From http://games.asobrain.com/forum/index.php?topic=2643.0:

Hello
Sorry - my english is very bad
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In your game: ( very good game )

END GAME - Farmers + finished city = 4 points
Farmers + PIG + finished city = 4 points

=> pig is unavailing !!!!! ( pig IS NOT important )
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In Carcassonne:

END GAME - Farmers + finished city = 3 points ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 3 POINTS ! ! ! !
Farmers + PIG + finished city = 4 points

=> pig IS NOT unavailing !!!!! ( pig IS important )

This is awesome. I love the word “pig”, and I love this guy’s English. The post made me laugh with joy. It’s very cute.

Aftenposten is finally getting the message out that fedme er ikke så farlig som antatt…det er verre at vi sitter så mye stille. The newspaper has generally stayed with the status-quo when it comes to coverage of “the obesity epidemic”, providing statistics about how many children are fat, how many adults are fat, which communities in Norway are the fattest, etc. You’ll still read those statistics in the article, but I think this is the first time I’ve read anything at all about the modern research being done on the subject of fat and wellness. Interestingly, the article is based on the reasarch of Glenn Gaesser, the darling of the fat acceptance movement and the author of “Big Fat Lies”. Some quotes from the article:

Fedmeproblemet er overdrevet. Det som gjør det usunt å være overvektig er ikke vekten i seg selv, men inaktivitet. Inaktivitet er mye farligere enn overvekt.

Flere undersøkelser viser at overvektige kan være like sunne som normalvektige, bare de er i god form…

En stor undersøkelse fra det amerikanske folkehelseinstituttet konkluderte med at personer som har noen kilo for mye, har mindre risiko for å dø tidlig enn de som er tynne, og at dødeligheten blant folk med fedme er langt lavere enn tidligere antatt.

Veier du noen kilo for mye, men er aktiv og har et sunt kosthold, så er situasjonen bra…

…i takt med at nordmenn er blitt tyngre de siste par tiårene, har folkehelsen også blitt betydelig forbedret. Gjennomsnittlig levealder har økt, dødeligheten av hjerte- og karsykdommer har sunket kraftig, kolesterolet har gått ned og det samme har blodtrykket, noe som gjør at stadig færre dør av hjerneslag.

Ekstremt få klarer å slanke seg uten å gå opp i vekt igjen. Gjentatte endringer i kroppsvekt er svært usunt, og det øker faren for en rekke sykdommer. All forskning viser at vekten er svært vanskelig å kontrollere, men både kostvaner og fysisk trening er lett å styre. Derfor bør man fokusere på det hvis man ønsker å være sunn…

I’m thrilled to see this message finally getting out in Norway, and in Aftenposten, no less.This article was published late Friday night on Aftenposten.no, which means it’ll probably be gone from the front page before many people have a chance to read it. I wonder if it’ll show up in the print edition.

I just found a really neat site called “WiseGeek”. At first, due to its cheesy clip-art graphics and underdeveloped design I thought it was one of those useless sites that claims to have information but instead codges its content from somewhere else or just posts links, usually dead, to other sites. I took a little look around, though, and found that “clear answers for common questions” is precisely what it provides. I’m not sure how comprehensive the list of questions is, so I’m not sure if it’s the kind of place you’d go to directly when you’re looking for a specific answer to a specific question, but it sure is fun to browse (odd information architecture notwithstanding). Check out, for example, “Are the Internet and the World Wide Web the Same Thing?”, or “What does 200 calories look like?”. Did you know Bailey’s Irish Bream has over eight times as many calories as Coke? The foods are listed in order of calorie density, and Coke is sixth.

“Natural” remedies are being removed from health food stores when they’re actually proven to have the effects they claim to have. On the one hand, I can see that if a product actually has a medical effect, it should be sold in a pharmacy, where pharmacists can counsel patients about its effects, side effects, contraindications, interactions with other meds, etc. On the other hand, plenty of powerful and potentially damaging and fatal drugs, e.g. acetaminophen, are now being sold over the counter in grocery stores. I’m guessing that the average health food store clerk has a bit more knowledge about the treatments she sells than the average check-out girl. Probably. It’s admittedly the case that the medications that are being sold over-the-counter have generally been used as treatments for years, and that their mechanism of action and effects are well understood. I find it hard to believe that acetaminophen is less innocuous than tea-tree oil, however.

I’m not a big supporter of the “natural medicine” industry, at least insofar as it promotes crap like homeopathic medicine, but it seems like the pharmaceutical industry is actively trying to screw over health food stores. I definitely don’t believe that “natural” remedies are always better than those remedies marketed by the pharmaceutical industry. But it’s unfair to an industry to require that its products are ineffective.

Perhaps most importantly, this decision reduces medical consumers’ personal agency when it comes to treating their complaints. Sure, consumers don’t know everything, but neither do doctors. I’d rather treat my toenail fungus with tea-tree oil than with a drug that’s harsh to the liver and that I have to take for six months. In the end, I think I’m against this decision primarily I don’t like having the choices I can make about my health limited by the pharmaceutical industry. Their actions are hardly guided by what’s best for the consumer.

Wow.

The first point I want to make is about the subject of the post, obviously. I think a lot of people, especially here in Norway, don’t really understand how deeply fat hatred runs in the US. If you haven’t been exposed to this kind of vitriol before, it’s hard to understand where my interest in fat acceptance comes from. I know it’s different here in Norway, but regardless, any time I step outside my house I expect that there is some percentage of people who feel about me like the guy in who wrote that list feels about fat people. It seems like it’s impossible to underestimate the amount of rabid hate directed towards fat people in my culture.

The second post I want to make is about the comments. Given this is a discussion about hate directed towards a group of people, someone mentioned racism. Then, since Fatshionista is so incredibly fucking PC, a bunch of members of the discrimination-comparison police squad came charging out from lurkdom to “educate” the poor soul who had the hubris to make the comparison. Here’s my favorite quote:

If I said that the discrimination faced by blacks and the discrimination faced by gays was WITHOUTADOUBT different and incomparable, would you ask me why or would you tell me I was wrong?

I think you should ask. I think you should open yourself up to the possibility of learning something new today.

Two things about this quote are typical of the way anti-racism activists act in discussions about race. First, the “WITHOUTADOUBT” part. There is no room for debate. What they believe is the Truth, it is Right, period. Second, should you disagree with them on any point (and it’s worth noting that the people being attacked by this kind of anti-racist activist are seldom bigots–they’re almost always anti-racist themselves), you are in need of being educated. Education preferably takes place by a fellow white person, as any “POC” involved in the discussion is tired of “educating” white folks. And for the “educator”, a condescending attitude is de rigeur. We whiteys need to understand that we’ll never be able to understand.

OK, I get that. I actually agree with pretty much every single tenet of anti-racism activists’ platform. The only tenet I disagree with is that black people get the last word, and their perception of any given situation is right. That’s the “WITHOUTADOUBT” part. And condescension I just despise. That’s a terrible way of trying to get someone else to see things your way–they lose face if they admit you might have a point. These attitudes turn people away from a very important cause.

Most importantly (and this was the point I originally intended to make when I set out to write this post), people learn by analogy. Telling someone they cannot compare two things, and telling them they also will never understand, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. First, how can I expect to understand even a little about your experience if I’m not allowed to compare it to my own? Comparison doesn’t mean you have to equate the two things being compared. Comparison allows you to see both the similarities and the differences. Comparison helps you see that you won’t be able to fully understand the other person’s experiences…but then, no one can ever fully understand another person’s experiences. Duh! And comparison does not have to result in a ranking of the things being compared. Finally, telling me I’ll never be able to understand doesn’t exactly motivate me to try to understand. No, telling me I’ll never understand inspires animosity. How is any of this conducive to accomplishing anti-racism activists’ goals?

I find it so frustrating to see advocates for causes I believe in shoot themselves in the foot.