, the Penn State researchers administered an on-line survey to 370 participants and a paper version to another 462 people." Maybe there's more to it. Either way, coming up with a phrase like "Eating Competence," and, by implication but obviously, "Eating Incompetence," could be the first step to making this a disorder, if not a disease. Where that might lead is anyone's guess. Have fun inventing seemingly paranoid possibilities and connecting it to various recent proposals to have government subsidize or take over health care or health insurance. I know someone who would love the phrase "Eating Competence." I'm sorry I didn't come up with it myself.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull)]]>Satire: "Zero Tolerance"
http://scottstein.powerblogs.com/posts/1174345200.shtml
Zero Tolerance...Scott Stein2007-07-23T15:07+00:00Zero Tolerance
by Scott Stein
Team Leader signaled the sniper to take up position. He hoped to God he wouldn’t have to use him. It was always worst with the young ones. High schools and middle schools were bad enough, and the elementary school last week was a horror story, so many wasted lives barely begun. Even that was nothing compared to today.
Sunnyville DayCare was surrounded. Patrol cars, two SWAT teams, and news vans from every major network ringed the rectangular brick building and fenced-in playground. Helicopters overhead sent aerial views to millions of televisions in homes across America. Officers locking arms kept the reporters at bay. A mother sobbed, “My baby!” Cameras whirled and microphones lunged.
Team Leader blocked it out, and his hunger, too. He was determined to end this without bloodshed, but knew it wasn’t up to him. Those kids in there had started this. Only they could end it peacefully. There’d been too many of these lately, almost one a week. It was an epidemic all right--the world was going to hell in a hurry.
He lifted the bullhorn. “Kids, listen up. This is the police.” He had to be careful not to provoke them. How they got their hands on dangerous contraband still wasn’t clear, but there they were locked inside with it. A mistake could lead them to use it--he’d be held responsible for any consequences to their health. Probably someone had left it unguarded, maybe a store clerk. More likely it was a careless parent.
This sort of thing didn’t use to happen. He remembered his own childhood--sure, sometimes kids talked back or broke curfew, but never this kind of open rebellion against adults and rules and the best-intentioned standards of a caring society. And at such a young age!
His voice through the bullhorn boomed. “Come out of there now and no one will get hurt.”
No answer. Team Leader couldn’t wait any longer. The risk was too great. He signaled, watched as the canister shattered a window of Sunnyville DayCare, in an instant thick white smoke billowing from the hole. Another signal, and four team members in gas masks swung from the roof through other windows, smashing glass and disappearing into the building and the smoke.
Quiet.
Seconds passed like minutes.
Then the front door swung open, heavy smoke blowing wild as the team members exited the building, children slung over their shoulders. There were four kids in all. No shots fired, no open wounds.
For a moment, Team Leader smiled. Tragedy had been averted. Smile gone as he got a closer look at the kids, chubby five-year-olds, crumbs on their shirts, glazed sticky fingers, sugar-high eyes darting. One girl still clutched the now-empty box of donuts, her knuckles white.
Team Leader shook his head. Four more victims. He consoled himself--you couldn’t save them all--and prepared for the worst.
The media descended.
-----
"Zero Tolerance" was first published in Liberty in 2005.
If you enjoyed this story, check out my novels Mean Martin Manning and Lost.]]>Chinese food! Run for your lives!!
http://scottstein.powerblogs.com/posts/1174486291.shtml
I'm shocked. It turns out that Chinese food is fattening, full of sodium, and in general not very good for people. Who knew?...Scott Stein2007-03-21T14:03+00:00 The CNN article advises readers to share Chinese dishes to minimize calories and fat intake. First, I believe that this is how many Americans have traditionally eaten Chinese food anyway. Second, it doesn't do much good, since though people share Chinese dishes, they usually share mulitple dishes, eating the same amount, or perhaps more, than if each person had ordered a single dish and not shared it.
In any case, the article misses the biggest danger of all -- everyone knows that an hour after eating Chinese food, people are hungry again, and usually snack or even eat another meal. That has to be factored in to the already high-fat, high-calorie Chinese food dinner. I'm amazed that this stuff is still legal. But maybe not for long.]]>A Big, Fat Slippery Slope
http://scottstein.powerblogs.com/posts/1159324307.shtml
Some people think slippery slope arguments are the products of paranoid minds. That they're logical fallacies. That one thing does not lead to another. That reasonable people know when enough is...Scott Stein2006-09-27T02:09+00:00
Except, sometimes, there is.]]>