Looks like death. I'd be surprised if he's around in five years.
218 karma · joined October 21, 2009
I find the claims that people sitting all day is a new problem somewhat dubious. People have worked sitting down all day for centuries. I'm pretty sure what's new is fat people who never walk anywhere.
The government broke up the studio system and now they limit risk by bilking foreign investors of capital, from what I gather.
Please share all the slam dunks I'm unaware of.
> leadership needs higher level political intelligence
Subscribe to Foreign Affairs. The idea that you need a multibillion dollar agency to sound out the geopolitical landscape in today's world is absurd.
Let's be honest that their primary function is global agitprop and covert ops. Analysis is a bolt-on, and not better than what you can get in the private sector.
They were married 19 year olds, dummy.
Strength is perhaps the single best predictor of longevity and health. That's not to say vigorous strength training has been clinically shown to increase lifespan, but strong people are much healthier than weak people overall. Geriatric care givers get dramatic results out of strength training. I don't think one can make a similar case for jogging or tennis, or whatever. Strength training has uniquely powerful benefits.
"Body Building" as an aesthetic goal or a "sport" is stupid. But there a ton of reasons to think everyone should try to keep up a respectable ten rep bench/squat.
For what? What have they EVER gotten right? This utterly failed 60 year experiment needs to be shut down. The actual intelligence functions should be absorbed into the pentagon with a much smaller budget.
I contend our foolish interference overseas lead directly to the blowback of 9/11 and current tensions with Iran, for starters. Nothing good has come to US citizens from the nonsense the intelligence community gets up to. It should be cut down to a twentieth the size ($25 billion or whatever it is these days is ridiculous).
My hypothesis is that we've seen a weakening of social norms and pressure, as reflected in the illegitimacy rate and the deterioration of standards for clothing in public. You faced more opprobrium for being fat, bearing a bastard child, or dressing in cheap garbage in the past. Now you can comfortably be fat in public, and wear flip-flops too.
It's highly constructive when the prevailing mode of discussing the issue blames public policy and business practices, as this article does. I stand by my assertion that it's mostly personal failings. Therefore, nothing needs to be done. It's a free country. Let people make their choices and suffer the consequences.
I'll make allowances that agriculture policy (subsidies for grains and soy) and bad diet advice from the government probably play a role. But it's not the predominant issue.
It's not a relevant difference. Sugar and rice are the absolutely cheapest calories, and they're not so good for you. But a can of coconut milk is ~700 healthy and tasty calories for about a buck. Eggs are healthy and pennies a pop; you can even buy them already hard boiled. A can of sardines is a couple bucks. A can of sauerkraut is a buck and loaded with nutrition.
You have to be a moron to fail to put together a decent day's worth of food at a grocery store given $8. If you're willing to eat high starch you can eat for a couple bucks a day.
Convenience and time? You're going to do better healthwise and financially with any of ten products you can eat straight out of the can/jar. How can you beat a can for convenience and time efficiency?
Dare I say there aren't decent grocery stores in poor areas for the same reason there are many liquor stores in poor areas. It's not some policy problem.
"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face." --Mike Tyson
My two cents on which martial art to pick is boxing or one of the kickboxing varieties. The "east asian" martial arts schools in your American strip mall practically never emphasize that fighting is 90% physical fitness and strength, and so I regard them as a bit of a joke. Rare is the taekwondo student who'd last three rounds against a golden gloves guy.
I mean, you see fat people coming out of these karate classes. There's very rarely such a thing at a muay thai or boxing gym that actually fields fighters. When I was boxing it wasn't rare for guys to puke.
I suppose nerds want to think fighting is this cerebral thing where all these advanced skills with funny japanese names make the difference. Sorry, it's mostly being able to hit hard and keep doing it a lot for minutes.
Markets do have all the available information. But no person or group of people can ever process all the information in a meaningful way. Only the market itself can process the huge amount information dispersed among participants.
The rest of your post is silly "animal spirits" pseudo-keynesianism. No, the government cannot usefully manipulate the business cycle or limit damage from failing businesses. Even Keynes himself only ever really tried to say government could stop a major slide from happening in the first place. He said it would be too late to intervene post-crash.
You can't look at state supported industries and come to any meaningful conclusions. All those examples have government driving them. Nuclear fission power would not even exist without government: the plants and businesses are uninsurable in the free market. No private insurance company to date has concluded the lifetime risks of a nuclear power plant are acceptably quantifiable.
Absolutely false. Personal well being continued to fall dramatically through the war. GDP went up because the government was buying weapons, i.e. digging and filling holes. Unemployment went down because people were drafted, essentially enslaving the unemployed. The depression did not end in any meaningful sense until the war ended and government spending was reduced. Only in 1946 when you finally had the conditions that both the New Deal morons were gone and the war economy was being shut down did living standards begin to improve.
> the point is to evaluate the true cost of something
Only the free market can evaluate the true cost of things. A panel of human beings cannot possibly make a meaningful calculation: there is too much ambiguity and unknowable data. The things "worth the cost" win out and the things not worth the cost go bust in the market.
Your points about the government subsidies to the petroleum industry are quite valid, but you seem to miss that the basic failing is government itself. If oil related businesses had to carry all security and business risk related costs themselves, that would be clearly reflected in prices and substitutes would be more competitive. The problem is that somebody in government decided geopolitical hegemony is "worth the cost."
Coal is basically in the same situation as oil, contrary to what you may have heard. The good stuff is gone and it's getting more and more expensive already, when measured by joules of net energy per dollar. It's lower quality and harder to mine stuff.
Besides, the political environment is essentially driven by the "madness of crowds". You are irrelevant. Better to remain detached and regard politics like the weather, something to be dealt with as necessary.
Summary: For various reasons the general population skews conservative, essentially driving the correlation. "Smart people" probably don't much skew liberal.