Quotulatiousness

October 18, 2011

Politicians should stop lecturing us about our “obesity epidemic”

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:32

Rob Lyons in the Yorkshire Post:

I would argue that the obesity panic is greatly exaggerated, that the “cure” for it doesn’t work, and that it usually gets promoted by politicians who have no better way to justify their existence.

For starters, obesity rates have stopped rising for adults, and are actually falling for children. The latest figures from the Health Survey for England, the best source of information we have, show that in 2009, 22.1 per cent of men were obese — compared to 24.1 per cent in 2008; for women, the new figure was 23.9 per cent, as against 24.9 per cent in 2008.

In 2004, 19.4 per cent of boys aged two to 15 were regarded as obese; in 2009, that figure was down to 16.1 per cent. The equivalent figures for girls were 18.5 per cent (2004) and 15.3 per cent (2009).

Even then, what the medical profession regards as obesity and what we commonly recognise as obesity are two different things. About one in four adults is classed as obese.

Now, think about your workmates and friends. Would you really regard a quarter of them as obese? I’ll bet few of them match up to the typical picture that accompanies every story about obesity: a morbidly obese person, whose clothes are straining to hold in their tummies. Such very overweight people only make up about two per cent of the population.

In truth, distinctions between normal weight, overweight and obesity are pretty arbitrary lines, based on something called body mass index (BMI) — that’s your weight in kilos divided the square of your height in metres. BMI is not a particularly good predictor of health, except at the extremes. Those who are mildly obese have much the same life expectancy and health outcomes as those who are normal weight. Being a little underweight is almost certainly worse for you than being mildly obese.

October 17, 2011

It was “a moment of mass credulity on the part of the nation’s media”

Filed under: Britain, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:59

Cory Doctorow points out that no “adult content” filter is a replacement for parental guidance and supervision:

Last week’s announcement of a national scheme to “block adult content at the point of subscription” (as the BBC’s website had it) was a moment of mass credulity on the part of the nation’s media, and an example of how complex technical questions and hot-button save-the-children political pandering are a marriage made in hell when it comes to critical analysis in the press.

Under No 10’s proposal, the UK’s major ISPs — BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin — will invite new subscribers to opt in or out of an “adult content filter.” But for all the splashy reporting on this that dominated the news cycle, no one seemed to be asking exactly what “adult content” is, and how the filters’ operators will be able to find and block it.

Adult content covers a lot of ground. While the media of the day kept mentioning pornography in this context, existing “adult” filters often block gambling sites and dating sites (both subjects that are generally considered “adult” but aren’t anything like pornography), while others block information about reproductive health and counselling services aimed at GBLT teens (gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender).

[. . .]

The web is vast, and adult content is a term that is so broad as to be meaningless. Even if we could all agree on what adult content was, there simply aren’t enough bluenoses and pecksniffs to examine and correctly classify even a large fraction of the web, let alone all of it (despite the Radio 4 newsreader’s repeated assertion that the new filter would “block all adult content”.)

What that means is that parents who opt their families into the scheme are in for a nasty shock: first, when their kids (inevitably) discover the vast quantities of actual, no-fooling pornography that the filter misses; and second, when they themselves discover that their internet is now substantially broken, with equally vast swathes of legitimate material blocked.

October 11, 2011

“Fat taxes” are doomed to failure

Filed under: Economics, Food, Government, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

Patrick Basham and John Luik handily dismiss the potential of government-imposed “fat taxes” on certain foods as tools to reduce obesity or to change peoples’ food choices:

The obesity crusaders’ argument is that a fat tax will reduce junk-food consumption, and thereby improve diets and overall public health. There are many reasons, however, to suspect that a fat tax would be at best unsuccessful, and at worst economically and socially harmful.

For example, scientifically rigorous evidence suggests that higher prices do not reduce soft-drink consumption. There are no studies demonstrating a difference either in aggregate soft-drink consumption or in child and adolescent body mass index (BMI) between jurisdictions with soft-drink taxes and those without such taxes.

[. . .]

These results are confirmed in a study by Christiane Schroeter in the Journal of Health Economics which examined the link between food prices and obesity. The study concluded that while increasing the price of high-calorie food might lead to decreased demand for these foods, ‘it is not clear that such an outcome will actually reduce weight’.

Why do fat taxes fail? The economic answer is that demand for food tends to be largely insensitive to price. Considerable research on food prices has demonstrated this inelasticity. A 10 per cent increase in price, for instance, reduces consumption by less than one per cent.

[. . .]

Furthermore, fat taxes have perverse, unintended consequences. According to the US government’s Economic Research Service, another unintended consequence of a fat tax on consumer behaviour is that taxes on snack foods could lead some consumers to replace the taxed food with equally unhealthy foods. Adam Drewnowksi similarly found that poorer consumers react to higher food prices not by changing their diets, but by consuming even fewer ‘healthy’ foods, such as fruits and vegetables, and eating more processed foods.

A Danish study confirmed this problematic outcome, finding that sin taxes on junk foods would fail to reduce consumption by the population (that is, the poor) who consume these foods most frequently. Additionally, it found that taxes levied on sugar content — the basis for the soft-drinks tax — would increase saturated fat consumption.

October 5, 2011

The police are not subject to the rules they enforce on gun owners

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:52

Lorne Gunter itemizes some of the many, many ways that legal gun owners in Canada can be tripped up by vagaries and inconsistencies in the law:

Since Bill C-68 became the law of the land more than 15 years ago, one of the most common charges police have laid against gun owners has been for unsafe storage. The reason for this is that the federal firearms law is very unclear about what constitutes safe and unsafe storage.

Is it enough to have one’s firearms locked away in a gun safe or must they also have trigger locks installed? How secure must the safe’s lock be: strong enough to keep a thief out for two minutes? Five? Fifteen?

Is it OK to store ammunition in the same safes as guns or must bullets and shells be in separate safes from one’s firearms? Must the two safes be in separate rooms?

There are no hard-and-fast rules, so in some provinces, unsafe storage provisions have become catchalls. In Ontario, for instance, most frontline officers have been trained to lay unsafe storage charges against any gun owner whose firearm lacks a trigger lock, even if the owner had just removed the lock so he could use his firearms to defend his home or family against intruders.

These unwritten rules make self-defence next to impossible. You are permitted by law to use a gun to defend yourself and your home against an armed intruder, but you cannot remove the locks on your guns to defend your loved ones, yourself or your property unless you’re willing to be charged with unsafe storage.

Perhaps the unsafe storage rules are should be called a Catch-22 rather than a catchall.

Oddly enough, the police don’t hold themselves to the same standard that they so unevenly enforce on the citizens. According to a recent FOIA result, police forces in Canada have lost more than 400 firearms over the last three years, but no police officers have faced criminal charges or loss of their jobs over these losses. Yet another way that the police have different rules than ordinary citizens.

September 21, 2011

Not much “liberal” about Britain’s Liberal Democrats

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:45

Patrick Hayes reports from the Liberal Democrat conference:

What is the most ridiculous aspect of the Liberal Democrat 2011 conference? MP Sarah Teather’s cringeworthy attempt at a stand-up routine during her speech? Or maybe business secretary Vince Cable’s attempt to paint the current economic crisis as the equivalent of a war?

Actually, far and away the most farcical element of the four-day conference so far has been the fact that the Liberal Democrats persist in calling themselves ‘Liberals’, while at the same time announcing a range of policies that could deal a bodyblow to individual freedom. From plans to introduce parenting classes, to proposals to ban Page 3 girls and give the state powers to put investigative journalists behind bars, a rebranding as the Illiberal Democrats must surely be in the pipeline.

This trend was evident before the conference had even begun, with an unprecedented vetting of conference delegates that reportedly led to lots of members refusing to attend on the basis that the checks were ‘authoritarian, disproportionate and wrong’. Police advised that at least two individuals should be banned outright from the conference, with the Lib Dems agreeing in one of the cases.

September 14, 2011

A response to the chefs’ open letter

Filed under: Environment, Food, Health, Politics, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:42

A group of well-known chefs recently issued an open letter about the relationship of cooking to the wider world. Rob Lyons would prefer them to stick to what they do so well and avoid being pawns for dietary puritans and scolds who want us to live poorer lives:

Dear chefs,

I would like to be a great admirer of your collective works. However, I’ve never had enough money to eat in your elite restaurants, so I’ll just have to trust that you really are the best in the business. I read with interest your recent Open Letter to the Chefs of Tomorrow. It clearly expresses your views on the way you think cooking should be done and how the restaurant business can interact with the rest of the world. But what you are suggesting is just nonsense. You should stop talking to your well-off customers and the food industry’s dreadful hangers on, and get a sense of perspective.

[. . .]

Please, stop now. St Jamie of Oliver is doing quite enough on behalf of chefs to scare us about what we eat without you lot joining in. Authoritarian busybodies have spent the past two or three decades lecturing us about our eating habits. They now want to exploit your reputations as chefs to justify their prescriptions. You may be flattered by the attention, but those miserable puritans have nothing in common with you.

Good food — especially restaurant food — is about pleasure and excess. It’s about oodles of butter, oil, salt and vino. It’s about staggering away from the table stuffed but happy. The petty puritans of the health lobby want low-fat, low-salt and no booze, in mean and miserable portions. If you go along with that health agenda, it will only prove you’re not the sharpest knives in the cutlery drawer.

[. . .]

Face it, guys. What you do isn’t about food at all. You’re an expensive and exclusive branch of the entertainment industry; you have more in common with high opera than family dinners. And in that respect, I wouldn’t want you to change a thing (except, perhaps, those prices). But please don’t use your success and reputation to parrot the sickly prejudices of the foodie crowd.

September 7, 2011

Brendan O’Neill – The Riots: A Mob Made By The Welfare State?

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:14

August 21, 2011

Obama has to fight reductions in government spending

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

Christopher Taylor explains why (in addition to the mere philosophical issues) Obama will have to resist any cuts to government spending:

In other words, to fix the debt, we have to lose jobs. To trim the debt down and reduce government spending to a sane and survivable level lots of federal jobs are going to be lost. That’s an inevitable consequence of the federal government bloat over the last few decades; lots of new jobs added, each costing money. When you cut the spending, jobs will be lost. And because a lot of that debt was created by adding new jobs, the direct and obvious solution is to snip those jobs away.

And it gets worse. Blacks are disproportionately represented in government jobs. In fact, hiring blacks in federal jobs is so out of norm with the general population that NASA has the smallest over representation by only hiring 49% more blacks than are in the general population. Blacks make up about 10% of the United States population, but make up about 20% of the federal government jobs according to a 2010 study by the Office of Personnel Management.

So we’re faced with a brutal dilemma: in order to lighten the pressure of the federal government on the economy and businesses so both can breathe and prosper, we’re going to have to slash the government down in size which will result in many people losing jobs in a time of dire unemployment. And many of those lost jobs will be black jobs.

Now, which politician wants to stand up and actually do that? Which politician will vote and fight to slash jobs and fire lots of black people? And if that actually somehow takes place, what exactly do you think will happen in the press and in black America? How do you think that will be portrayed by a media which already is incredibly hostile to the idea of cutting anything in the federal government?

H/T to Gerard Vanderleun for the link.

August 15, 2011

The London rioters are not “Thatcher’s grandchildren”

Filed under: Britain, History, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:16

Brendan O’Neill has little patience for what he refers to as an “Idiot’s Guide to Social Decay”:

Is there anything bad in the world that ‘neoliberalism’ is not responsible for? The rap sheet grows longer by the day. This nebulous yet apparently nefarious ideology is said to have brought about two wars in the Middle East, an economic recession, and the general disintegration of human morality. And now it stands accused of causing the destruction of parts of Tottenham, Hackney and other English city suburbs, as commentators rush to claim that the recent riots are the bastard offspring of the zealous promotion of market values. The rioters are ‘Thatcher’s grandchildren’, says one observer, their lives shattered and brains washed by the ‘neoliberal amoral creed’ which has ‘reigned unquestioned since Thatcher’.

This claim, the outrage-heavy but evidence-lite argument that the rioting is a product of the unleashing of market forces into every area of life, captures what the term ‘neoliberalism’ represents in modern public debate: not a serious attempt to analyse or describe events, but an expression of political exasperation, a borderline childish belief that a bogeyman, in a Thatcher mask, is responsible for every terrible thing that happens. The screech of ‘neoliberalism!’ is meant to sound assertive, radical even, but really it speaks to an extraordinary intellectual passivity and unwillingness to face up to the true forces laying waste to British communities.

As to why the recently riot-torn communities have become so poor and dysfunctional, there’s been a significant change in how communities used to cope with job loss and changes in business pattern and how those changes are handled today:

It is important to note that, throughout modern history, communities around Britain have been rocked by the vagaries of the market, by the wholesale closure of industries and massive job losses. Yet they did not respond by burning cars and looting Boots. The difference today is the almost total welfarisation of these communities, the intervention of the state into every single aspect of people’s lives and social relations, with a relentlessness that would have alarmed William Beveridge, the social reformer who founded Britain’s modern welfare state. In the past, communities that found themselves kicked hard by capitalism would have reorganised themselves and perhaps fought for jobs, or simply dissipated. People, entire families, would have upped sticks and moved to other areas with better job prospects, leaving behind a town that would have turned ghostly, waiting to be taken over by some prospector 20 years down the line. Today, by contrast, such communities are artificially maintained, massively subsidised by an interfering state pouring in economic and social resources in a way that was never experienced by interwar or postwar working-class communities that also underwent economic devastation. It is this invasion of the welfare machine, the erection of permanent scaffolding around communities with little remaining purpose, which has nurtured the kind of nihilism we witnessed in recent days.

Because when the state invades a community and puts it on the welfare equivalent of an artificial life-support machine, when the state seeks to provide for people’s every basic need and even to shape their morality and parenting practices, it has a seriously detrimental impact on community spirit and social bonds. The very idea of ‘community’ becomes corroded. People become so reliant on the state that they no longer turn to their neighbours for moral and social sustenance. What’s more, the external propping up of economically whacked communities massively undermines the social wherewithal and pioneering spirit that working-class communities would have utilised during times of economic hardship in the past, either by moving on or organising themselves into a job-demanding collective of some sort. Today, when people are sustained by the agents of welfare right from childhood to adulthood into old age, from Sure Start to jobseekers’ allowance or incapacity benefit to pension payments, both their individual and collective resourcefulness become seriously weakened. The risky business of reorganising your life and your community in response to economic upheaval is discouraged, in favour of simply living a safe if depressingly uneventful life in the welfare safety net.

August 12, 2011

Gunter: Government is the problem

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:18

Not much to disagree with Lorne Gunter here, at least in the main outline:

What do Obamacare, the London riots and a possible French debt crisis have in common? They are all proof that Western governments have grown beyond all reasonable, sensible limits. All these examples, and many more, demonstrate that we have grown utterly dependent on a ubiquitous state. Without one, we are at a loss about what to do.

[. . .]

And I am not talking solely of lifelong welfare recipient or habitual EI claimants. I am talking about middle-class voters who screech at the mere suggestion that they pay a portion of their “free” health care, education or pensions. I’m referring to cause-pleaders who run to government commissions claiming infringement of their rights every time fate deals them a less-than-ideal hand. Even people who think there is a social good in bicycle paths or parks or waterfront boardwalks, and therefore a common obligation to fund them through tax dollars.

And I also mean executives who want the state to use its coercive power to limit competition or to tax money away from working people to fund massive business-stimulus programs. A CEO demanding a bailout to mitigate bad business decisions they’ve made is every bit as guilty of this as a welfare advocate who claims it is the state’s duty to provide everyone with cable television, high-speed Internet, sports for their kids and hobby supplies so no one feels isolated from mainstream society.

Governments can do some things (relatively) well — courts, policing, national defence — but the more they attempt to do, the less well they do any of the tasks they’ve taken on. Western governments have vastly extended the range of human activities they now attempt to control, regulate, or foster. As with any organization that tries to do too much, it increases the chance of failure over a larger area.

July 18, 2011

Moral outrage is a bad source of legislative impetus

Filed under: Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:53

Steve Chapman attempts to explain why the multiple “Caylee’s Law” proposals in many state legislatures are uniformly bad ideas that will become bad laws:

It was once suggested, as a general rule of staying alive, never to fly on an airline named after a state or the owner. As a general rule of sound government, it’s also a good idea never to enact a law named after a person. Personalizing criminal law usually stems from fruitless outrage at a freakish event.

Plenty of legislators are ignoring that risk. Their proposals, all going by the name “Caylee’s Law,” are an understandable response to the acquittal of Casey Anthony of killing her 2-year-old daughter. Swearing when you stub your toe is also understandable, which doesn’t mean it will do your toe the slightest good.

[. . .]

Targeting parents who fail to report missing kids on a government-approved schedule will probably accomplish nothing useful. Conscientious adults with grounds for concern already call the cops. But the change would burden police with trivial cases that would soon resolve themselves.

Already kids are reported missing at the rate of more than half a million a year, usually because they run away or neglect to tell parents where they are. A 2002 Justice Department study noted that “all but a very small percentage are recovered fairly quickly.”

But a mother whose son has a habit of absconding and reappearing could go to prison for exercising sensible patience. A divorced dad whose ex-wife gets angry when he’s tardy returning the kids from a weekend outing could give new meaning to “custodial parent.”

June 21, 2011

American history, retold

Filed under: History, Humour, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

Frank J. Fleming reminds his readers about “the principles this country was founded on”:

Back before the Unites States was an independent nation, people lived in horrific conditions under British rule. The British weren’t providing very good free health care (wait time for a poor person to get an MRI was over 200 years), they were refusing to increase taxes on the rich, and they had very few laws dictating what colonists were allowed to eat, causing many to become obese on the high-fructose maize syrup the Indians taught them to make.

So the colonists kept demanding that the British give them big government to regulate their lives and provide for their basic needs while confiscating all their wealth. “We’re stupid,” they’d cry out to the British. “Please rule us and make us do what you think is best!” But the British kept refusing, saying, “No, you guys are doing okay by yourselves. We want you to have the freedom to run your own lives.”

It was this laissez-faire attitude that led to the Boston Massacre, in which five people died of heart attacks in Boston from eating fatty foods a proper government would never have let them eat in the first place. Finally the colonists had enough of not being bossed around and decided if the British weren’t going to provide them the all-encompassing government they wanted, they had to make it themselves.

They started by throwing tea into the Boston Harbor since they determined it had too much caffeine and people shouldn’t have been allowed to drink it. Then they formed militias to collect more taxes from the colonists to spend on welfare and government works projects. The British tried to strike back by ending regulations and giving tax rebates, but the colonists were now ready to fight to make sure some large entity would tell them what to do. And many were rallied to the cause by Patrick Henry’s cry of “Give me a large government telling me what I can and can’t do while spending most of my money, or give me death!”

June 16, 2011

Apple’s lovely little pre-censorship patent

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:47

Oh, I know it’s supposedly intended to prevent iPhone users from filming at concerts and thereby depriving the promoters and performers of theoretical income, but I’m sure the technology will be used — in addition to, or instead — as a way of preventing certain kinds of citizen journalism.

The leading computer company plans to build a system that will sense when people are trying to video live events — and turn off their cameras.

A patent application filed by Apple revealed how the technology would work.

If an iPhone were held up and used to film during a concert infra-red sensors would detect it.

These sensors would then contact the iPhone and automatically disable its camera function.

I mentioned my concern to Jon, who sent me the initial link saying, “That sounds like a straight-from-Steve-Jobs kind of ‘how can we make money from censorship’ brain fart. Want to bet that the next thing it’ll allow is governments to automatically prevent iPhone users from filming police ‘doing their job’?

“Literally ‘nothing to see here’, if the technology works as they imply in the article.”

His response: “My bet is that the government application is the first we’ll see of this technology, not the next.”

Update: Oh, good, it’s not just me seeing the cloud instead of the silver lining — here’s Tim O’Reilly with the same concerns:

Doubtless in response to pleas from the entertainment industry, Apple has patented new technology to disable cellphone video based on external signals from public venues. Now imagine if that same technology were deployed by repressive regimes. Goodbye to one of the greatest tools we’ve yet seen for advancing democracy.

Think for a moment about the pro-democracy impact of cellphone video combined with online services like YouTube [. . .] I hope Apple has the guts and good sense never to deploy this technology, and instead uses the patent to prevent it being implemented by others. Yeah, right! If it were Google, that might be more than a vain hope.

Update, the second: Cory Doctorow chimes in:

An Apple patent describes a system for allowing venue owners to override compliant cameras. The patent describes using an infrared signal that compliant cameras would detect; in the presence of this signal, the device would not allow its owner to activate its record function. It is intended for use at live events and galleries and museums, and it will be a tremendous boon to policemen who shoot unarmed subway riders, despotic armies putting down revolutions as well as anyone else who is breaking the law or exercising coercive power.

June 14, 2011

Yet another call for the government to “do something”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:26

Sean Gabb dissects what is really going on with the current push for the British government to “do something” about the sexualization of children:

The argument I have been putting is fairly simple, and I have not deviated from it in my various appearances. I argue as follows:

1. It is reasonable to assume that anyone who uses the “protecting the kiddies” argument is really interested in controlling adults. Indeed, one of the organisations most active in pushing for controls is Media Watch UK, which used to be called the National Viewers and Listeners Association, and which, led by Mary Whitehouse, spent most of the 1960s, 70, and 80s arguing for censorship of the media.

2. Ratings on music videos will have no effect, as many of these things are now downloaded from the Internet. As for controls on clothing, children will wear what they want to wear, and it will be hard in practice to do anything about it.

3. How children dress and behave is a matter for their parents to control, not the authorities. Doubtless, there are some rotten parents about. But any law of the kind proposed will not be used against a small minority, but against parents in general. It will be one more weapon in the armoury of social control that has already reduced parents to the status of regulated childminders.

4. Authoritarian conservatives deceive themselves when they think the authorities are fundamentally on their side. The moment you ask for a control to be imposed, you put your trust in people you have never seen, who are not accountable to you, who probably do not share your own values, and who will, sooner or later, use the control you have demanded in ways that you find surprising or shocking. The attempted control of clothing, for example, will certainly be made an excuse for the police to drag little girls out of family picnics to photograph the clothes they are wearing, or to measure their heels to see if they are a quarter of an inch too long. Anyone who dismisses this as an absurd claim has not been reading the newspapers. That is how the authorities behave. Even when it is not an abuse in itself, any law will be abused by them.

June 12, 2011

QotD: A scene from an Australian National Park

Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Environment, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:53

A few years ago, two National Park rangers were doing a similar service while assorted tourists looked on and took their happy-snaps. The birds, whatever they were, had moved along the road a few yards when a dingo walked out of the long grass, killed one and started to stalk the remainder.

The two Rangers became embroiled in an ideological argument as to which protected specie was to be left alone. The tourists, appalled at the slaughter, then chased the dingo away. The Rangers were instantly reconciled and started issuing citations to the offending tourists for trespassing in a National Park, threatening protected species, obstructing traffic, affray, foul language etc. The tourists were told their cars could be impounded and all, eventually, got court summonses. Fines were levied and they were warned that the offences potentially carried jail time.

One disgruntled victim opined that he should have run over the Rangers and the birds. This was overheard by ‘authority’ and he was hauled into court again.

Visitor numbers at the National Park declined dramatically.

Roger Henry, posting to Railroad_Modeling_Still_Makes_Me_Grumpy@yahoogroups.com, 2011-06-11

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress