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Active player (315)
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
this must be the thread where we post youtube videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOyP44Xu5FA
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself. It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success." - Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
Drama, too long, didn't read, lol.
Player (36)
Joined: 9/11/2004
Posts: 2630
Fabian, what do you think the best solution to the growing obesity epidemic in America is?
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day, Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Former player
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 1711
Entity, pretty tough question. I think the most important thing would be to give families with children better opportunities to eat healthily. Adults can take care of themselves and make decisions on their own, what matters most (imo) is to not develop the habit of eating unhealthily as a child. Now, how to practically implement this.. I think the government should subsidize (hope this is the right word) certain foods, to make them cheaper to buy. I can definitely see how tempting it must be to buy prepared frozen dinners or fast food or whatever for your children, when it's both 20 times easier AND cheaper. Make the healthy alternatives cheaper, and the parents have an incentive to cook healthy food. In the same vein, making stricter rules for what can go into pre-cooked dinners, or what fast food chains are allowed to sell, would both make those alternatives less unhealthy, and more expensive (which imo would be a good thing). Another thing would be to start educating children in school/pre-school about nutrition and what it means to eat (un)healthily. Young children are very impressionable, and I think teaching them from an early age how to influence their parents and make them cook healthy food, etc, would definitely have a positive impact. In reality, changes like these probably wouldn't have a huge effect, but you have to start somewhere. I'm not so sure more drastic alternatives would be fruitful; as tempted as I would be to suggest just closing all fast food chains, we all know how the alcohol ban turned out in the 1920's. I don't think there's an easy fix, certainly, and changing Americans' eating habits for the better would be a long, and probably quite unsuccessful, process. Just as it is in the case of one individual, if you want to lose weight/become more healthy, you can't go on a diet; you'll just gain that weight back when you come off it. You need to change your long term perspective and way of life permanently. As long as Americans want to eat unhealthy stuff, they will. Start influencing people at an early age and make healthy alternatives more accessible, and maybe things will get better.
Zoey Ridin' High <Fabian_> I prett much never drunk
Active player (315)
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
Fabian. Would you believe me if I said that the post after the next post will create a new page in this thread?
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself. It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success." - Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
Drama, too long, didn't read, lol.
Post subject: dtm i'm from gothenburg, Sweden
JXQ
Experienced player (761)
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132
Fabian, Let's say that we exist in a world where all of our perceptions of color are different - for example, a photo negative, although that doesn't have to be the permutation from current color to new color. We could just as easily "cycle" up the rainbow one color and leave brown, black etc. the same. One question that comes to mind is: would the colors would all have the same names they do now, or all have the name of the color they used to be, or a mix of the two? Could that vary between languages? Wandering down that thought road, you might wonder if we even all see the actual same shade or not for each color, and have just become used to our view and learned our color definitions that way. Even something outlandish such as if our brains are built in a way to take these different brain-mapped colors and turn them into the mostly-pleasing colors we see today is completely unanswerable and mostly stupid but a pretty out-there question nonetheless. However, all of those questions pale in comparison to the most interesting question I can think of in this context, which is what I'm "officially" asking you in this thread: R U NOOB?
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Player (36)
Joined: 9/11/2004
Posts: 2630
Fabian wrote:
Now, how to practically implement this.. I think the government should subsidize (hope this is the right word) certain foods, to make them cheaper to buy. I can definitely see how tempting it must be to buy prepared frozen dinners or fast food or whatever for your children, when it's both 20 times easier AND cheaper. Make the healthy alternatives cheaper, and the parents have an incentive to cook healthy food. In the same vein, making stricter rules for what can go into pre-cooked dinners, or what fast food chains are allowed to sell, would both make those alternatives less unhealthy, and more expensive (which imo would be a good thing).
Subsidize at point of sale? Because right now we're actually subsidizing mostly soybean and corn at point of production, which tends to make the unhealthier food. :( Very thoughtful response. :D
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day, Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Post subject: Re: dtm i'm from gothenburg, Sweden
Skilled player (1652)
Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy
JXQ wrote:
Fabian, Let's say that we exist in a world where all of our perceptions of color are different - for example, a photo negative, although that doesn't have to be the permutation from current color to new color. We could just as easily "cycle" up the rainbow one color and leave brown, black etc. the same.
Nothing guarantees that my perception of any single color is equal to what you perceive, within your brain. However, because color is simply light reflected off an object at a given wavelength, we define a certain (range of) wavelength as being a certain color. Thus, the actual brains interpretation of a perception doesn't matter, simply the naming convention for the perception of a given range of wavelength. That said, there are humans that can already attest to perceiving differently, however, there is a physiological reason behind it. Some people lack one of the three (major) different cone types, while a rare set of females actually have a 4th distinct cone type. (Cones are split into the wavelength of light they respond to, however, recent research has shown that there are actually hundreds of cone types in an individual's eye.) So in summary... URANOOB
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Experienced player (828)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Fabian wrote:
Now, how to practically implement this.. I think the government should subsidize (hope this is the right word) certain foods, to make them cheaper to buy.
I can foresee a lot of difficulty with defining which foods to subsidize, particularly due to the amount of processing that is possible with raw foods (i.e. an ear of corn being define as healthy vs. high fructose corn syrup being unhealthy). Ironically, raw and/or fresh food is already cheaper than processed food almost everywhere, because of the incurred costs inherent to every step of processing. The more hands a food product has to go through before it reaches the consumer, the more that product costs. So encouraging people to buy bulk raw ingredient should be incredibly easy from a cost standpoint. I think the problem occurs due to the time commitment of cooking, and the lack of knowledge about how to cook properly, tastefully, and healthily. For instance, making a piece of fried chicken at home, when you know how to do it, will be cheaper, more flavorful, and healthier than buying it at a fast food chain (most people are unaware that fried foods are not particularly unhealthy when done properly; very little oil gets absorbed unless the water content of the food drops below a certain level). However, this does take time for preparation, cooking, and clean-up. With the busy lives most American's lead, I really believe that lack of convenience is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome, even if you educate people and make it cheaper.
Living Well Is The Best Revenge My Personal Page
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
So maybe we should subsidize bread machines and sandwich fixings instead of raw materials, hey? Actually, subsidies in general are dangerous business. Witness the massive corn subsidies we still have that were originally created to correct a blip in the corn supply in the 70s. Basically, once business gets a new government handout, it's going to do everything it can to perpetuate that handout.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Post subject: Re: dtm i'm from gothenburg, Sweden
Former player
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 1711
JXQ wrote:
Fabian, Let's say that we exist in a world where all of our perceptions of color are different - for example, a photo negative, although that doesn't have to be the permutation from current color to new color. We could just as easily "cycle" up the rainbow one color and leave brown, black etc. the same. One question that comes to mind is: would the colors would all have the same names they do now, or all have the name of the color they used to be, or a mix of the two? Could that vary between languages? Wandering down that thought road, you might wonder if we even all see the actual same shade or not for each color, and have just become used to our view and learned our color definitions that way. Even something outlandish such as if our brains are built in a way to take these different brain-mapped colors and turn them into the mostly-pleasing colors we see today is completely unanswerable and mostly stupid but a pretty out-there question nonetheless. However, all of those questions pale in comparison to the most interesting question I can think of in this context, which is what I'm "officially" asking you in this thread: R U NOOB?
I sort of read the first bit of the post, but decided to focus on the second bit: U R NOOB. Also a bit of what Kobold said. Entity and others chiming in, I've read about the whole corn thing happening in the US. Pretty disgusting. Clearly, if the US was to take my advice, smart people would have to be in charge and decide what's best. That's kind of a given. Implementable in practice? Well, one can dream. bossman, while I'm not saying a greater focus on education and added financial incentives to shop for unprocessed raw foods would solve everything overnight, I think it can (almost) only help. For some people, the inconvenience factor of cooking is big enough that they're willing to pay a huge premium (money-wise and health-wise) for an easy/unhealthy choice. For others, the tradeoff between time and money/health isn't as great, and if the incentives were big enough, I think they could easily be persuaded into better habits. Of course, this is quite hypothetical.
Zoey Ridin' High <Fabian_> I prett much never drunk
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Incidentally, it takes about 30 minutes to bake enough granola to last one person two weeks (and homemade granola is miles better than anything you can buy in a store). Get a bread machine and you can make your own bread from scratch quite easily, too; depending on how much bread you eat, a $80 machine should pay for itself in a year or so (figure about $1/loaf for homemade bread vs. $3-4/loaf per store-bought). My usual lunch is a peanut butter and pickle sandwich (yeah, I'm a freak) and an apple. On days when I fail to prepare my lunch and have to eat out, I definitely notice a huge difference in my alertness in the afternoon, pretty much regardless of where I go. Not to mention it's costing me many times what the homemade lunch does.
Granola recipe:

5 cups rolled oats
1 cup sesame seeds
1 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup wheat bran
1 cup crumbled/chopped walnuts

1 cup canola oil
1 cup honey

1 cup dried cranberries

Mix together dry ingredients (not counting the cranberries). Heat oil 
and honey on the stove to mix them, then mix in with the dry 
ingredients. Add any spices at this point (cinnamon, etc. -- whatever 
you add, you'll need a lot!). Bake on a cookie sheet at 350°F for 30 
minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven, pour into a fresh 
mixing bowl. Mix in cranberries, allow to cool.
That's it. Very simple. Moreover, it's very experimentation-friendly and you can be pretty sloppy putting it together (nobody's going to notice if you accidentally put in 1.5 cups of sesame seeds, or forget the walnuts, etc.).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
One reason for obesity is this: You need to go to the grocery store to buy some basic essential food products. You don't intend to buy anything else. However, on the store you are flooded by the sight of delicious-looking bakery products, candy, potato chips, soft drinks, etc. The packages are made to look alluring (the people who design packages use all the tricks in the book for this). Most people can't resist the temptation (especially those with existing weight problems), perpetuating the problem. (For the record, that realization is not originally mine.)
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
Hi, Fabian. How's life treating you nowadays? Did you find yourself a nice job you're comfortable with? In the past couple years, I've experienced many things, seen true love, become more human, felt things I've never felt before, improved my intuition and observational skills, understood myself and my life better and realized what I need to do to improve it further. Lots of interesting progress, though some of it did require a lot of painful cracking of my inner shells to let things grow. Unlike Bisqwit, however, religion wasn't involved. At the moment I'm in a huge financial pickle (both myself and my parents have taken loans, and at the moment I'm the only one of us three who has a regular job; I didn't really see this coming back in summer), the state military service is after me, and I have to get myself a second regular job to be able to support all this and some further needs financially. Still, I feel better and more motivated to do something meaningful than ever before, and this is completely awesome because changes for the better are already happening. I do hope I won't have to sell my body thanks to all of these debts, though, that wouldn't be so awesome. :D (j/k) Really hope you're having something good in your life as well!
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Former player
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 1711
moozooh, Good to hear about your personal improvement. Sounds like just the kinds of things you needed to maybe become less of a cynic, which was my general impression of you ~4 years ago. Sucks to hear about the economic hardship of course, but the change in perspective is great, and best of luck with everything. As for me, I guess I've gone through some character defining stuff too. Mostly from being in my first serious relationship, which lasted 15 months. Once I get over the feelings of resentment and bitterness, I think it has made me a better person in at least most regards. Other than that, it's mostly the same old. Still haven't got a job, supporting myself from old poker money. Still having trouble coming up with a career choice I'd feel happy with, so not much has changed on that front to be honest.
Zoey Ridin' High <Fabian_> I prett much never drunk
Tub
Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 1377
Dear Fabian, back on page ~14 you helped me with some women trouble and I just noticed I never followed up on it. Now don't take all the credit for it, but that woman and I have been together for 3 years now. Just wanted to say thank you! and because I don't want this post to lack any question: what career choices have you considered so far (besides the accountant thing you mentioned), and why didn't you stick with them? What's your criteria for a good career choice? greetings, Tub
m00
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Why is online poker no longer a viable career for you?
Former player
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 1711
Tub, Immediately had to go back and reread those posts. That's legitimately really awesome, congrats :) Very happy to hear it. As for what I think would be a good career choice for me; honestly I haven't found one yet. Having grown up making money from online poker, I've always been very spoiled in the sense that I was able to make very good money very easily. I think this has led me to look down upon basically any "legit" career move (ie typical 9-5 jobs, etc). My plan right now is to go back to college for an Civil Engineer degree, but there's no guarantee I'll actually like that; far from it. As for what I've been considering for the ~6 years since I graduated high school, I'd say a) economist (dropped out) and b) teacher (bleh) have been the main contenders. Neither seems particularly attractive to me right now though. Kermit, I'd say I've never considered poker to be a viable "career choice" for me. Even when I started playing seriously, late '03/early '04 and felt completely invincible, I still had a pretty clear idea in my head that this wouldn't last for more than 5, 10 years, max. The reason I (still) feel this way, is that online poker competition has become vastly tougher in the last ~2-3 years, while my own level of enjoyment/drive to succeed has gone down considerably. I don't play very much anymore, mostly living off saved poker money, but I still feel very confident I could make a decent living from it. The difference compared to, let's say 4-5 years ago, is that it doesn't feel like a complete cakewalk where basically no one could fail, given a reasonable level of dedication. It's a lot tougher these days, and if I didn't already have considerable faith in my playing ability, I wouldn't feel as though I could still successfully play.
Zoey Ridin' High <Fabian_> I prett much never drunk
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Every time I get down I just go look at nano's graph. But if it's no longer making you happy, I suppose that's that.
Post subject: irc is so fucking lame
Player (121)
Joined: 2/11/2007
Posts: 1522
Dear Fabby, I was thinking that I should ask you another question. So, how's your girl? Many regards, although not necessarily important ones, Alden
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
Former player
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 1711
alden, My girl and I broke up in July. As far as I know, she's very good; she found herself a new boyfriend just a week or two after our breakup and they seem very happy together from what I hear.
Zoey Ridin' High <Fabian_> I prett much never drunk
Joined: 10/20/2006
Posts: 1248
Are you happy for her or are you jealous? Do you still care for her?
Former player
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 1711
Kuwaga, All those questions might have different answers depending on the day you ask me. To cut a long story short, we were talking about getting back together and trying again until quite recently, when she sort of decided she preferred her current boyfriend after all. Without going into details, I guess that sounds pretty weird, but not really willing to tell that whole story on a public forum, since it involves other people than myself. Anyway, that experience has left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth, and while I obviously still do care for her, I also think she's.. how can I put this.. handled the situation less than optimally, which I'm not exactly thrilled with. To answer your questions, I guess I'm part happy for her, part jealous. I do still care for her, although I'm trying not to.
Zoey Ridin' High <Fabian_> I prett much never drunk
Post subject: irc i was a little hard on you last time; you are pretty ok.
Player (121)
Joined: 2/11/2007
Posts: 1522
Oh dear, didn't mean to pry. I was a little pixelated at the time, to be frank. (I prett much always drunk, so to speak.) As Homer Simpson said, "Women: can't live with 'em, can't have heterosexual sex without 'em." What is your favorite cover song? Right now I happen to be listening to Sonic Youth's cover of the Carpenters' "Superstar." Just thought you should know! For reasons.
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
Active player (435)
Joined: 9/27/2004
Posts: 650
Location: Canada
Fabian, Considering she handled the situation suboptimally I think I will have to give your movie a no vote. I'd probably give it high marks for entertainment if it were published though. How offensive did you find this joke?
Former player
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 1711
Offensive? not at all. Aggressively unfunny and eye-stabbingly lame? Around a high 8. Edit: alden, Not sure. I looked through a list of songs I listen to more than most, but I wasn't really sure any of those songs were covers.
Zoey Ridin' High <Fabian_> I prett much never drunk
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