Fatland
It’s a definite. Fat is the new thin. Remember when you parents told you to finish the food on your plate because of all the starving people in China? Times have changed. One sign of its extent is the new World Health Organization warning of a new scourge stalking the world — the scourge of obesity. “Once considered a problem only in high income countries, overweight and obesity are now dramatically on the rise in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in urban settings.”
Once the narrative consisted of blaming Americans for gorging themselves on the world’s resources. Unfortunately, as the New York Times sources are forced to admit, the fattest people on the North American continent are now the Mexicans. This posed serious problems for the writer, who gamely tries to emphasize the exceptionalism of American greed by casting it as the sinister number two. “As you can see, in rates of overweight and obese residents, the United States is second to only one industrialized country: Mexico.”
But fats are facts. Pancho Villa has now become Paunchy Villa. There’s been an outbreak of rising standards of living the world over. Even the WHO’s poster boys have changed. It now tells the heartbreaking story of childhood obesity in Africa. So it’s eat your argula kids, just remember the fat children in Africa.
None of this is to say that the world’s problems have ended. But it does make undeniable the fact that the character of the world’s problems have changed. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker tries to explain another puzzling aspect of the last 70 years: the Long Peace.
Violence may seem to be wherever we look, but the perception that we live in violent times is wrong, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker said Tuesday evening during a talk at the Boston Public Library’s Honan-Allston Branch.
Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology and Harvard College Professor, said we’re actually in a period referred to by scholars as “The Long Peace,” which began at the end of World War II, and which is marked by the absence of war among the world’s great powers.
What could account for it? The answer, according to the article describing Pinker’s talk says, is “the rise of civilization, with centralized governments and disinterested third parties like police and court justices to resolve disputes.” This plus a surprising tendency among recent great powers to behave in a civil manner. “Nations that might be considered great powers, which once warred regularly, have had an extended period of peace.”
Arise Ye Prisoners of Gustation, Arise Ye Fatsos of The Earth
The whole problem of explaining the present is so nettlesome that the European Union’s “House of European History” museum decided to omit the mention of World War 2 altogether by the simple expedient of declaring 1946 the Year Zero for European history. “It celebrates the creation of the EU with barely a nod to the crisis raging all around. France’s recent history is marked by a picture of the Tour de France, and Germany’s by the famous Berlin address by Barack Obama in 2008.”
Farcically, it’s been decided to omit any exhibit on which agreement cannot be reached. And because of their differing views about World War II, the museum will begin with an EU ‘year zero’ of 1946.
But of the unpleasantness of 1939-1945 it will only say that there was an event called the “European Civil War”, which presumably was fixed by the European Union, without the slightest input from things called the United States, the former Soviet Union, China and the Empire of Japan.
Pinker has proved himself a sucker for PC explanations before – in one of his first books, How The Mind Works, which contains a ton of material I like very much – he gets to the point of the mathematics of AIDS transmitability, and completely goes PC. In the book he says people are stupid to be scared, people can’t do math, and that the entire freshman class of Harvard Med told him he had it wrong, showing how stupid they all are – and thus how the mind works, frequently non-mathematically. Well, guess what, Pinker had it wrong – which can still make his point, if you want to see it that way! I looked for a correction in later editions, and didn’t see it. So I haven’t really paid much attention to him since.
Of course there’s a “conventional” explanation for the long peace, and that’s nuclear weapons. At long last mankind found both a weapon they were too wise to use, and the wisdom not to use it. Of course that seems likely to last about another 90 days, but then even Captain Kirk has explained it many times, “We just won’t kill – today!” Then the appearance of these other organs is an effect of the peace, and not the cause. Oh, and how about the fact that the most powerful of the nuclear nations, the US, just happened to already be the richest on Earth, and as well had the ethics and morality not to use its strength aggressively … well OK, especially as the world held its breath about a nuclear war between two roughly equal opponents, that it seemed after some consideration might not just be horrible on its own, but might just end all life on Earth. When war is “unthinkable” you get peace, like it or not. Too simple for a big brain like Pinker, I guess.
The whole obesity thing is another matter, I guess we’re lucky to be so obese, per Paul Erlich and his confused minions. OTOH, I’d really like to lose about 10-15 pounds, and it just doesn’t want to go. Can I blame it on something, like maybe George Bush?
But of the unpleasantness of 1939-1945 it will only say that there was an event called the “European Civil War”
Yes, there have begun to be a number of references to that. Even though it is a little difficult to explain what Rommel & Montgomery were doing in Libya — unless North Africa is part of Greater Europe? By the same logic, Mother Russia must be part of Europe too? So let’s give Russia its proper place at the head of the European Union!
Let’s be careful. These casual mis-namings are how Anthropogenic Global Warming started several decades ago, before mutating into Climate Change, and then becoming indisputable fact (no evidence required). Let’s get ahead of the curve. Let’s refer to World War II as the “Third Reich” — oops, I mean the “Third European Civil War”. There are no end of candidates for the first two European Civil Wars, from the Hundred Years War to the Napoleonic Wars to the First World War. And then start looking at all future events through the prism of ‘Is this the trigger for the inevitable Fourth European Civil War?’
“…but then even Captain Kirk has explained it many times, “We just won’t kill – today!”
Wow. Everytime I think of the Middle East situation, I’m reminded of exactly that episode of old Star Trek (“A Taste of Armageddon”, I think).
A war between two planets that’s lasted 500 years because the participants are too “civilized” to ever let one side, you know, actually win.
Pinker changed the definition of war to get the results he wanted;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_1945%E2%80%931989
The USA and the Soviets used proxies during the cold war. Most of the time. The Soviets shot down enough recon/Elint planes to kill a couple hundred Americans.
Pinker should have said there was no large scale conventional war between the West and East. That would have been correct. The reason for that is both sides were worried about a conventional war going nuclear.
Yes, let’s be careful.
To be the ones that change key words, is to become the ones that change the past, is to become the one that sets the (allowed) paradigms of the future, near and far.
It is essentially equivalent to shape changing; name changing, but shape changing just effects oneself. Name changing does not require having to actually change anything (obvious), but yet, it changes anything. One takes hard work – changing reality; the other, much easier, changes the perception of reality, indirectly modifying anything. Why, it can change whole portions of reality, in one terminology.
And all this, changing, right in front of everyone! Staring in unbelief are me (perhaps all of we).
Kinua #2:
“Even though it is a little difficult to explain what Rommel & Montgomery were doing in Libya….”
Whasamatter you? You never hear of R2P?
And Happy Doolittle Raid and Paul Revere Ride Anniversary, everybody.
Nuclear weapons do not stop the wars. As an illustration, Pakistan and India had 3 wars since WW2, and they have nukes. We almost had a nuclear strike against the USSR during the Cuban Missile crisis.
No, the reason that Europe has not had the large-scale wars of before, is that the US stayed in Europe and kept the peace. Then, the Europeans decided to spend their money on things other than armies. Now, they couldn’t fight a war, if they wanted to. Look at the pathetic performance against Libya.
Europe can thank the mighty USA for the extended peace in Europe. Pax Americana.
Psychs have examined team sports, porn, and even video games as possible sinks for aggression. One nut even blamed fluoridation, but that was only a movie. Maybe a controlled narrative (hate that term) isn’t such a bad thing. I’m not prepared to guess which wars were totally “wagged” from 1946 to 2001, but I am open-minded about all of them.
1- I think the point is to question whether we really are more obese. The autism industry is ramping up (NPR says it’s a public health crisis), kids are getting tattoos (Drudge Report says so), and we all spend too much time on the internet (both NPR and Drudge Report claim this). So are we really fat?
3- In retrospect, episodes like Taste of Armageddon seem brazen now. ‘Trek’ told many true stories, but even the biggest fans didn’t get it.
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”
awaiting Godot
mm @ 7: Nuclear weapons do not stop the wars. As an illustration, Pakistan and India had 3 wars since WW2, and they have nukes.
But they didn’t, then.
And frankly, the evidence is that they only barely have them even now.
b @ 8: In retrospect, episodes like Taste of Armageddon seem brazen now.
Absolutely. General Order 24, OMG. Surely that would have to be bucked up to Star Fleet Command and debated for a month, first, then bucked up to Federation Councils, and debated for a year. But ST:TOS were mostly morality plays, not “realistic” scifi. In general, I miss that in most current “entertainment”, the abstraction, the formality, now replaced by maudlin indulgence and giant tubs of hot buttered popcorn.
The “European Civil War” narrative sounds sinister. The EU, as opposed to the original Coal and Steel Community followed by the Common Market with American blessing, is a demilitarized, in the expectation that Uncle Sugar will infinetly do the heavy lifting while taking abuse with a smile, fusion of Napoleonic and Nazi programs for continental integration under an imperial socialist program. If you read the German propaganda from before the war it was full of warnings that greedy Capitalists and Bankers, read Jews, were going to push Europe into a war. For two generations the people who believed that either kept quiet or worked indirectly to prepare for their narratives return. Now they are climbing out from under their rocks.
“They make a desert and call it peace.”
“But they didn’t, then.”
True enough. Still, the conflict continues, and it is more serious than people think. For just one example, every Winter, the Indians have to beef up the border as best they can, because that’s when the jihadis do their utmost to infiltrate across the border into India. We are not talking really small numbers, here.
In’01-02, they came very close to all-out warfare. Nuke simply were not a deterrent, really.
Anyway, I was just using it as an illustration. We are not talking about them, but about Europe, and the cultures are not the same.
Yours is a valid point, though.
Coca Cola sells more Coke in Mexico than anywhere else in the world. The Mexican’s have become “Coke whores” and drink it at meals too…that’s why they have become fat and diabetic, addicted to an American sugar drink. I suspect that India isn’t far behind percentage wise in obesity. Something evil about good ole American Coke.
It tells you a lot about man that on the eve of nearly obliterating hunger, we spend our time complaining about being too fat.
Man has finally gone up to Famine, the horseman of the apocalypse, and knocked him off and immediately replaced the emaciated rider with a fat one.
I spent a week in McAllen TX a couple of years ago. Got to eat some “real” Mexican food. The first thing I noticed was that as soon as the chips and salsa got to the table everyone one around me immediately salted the chips. The food was great tasting. Lots of carbs and lots of calories. If I ate that way everyday I’d weight over 250 easy.
As far as the “facts” goes I’m convinced that facts don’t really matter that much anymore. If I could write a book about space aliens building the ancient pyramids or about how DDT and pesticides are bad and sell a million copies and makes millions of dollars I guess my facts are correct….just sayin.
Pinker is living proof that there’s a big gap between intelligence (which he has in spades) and wisdom. By the way, the difference between the politicians and political pundits and the scientists is very clear: when scientists’ narrative doesn’t work, they CHANGE IT to fit with the facts.
Unfortunately, as the New York Times sources are forced to admit, the fattest people on the North American continent are now the Mexicans.
………
I saw Oreilly trying to push Karl Rove into advocating that Romney ease up on illegals on Wednesday 4/18. Why? Even shoving aside legal, border. and sovereignty issues– Mexico’s unemployment rate is currently 4.8% while the US unemployment rate is 8.2%.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Fukuyama has not (yet) been proven wrong, it seems to me. The fact that a lot of the world is showing how difficult it is to adapt to liberal democracyp and open markets in a single global economy doesn’t mean they have an alternative horizon. Are there clear signs of an alternative Chinese model that will win the day and show the rest of the world a way to modernize without democracy? Does the Muslim Brotherhood have anything other than a hopelessly Utopian vision of a global Caliphate to offer? Liberal democracy, however difficult for non-Western cultures to adopt, remains the only plausible alternative to the endless dead ends that come to authoritarian societies competing globally. It may take a very long time to get there but is there any other road that does not spell death sooner or later? Having said that we should remember FUkuyama’s end of history is only on the meta-ideological plane; there will be no end of conflict within and between liberal democracies, I.e. no end of ways to do liberal democracy.
15. KWB
re: real Mexican food, it is like most of the European peasant fares (I am familiar with Irish, Polish and German) all are rich in carbs and cals as they were food for people that worked hard all day in the feilds. Sitting in front of a computer monitor is far less work, thus we get fat.
19@Anton
Exactly. After four days of Mexican food for lunch and dinner I was feeling quite bloated. Even if I had worked outside everyday instead of behind a desk it still would not have matched up with my calorie intake. Way too many calories.
One of the great feats of man kind has been the industralization of food production. The US has lead the world in both process and technology and it really started just before WW2. We not only beat the Axis with military hardware but with food. In the last 70 yrs. we have transferred that technology to just about everyone who will listen and as a results those who used to be peasants living on the edge now either work on an industrial farm or buy its products and work in the cash economy. Mexico has gone from low productivity subsistance farmers to fat city people. With that change has come all sorts of not healthy effects and in large part the world hasn’t adjusted to a new healthy base line based on calory restraint. Trying to change human behaviour is very difficult; just look at how hard it is to keep politicans from buying votes with your money.
I suppose the lesson here is that you can rewrite the past to your liking, you can explain the present to your liking, and you can predict the future to your liking.
I imagine it is very comforting to explain the world in a way that agrees with the views of oneself.
Truepeers @ 18: “Liberal democracy, however difficult for non-Western cultures to adopt, remains the only plausible alternative to the endless dead ends that come to authoritarian societies competing globally.”
With respect, that assertion would be very difficult to defend. Every form of society which has existed historically has come to a ‘dead end’.
The authoritarian phase of the Roman world did manage to last centuries, while the authoritarian Soviet Union could not even complete Century One. But the much more liberal democratic British Empire did little better. And the liberal democratic United States Constitution has in many respects become functionally a dead letter by Century Three.
The wages of sin are death, as they used to say. And the wages of any form of human society are its eventual dissolution. The killer, according to those who have investigated past societal failures, is usually the accumulation of unaffordable overhead, leading to excessive governmental intrusion, excessive taxation, and currency debasement. Eventually, every society dies, unloved by its peons. Would any of this sound familiar to today’s inhabitant of a western liberal democracy?
The EU itself is an argument against history. It stands to reason that they rebuff the past until they can recast it as having never happened as an inconvenient truth if you will. Moral debts are to be avoided while the debt of present social ideology cannot be paid with current coin. No great sparkling future is possible without disassociating from the shackles of reality. But only a fool builds their house on the foundation of wispy clouds and whorled peas. What can’t last wont and reality will push forth new candidates. Probably ones who have been educated outside of the system that promotes such trite European romanticism.
I’ll take the girl on the left and the meal on the right. Can I have my cake and eat it too? It is hard to bend history. It must be undertaken with many small half truths. If you can’t have all the money in the world then controlling all of the material wealth is as good or better. AGM and world obesity are two sides of the same coin. Regulate consumption.
Communists need an unsolvable crisis to keep the sheep penned up and the masters of the universe at bay. What we lost with war between nations we gained with a informational war against reason. The hate remains the same, only the weapons have changed. How do you fight the hydra of disinformation from our leaders? I wish I knew. Somehow I think unions will feature prominently. Reform or system crash?
I place Pinker along with Fukuyama and Jared Diamond as individuals with a lot of book learning and writing ability who are great at presenting a myriad of interesting facts which unfortunately do not prove the conclusion that they say is proven.
Hat’s off to those above who point to the nukes as a proximal reason for the “peace”, at least between large nations. Few people outside of jihadis and leftists want to see everything go up in smoke. But another big cause of the “peace” is the glut of government-backed easy credit and fiat money that allowed individuals to overvalue the material worth of their labor and get away with it for the past fifty or so years. This has already ended (even though vast swaths of people either don’t know it or are in denial) and as the consciousness of this sinks in and people are forced to abandon the entitlement mentality and the West’s revolution of forever rising expectations both individually and as communities and nations, we’ll see just how capable they are of handling the downgrade and if the can do it with “peace” in their hearts and minds.
This nonsense about a WWII cast as a “civil war” is nothing more than a Lakoffian attempt to frame things in a way which makes the left look good, devoid of context and honesty. Comparing WWII to a civil war is of course risible. A European client once told me, when I asked him what the hell Europe was all about,
“Imagine two cities on either side of a mountain range. They speak different languages, eat different foods, go to different churches, grow different things in their fields, and have been at war seven times since the fall of Rome.”
That has stuck with me since. Under those circumstances even the Thirty Years War cannot really be called a civil war. These European countries aren’t a few provinces with internal problems, they are distinct nations. The War of the Roses or the American Civil War are civil wars. Not WWII or WWII.
Obesity?
We paid farmers to grow grains. Then we paid farmers to put fertilizers and chemicals on the grains that washed into the seas and killed fish that people could have been eating. Then we paid government agencies to tell people to eat those grains. Then we subsidized school lunches to reflect the needs of subsidized farmers. Then people did that instead of eating healthy fish protein and they got diabetes, heart disease, and just plain fat.
Any questions?
In any society, elites and insiders continually attempt to control the mechanisms of power in order to accrue more wealth and power to themselves, at a cost to the people who actually produce things and the people who are expected to defend the society.
When the people who produce lose their incentive to work hard at producing, and the people who defend lose their motivation to risk death to defend the society, then the society falls.
Later some new society arises from the ruins, where those who produce can retain enough of their production to motivate them to work hard, and the cycle repeats.
re 1. Josh
“OTOH, I’d really like to lose about 10-15 pounds, and it just doesn’t want to go.”
Stop eating grains and sugar.
Going back to the original post, the reason they now have obesity in the 3rd world is because we send them grains and sugar (or corn syrup) as food aid. And we teach them to grow wheat and corn for instead of helping them increase yields of whatever subsistence crops they were growing before.
I heartily recommend all BC readers to investigate the merits of a low carb, high protein high fat diet. Please see http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-to-the-primal-eating-plan/
“The good news is that when they eventually do find something, it may not be Dark Matter at all but a new and better way of understanding our universe.”
Indeed. The studies of Einstein and others that eventually led to Relativity started with the then-puzzing non-result of the Michaelson-Morley experiment.
Re 2. Kinuachdrach
“And then start looking at all future events through the prism of ‘Is this the trigger for the inevitable Fourth European Civil War?’”
You reminded me of a wonderful story, free to read online, see:
http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1416521461/1416521461___3.htm
excerpt:
Said she in German, “What are you?”
“I am the death of all men who oppose the Sixth German Reich,” said the machine in fluted singsong German. “If the Reichsangehõriger wishes to identify me, my model and number are written on my carapace.”
…Traced on the carapace just above the three heads was this inscription:
WAFFENAMT DES SECHSTEN DEUTSCHEN REICHES
BURG EISENHOWER, A.D. 2495
And then below it in much larger Latin letters:
MENSCHENJÄGER MARK ELF
Conservatives are fatter than Liberals!
There, now that some attention has been granted… Not really…A technique learned from Washington…
Read “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes.
Ehrlich claimed on the first Earth Day in 1970
Ahhh . . . . Earth Day!
The founder/originator of Earth Day was said to be Ira Einhorn (aka, “The Unicorn”), a bizarre academic fraud who murdered his girlfriend and stuffed her in a trunk before running off to France a la Roman Polanski.
The sheer depravity od so many of the founding mothers and fathers of the counterculture that has become the prevailing ruling ethos will one day be taught about as a cautionary tale — or so I hope.
“We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons.”
- Screwtape (Senior Tempter of the Lowerarchy)
Paul Revere Ride Anniversary
Oh yeah, the guy who, when briefly detained by the British before escaping again, warned them that 500 militiamen stood in the way of the Brits trying to take the colonial armory. You know, like that chillbilly Sarah Palin said, because the record of that incident is stored at the Library of Congress.
j @ 27: Stop eating grains and sugar.
Maybe. Cutting back on both by 80%, hasn’t helped much. I understand the theory. But even “high protein, high fat” is misleading. Mostly green veggies and fish, is what it comes to, with a bunless burger now and then.
Just brute force caloric reduction with a balanced, moderately low carb diet, is probably my answer, your metabolism may vary. And more exercise, of course, such as my aging body will stand for it.
24 Annoy Mouse “How do you fight the hydra…”?
You’ll need a club, and a torch. Some disassembly required.
“Just brute force caloric reduction…” = starving yourself = a lethargic less active mind and body.
“…with a balanced, moderately low carb diet…” = A moderate amount of some poisons can be good for you.
“…more exercise…” = a well toned body with minimal weight loss in the long run. That is if you don’t starve yourself into less exercise.
Don Rodrigo @ 33 – You know, like that chillbilly Sarah Palin said, because the record of that incident is stored at the Library of Congress
Please elucidate. Is this sarcasm? What is your meaning?
On the topic of obesity, I recommend Food Lovers. You eat any food you like, but each of three categories of food: protein, fast carb, slow carb, each in the proper proportion to the other two. You eat three meals a day, with snacks in between, and drink lots of water. Really, it’s the best I’ve ever *eaten* in my life, meaning enjoying my meals and feeling good throughout the day, which is my personal goal. Even if you don’t follow the plan every day you understand what it takes to feel better and that’s like having a map in the wilderness. The result: you keep your blood sugar in the right range all day, you think clearer, have more energy, sleep better, wake up rested, and have the chance to face the problems you were managing by not eating well in the first place. Fall, forgive yourself (confess) and repeat. For overweight people whose metabolism has slowed, eating *more* food in the right proportions and more frequently turns on their metabolism and they lose weight. Just not me, cause I’ve always been a skinny guy. Excercise is recommended but seems to present a psychological hurdle that obese persons have to overcome, and why wait when good food is available now?
It could sound ironical that I’m chiming in, my own story is that I could never gain weight, was always rail thin no matter what or how much I ate. But I rarely ate at regular intervals with balanced meals, so I went around feeling listless, somewhat helpless and fuzzy headed, then wound up eating whatever I could stuff in my mouth. That’s an unfair but not grossly unfair characterization.
Just getting out of that trap as a young man would have set the stage for real success in life, if only modest success, not that I haven’t eked out a few success stories in my turn. It seems a pity we each have to figure these problems out on our own, in the final analysis, and inevitably look back with regret. I put it as an example of living in an imperfect, contigent, (fallen) world. yet God wills for us to have life, and that abundantly. It is a loving act to guide our children through these pitfalls, but no one’s perfect.
KWB @ 15 – The first thing I noticed was that as soon as the chips and salsa got to the table everyone one around me immediately salted the chips.
A fine Texas tradition. First, salt the food. Next, taste it to determine if it needs more salt!
sigintel @ 13 – Something evil about good ole American Coke.
Noticed on a visit to a factory in the heel of Italy (Il Salento) that all the workers drank water during lunch in the cafeteria. Seemed like almost nobody drank “softdrinks” or “soda pop”.
37. epignosis
Sarcasm. Sorry for the incomplete thought.
Sarah Palin was essentially correct when she said that Revere warned the British — in a certain context where he was briefly held captive by them. Revere wrote to that effect in his account of his ride, and the document is in the LOC.
23 Kinuachdrach
My argument is not that any given “liberal democracy” won’t fail. I agree, failure is all about us now. But to support Fukuyama’s argument I think one only need believe that when it comes to rebuilding, the inheritors of our failures will have no alternative Utopian vision that makes much sense to them – they won’t have the equivalent of faith in “Communism”, as mankind’s destiny, that some had in the 19th and 20th centuries; they will have to find a way to rework “liberal democracy” and learn from our mistakes. I think it will take a massive amount of destruction of learning, infrastructure, technology, etc. for people to find a new stability in smaller, more isolated, big man societies. It could happen; but if there is the survival, intellectually, of the Western tradition will it provide a horizon for future social organization other than one that advocates some form of liberal democracy?
Fossil fuels, Big Pharma, corporate globalism, wall street, air, water, noise, light pollution, and, aha visual pollution. Ecosystem destruction, radioactive contamination, oil refineries, oil spills, oil and water, toxic this toxic that, toxic culture. On and on it goes and that gentleman describes rocket like progress in the past 60 years in the overall health wealth and prosperity of the planet. Then suddenly a portion of the worlds elites say we need to get off this train and if we don’t get off it immediately, unimaginable horrors await us. Excuse me! Excuse me!
I do not understand why you keep cojoining “blue model” and Fukayama’s end of history theory. They are not one in the same. The “blue model” is the government centric model of the National and International socialist model while the end of history theory is market based republican gonvernment. While Fukayama’s end of history argument was always silly it has nothing to do with a blue model.
In the industrialized West, obesity, slack bodies, weak bones – the whole spectacle of humans turning into Michael Moore lookalikes – is the result of evolving to fit a past way of life that no longer exists.
Hunter/ gatherer people in high Northern latitudes needed high fat diets to counter very high caloric burn rates from intense physical activity in frigid conditions. their modern descendants continue with a similar high fat diet in sedentary lifestyles. Now many of them are fat.
Although modern people are larger than our ancestors, the modern skeleton has become relatively more slender as technology has caused a gracilization of the human skeleton. this article in the American Scientist explains that even 5,000 years ago (before much of the technology that insulates us from the physical world), the bones of human beings were relatively much weaker than those of human ancestors from several million years ago.
Despite this trend, our bones retain their ancient capacity to grow strong, such that a long-time tennis player will have a playing-arm bone on average 40 percent stronger than the bone in his non-playing arm. More physical work produces more mechanical stress on bones which then become more rigid and have a relatively larger cortex. Stronger muscles from physical work reinforce this.
A second article in the American Scientist also shows that the activity level of skeletal muscle modulates a range of genes that produce dramatic molecular changes—and keep us healthy. Aerobic and muscular exercise seems to be the only way to activate some genes that produce proteins with beneficial effects – for example prevention of type-2 diabetes.
To be on good terms with our genes, I think if we eat well (fat, protein, carbohydrates, fruit, vegetables) but don’t take in more calories than we burn, and we consistently put significant mechanical stress on our bones, then we won’t be fat, we won’t have so many broken hips nor see such widespread occurrences of type-2 diabetes.
It would all be so easy if we had not inherited the lazy gene.
In third world countries there’s a different story. If fat third world kids means that people who used to live on subsistence diets are now getting enough to eat; my preference would be fat kids over malnourished, rail thin kids, any time.
34: Josh -
Read the Taubes. It has a couple versions of a low / no carb diet in the back. I’ve been doing the fat boy yo yo diet for a lifetime and this is the first thing I have ever done that I am not hungry or starving myself. You don’t count calories. You don’t pay any attention to them, as some calories are better than others. You keep the carb number as low to zero as possible and try to keep fiber up. You get most of your energy from eating meat, eggs and fat. It works. Amazon and Taubes link follow. Cheers -
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-Vintage/dp/0307474259/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334864622&sr=1-1
http://garytaubes.com/
RWE @ #6,
Thanks for the reminder of the Doolittle Raid.
My dad was an aviation chief ordnanceman’s mate on the Hornet (CV-8) along with 3,000 other sailors and officers who supported that mission. He served with them until the day the ship was sunk in the battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October of 1942. (Lived a long happy life after, too.)
On impulse, I did a search on Navy Crosses awarded to crew of the Hornet, and found that my dad was only one of almost thirty of the Hornet’s complement awarded that medal. The same website lists HUNDREDS of others who died in action in the months between December 07 1941 and the Hornet’s sinking.
I think I finally understand why my dad and so many others honored for their actions were reluctant to boast or even bring up the subject, recalling so many of their mates they knew had been just as ready to take their place in harm’s way.
With each passing year, I’m increasingly humbled by the determination and self-sacrifice of the people of my parent’s generation who went to war.
Truepeers @ 42: “But to support Fukuyama’s argument I think one only need believe that when it comes to rebuilding, the inheritors of our failures will have no alternative Utopian vision that makes much sense to them”
Fair point. However, “liberal democracy” seems to cover an overly-broad range, from a New England town meeting to the distant-from-the-people proto-fascism of today’s EU.
If I had the opportunity to advise those future rebuilders, it would indeed be to adopt a participatory form of constrained government — a “liberal democracy”, so to speak. However, a sustainable society would require a limited, strictly-earned suffrage; much more effective checks & balances on expansive government than provided in the US Constitution; total prohibition on individuals making careers out of ‘public service’; and an explicit adoption of the Chinese policy of taking the occasional corrupt/incompetent bureaucrat or politician down to the football stadium for a public execution. Whether that kind of sustainable society would fit within today’s broad definition of “liberal democracy” is an open question.
Ah, Obama’s ‘famous” Berlin address in 2008. Yeah, wasn’t that the one in which he said, “Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall!”?
If I were a European I’d want to ignore what transpired between whatever and 1946 too. Every major problem that occurred in the whole world in the 20th Century originated in Europe and every one was resolved by the English speaking people of the world. Hard for the people who created the problems but true none the less.
Obama – Clinton’s greatest contribution to History will be the End of the Pax American and restoring the stats quo ante. Once again we will have the balance of power diplomacy that was so effective in 1939 and 1914.
What is to be done? Buy a gun, buy ammunition, a good survival kit and look for a safe place to live which can survive a nuclear attack. Learn madarin and russian. Study the Quran (men only).
RE: “European Civil War”. Interesting, I’ve usually heard this term connected to the arguments that WW1 and WW2 should be treated as the same conflict (which I subscribe to) and/or that the Japanese/Chinese/etc conflict treated as a seperate one that happened at the same time (which I do not subscribe to). I’ve never heard it connected to just WW2.
48 Kinuachdrach: re EU protofascism – well the increasing bankruptcy on all levels of the EU is history’s verdict that what EUnuchs calls “liberal democracy” isn’t any longer very liberal or democratic. I agree that circumstances will favor those who look to reduce the size of government, and that this will entail relearning what is liberality in a free society.
If you look at the human species in pure tonnage, yes, there is too much. War is necessary to reduce these figures to nice round numbers. Exterminate all rational thought. Vot’O Maxim’O
Would Prof. Pinker care to comment on the fact that a Boston University grad student was murdered last night right around the corner from the library where he spoke, one of 4 killings in Boston yesterday?
Four in one day is something that Boston hasn’t seen since the Crack Wars 20 years ago.
My father, who was supposedly the fastest end in the conference UConn was in before the war, was 6’1 1/2″, 185 at the time. He would be overweight under current definitions.
I was 6’2″, 205 getting out of OCS, overworked and underfed. I’d be overweight, were I still that weight. Which I am not.
IMO, they’re ratcheting down the tables to provide fuel for another “Crisis” requiring taxes, programs and reductions in individual liberty.
Went to a “heart smart” Mexican restaurant. Waste of time. Contradiction in terms.
Pinker, Fukuyama, Ehrlich, any number of government assertions, all prove two things: First, that you can prove anything if you screw with the definitions and methodology and don’t tell anybody, and, second, there are people with very strange things to prove.
I lived in Europe for 7 years – not surprised that the EU wants to avoid conflict or publishing many dissenting views…remember, this is a unification of an area that has had many ‘civil’ wars over thousands of years. If you live/visit there, you see that the USA is much more homogenous in many ways and the idea that an EU will be like a USA is ludicrous in the short-term and a low to 50% probability in the long term.
#48 – very good idea wrt a government – limited allowing individual liberty, but quick and effective punishment to those who abuse power when they are in the position of power/societal governance
It should be noted that the video shows a description of human populations over time. It would be interesting to show how those statistics correlate (positively or negatively) with that of other phenomena such as the populations and life spans of other species or Earth resources. His prediction for a continuous upward trend, is in my mind based on very limited and historical data and supposes ever increasing human access to energy sources. Will our technological landscape keep up with the requirement for energy to sustain such an upward trajectory in human populations and average human life spans?
Julian Simon has shown that resources increase with prosperity and population. He won a famous bet with Paul Erlich that a basket of commodities would increase in reserves and decrease in price over some time period (5 or ten years, I think.)