Death and taxes

Well, death brought nearer as a long-term complication of childhood obesity, that is:

• B.C. urged to tax junk-food snacks from — you guessed it! — the CBC.

This has it all: simpleminded obsolete fad-based reasoning about nutrition, ineffectual feel-good legislation, and government coercion.

The basic premise is mundane: BC’s health committee (wasn’t I just saying something about grass-eaters and committees?) wants to tax junk food to reduce childhood obesity. The devil, of course, is in the details.

First of all, let’s look at the (supposed) problem and the (proposed) solution:

The provincial government should start charging sales tax on snack food as part of an effort to reduce childhood obesity, the legislature’s health committee says.

[...]

One remedy, the committee said, might be the provincial sales tax.

“Amazingly enough, candies and confections and soft drinks are explicitly exempted from the provincial sales tax, so we’re calling on government to amend the legislation accordingly,” said Liberal MLA Ralph Sultan, who co-chairs the committee.

Sultan et al. propose that, if we start taxing candies, confections, and soft drinks — fewer children will buy them, and fewer parents will buy them for their kids. Uh, right. Have a look at BC sales taxes — please note that alcohol is taxed at 10%, rather than the usual 7%. Accordingly, people don’t buy booze in BC. (If you believe that, I’d like to offer you a fantastic deal on the Lions’ Gate Bridge.)

Does taxing something reduce consumption thereof? I doubt it — but in any case, the onus is upon the committee to show that it does, and they’ve notably failed to do so.

But wait, there’s more:

Sultan would also like to see a better system of labelling, which could warn consumers what foods are not recommended.

That works really well. In fact, I hear that since they added gruesome pictures to the “these things’ll kill ya” warnings on cigarette packages, nobody smokes any more. I’m all in favour of food labelling, but I don’t expect it to work miracles: you’ve gotta give a shit about what’s in your food to read the label. (That is, assuming you’re numerate enough to understand what the little squiggles in the box are trying to tell you.)

Okay, so we’ve covered ineffectual feel-good legislation: adding taxes to junk food will probably work about as well as the War on Drugs, at least as far as preventing childhood obesity goes.

Next, let’s cover simpleminded obsolete fad-based reasoning about nutrition. Here’s the money shot:

The MLAs are also recommending a nutrition council work with the industry to voluntarily reduce the fat, sugar and salt content of foods sold in B.C.

Uh, right. Let’s get rid of fatty food (like wild salmon steaks) and sugary food (like fruit). It’s unhealthy, don’cha know. (Somehow I get the feeling that I’ve written about this before.)

There’s a bigger problem with this article — it’s not what this asinine committee’s recommending, though, it’s what they haven’t mentioned. Yes, twinkies and cheezy poofs will make little Eric fat, but so will (for instance) fast food, TV dinners, and poor-student staples like ramen and Kraft Dinner. What are you going to do, tax everything unhealthy? Bzzt, wrong — just about everything is bad for you if you eat too much of it. I could probably get fat and sluggish eating nothing but filet mignon and steamed broccoli (and — if anyone from the BC government is reading — I’d love to try… purely for science, of course).

We’re starting to get back to the ineffectual feel-good legislation bit, here: the province can’t tax all crappy food without provoking a howling outraged uproar (I hope) , so what’s left? Fall back upon the usual suspects and pass some token legislation to make it look like you care.

And now we get to the government coercion part of this tirade: the province is trying to hit us in the pocketbook. They’re taking superficial fear-mongering and facile baseless fad-pandering, and threatening us with economic consequences if we don’t toe the line. In other words: don’t worry, the province knows what’s best for you, and they’ll manipulate the economy to (try to) make sure you do what they know is best.

Sales tax as an instrument of social control. Who’d have thought?

(I suppose I should at least be thankful that they didn’t blame video games.)

Vancouver mayor wants city with no drunks or homeless

So sayeth the CBC:

• Vancouver mayor wants ‘civil city’ by 2010

I guess we can get rid of “crime and public disorder” by “attacking homelessness, the open drug trade and aggressive panhandling” and “taking aim” at those nasty bars — “the three-block stretch of bars along Granville Street infamous for late-night drunkenness and brawling.”

Wait a sec — those are pretty vague goals, there. “Attacking” this and that. “Taking aim” at stuff. Tell me, mayor Sullivan, what are you actually going to spend money on?

Sullivan said he will ask city council to redirect $1 million of the proposed Olympic Legacy Fund toward responding to nuisance and noise complaints. He also wants to spend $300,000 from the city contingency reserve to set up a Project Civil City office and hire a commissioner to run it.

The mayor is also establishing a Project Civil City leadership council that will include federal and provincial cabinet ministers, including federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, B.C. Solicitor General John Les and Attorney General Wally Oppal.

Outfuckingstanding. Sullivan’s going to set up an office and hire a commissioner, and establish a leadership council. Oh, and spend a million dollars — presumably on cops or something — to respond to nuisance and noise complaints. Okay, I get kind of angry when my neighbours decide to hold a music festival at two in the morning, but be serious — is this the biggest issue facing greater Vancouver’s law enforcement community?

You might remember Sullivan from one of my previous posts — he’s the guy who wants to wire up Granville Street with CCTV cameras. He’s the guy who came up with this gem:

“When you’re weighing the options of civil liberties versus crime and safety, many citizens are willing in certain circumstances to lean toward crime and safety, and we need to have that discussion publicly in Vancouver.”

Yeah, Sullivan’s not exactly a champion of Liberty. Why do I get the feeling that this “civil city” bullshit is more than just a waste of money — that it’s part of a larger agenda that’s likely to take away a little essential liberty while promising a little temporary safety?

Never mind, I’m probably just being paranoid again.

Speaking of which, the boil-water advisory has been lifted. Twelve days without drinkable tap water. Many people spent many of those twelve days without power — storms are a bitch that way. Could you boil tap water without power? Could you spend a week without power and water? Yes, folks, it is reasonable to think about this stuff, even in our modern industrialized society.

Or wait, never mind, I’m probably just being paranoid again.

Beers of Vancouver, vol. 5

Enough politics for the moment, let’s move on to beer.

It’s winter in Vancouver, and that means two things:

1. People are going to go batshit over a few inches of snow, and
2. Granville Island’s going to sell their excellent Lions Winter Ale (top of the page)

Lions Winter Ale is kinda dark, kinda thick, kinda sweet, kinda strong (5.5%), and loaded with vanilla flavour. Yes, vanilla — and yes, it works. I’m not generally a big fan of flavoured beverages — I want my coffee to taste like coffee, my beer to taste like beer, and so on — but I quite enjoy this stuff. The strong vanilla flavour enhances the beer, it doesn’t mask it or overwhelm it. That wouldn’t be possible with a different kind of beer — it would be entirely out of place in a lager, for instance, or a stout. It fits perfectly with a winter ale, though.

If vanilla’s not your thing, though, you can still get Holsten Festbock, which will serve you quite well.

Blunt Object terminology: “grass-eater”

Some have complained that my use of the term “grass-eater” in recent posts may unnecessarily offend vegetarians. Well, it ain’t vegetarians that I mean to offend.

I picked up the term “grass-eater” from the esteemed John Farnam, but I didn’t pick up a concrete definition of what makes a grass-eater. (Here’s a hint: Mr. Farnam often uses the term interchangeably with “sheeple”. Jeff Cooper might also call a “grass-eater” a “hoplophobe”, though the term seems more widely applicable.)

If you’re familiar with George Orwell’s novella Animal Farm, you can think of grass-eaters as the bipedal equivalents of the sheep. The term is intended to remind one of a herbivorous herd mentality, rather than simply munching green things. Grass-eaters are known for their passive-aggressive approach to life, society, and morality.

If your first reaction to a law being horrifyingly broken is “we gotta make more laws”, you might be a grass-eater. If you believe in angels — or the Just World hypothesis — you’re probably a grass-eater. Both of these delusions indicate a desire to give up responsibility (and, therefore, freedom) to a faceless “higher” power. Grass-eaters are perfectly happy to give up liberty for a little safety — even if the only safety they get is from the consequences of their actions.

In fact, you can ward off grass-eaters simply by shouting “consequences!” at the top of your lungs, or waving a copy of Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism. They hate that.

Grass-eaters are deathly afraid of anything resembling personal responsibility. They are prohibited from assigning blame to any human being — such an act, after all, would imply that they themselves might someday be blamed for some transgression! Therefore, grass-eaters blame just about anything that isn’t animate for society’s ills — weapons, rap music, video games, black trenchcoats, money, red meat, or the hormone testosterone. They’ll put the blame on ephemeral concepts, too — generally liberalism or conservatism, but masculinity, feminism, globalization, religious fundamentalism, and secular humanism are also popular favourites. Under no circumstances may an actual human being be held accountable for his or her actions by a grass-eater.

That said, grass-eaters fear and despise people who accept — worse, seize — responsibility for their actions, future, and well-being. If you study awareness for personal security, grass-eaters will call you paranoid. If you study combatives in case your awareness fails, grass-eaters will call you a vigilante. If you store clean water in case — oh, just hypothetically speaking — runoff from heavy rains contaminates your city’s main drinking water reservoirs, grass-eaters will call you a survivalist nutcase. By taking responsibility for (gasp!) your own well-being, you threaten the grass-eater lifestyle of perpetual buck-passing and recrimination. In fact, decisiveness in any form infuriates grass-eaters — but that doesn’t stop them from complaining when their company (or their government) bogs down in endless committee meetings.

In retaliation, grass-eaters demand legislation which half-assedly provides for the lowest common denominator of common good at everyone’s expense. If you’re lucky, grass-eater legislation will take your money to buy services and provisions with no practical utility beyond making the grass-eaters feel good about “doing their civic duty”. (Guess what that means? You get to pay for it a second time, doing it right on your own dime, and thereby inviting scorn from the grass-eaters.) If you’re unlucky, the grass-eaters will still take your money to provide inadequate service, but they’ll also prohibit you from providing for yourself.

Grass-eaters, then, are those who seek to absolve themselves of responsibility for the conduct of their own lives. Alarmingly, they tend to force others to abdicate responsibility for the conduct of their own lives. Be wary.

Determinants are not your friends

Part two in my impromptu “how to teach linear algebra, you meatheads” series:

Down with Determinants!

Okay, so the paper’s eleven years old; so what? I’m just starting to realize the extent to which focusing on determinants fucked me up.

British Airways protects the children…

…from adult male passengers:

• Come off it, folks: how many paedophiles can there be? asks the Telegraph

Now, I’m not a huge fan of “won’t someone please think of the chiiiiiiiilllldrruuuuun?” paranoia and other pro-crotchfruit propaganda, but let’s think this through for a minute.

Airlines prohibiting adult males from sitting near squalling window-licking slobbering destructive Little Darlings? Not having to worry about mommy’s dearest yard-ape smearing baby formula all over my conference proceedings? Sign me up!

I heartily approve of BA’s exemplary policy, but I think we need to take it a step further. I ask — nay, demand — that for the sake of our nation’s beautiful little sproggen, airlines ensure that no adult males sit within earshot of any child not old enough to convincingly use fake ID.

After all, if it saves the life of just one child, it’s worth it!

Calgary city council loses its collective head

• Calgary passes public behaviour bylaw from the CBC

From the article:

The bylaw, which takes effect immediately, makes it illegal to spit, fight, carry a sheath knife, urinate or defecate in public or put one’s feet up on public property.

Fines would range from $50 to $300.

Hang on a sec. I can get fined fifty bucks in Calgary for putting my feet up on public property? This is such a heinous and pervasive offence that we have to put a law on the books to deal with it?

“Oh my God, Susan, that man has his feet on a table! Quick, grab the kids!”

Right. Yeah, those damn foot-resters are a real problem these days. Maybe there’s something else going on here:

The protesters, mostly from Calgary’s anti-poverty community, said the bylaw is discriminatory and unfair. They believe the bylaw targets the homeless while ignoring the root cause of the problems — a lack of affordable housing in Calgary.

Now things are starting to make more sense. The Calgary city council wants to get rid of those damn unsightly poor people, but they can’t really come out and say just that. So instead, they target behaviour they associate with the homeless, adding another six bylaws to everyday life for questionable gain. (Wait a sec. Isn’t fighting already illegal? How about a $50-$300 dollar fine for murder, while we’re at it? After all, if one law against an act doesn’t prevent all instances thereof, maybe we just need more laws against it!)

Yeah, there we go. How do you fix a problem? You pass another piece of legislation. Big Brother Government is your friend, and will fix all of your problems.

(cue rant)

Case in point: the Lower Mainland’s recent problems with drinking water. Did you notice how the government just stepped right in and, quick as a wink, cleaned up the contaminated reservoirs?

No? Neither did I.

So what you have is roughly a million placid docile people — who, lest I seem unsympathetic, committed no greater sin than believing their teachers and their politicians and their newspapers and their televisions when they said that Someone Else Will Take Care Of It, You Just Pay Your Taxes And Buy Your Happy Meals — who are assaulting each other over flats of overpriced water in little plastic bottles with pictures of anonymous mountain streams thereupon. Their illusion that they can let someone else guarantee their basic needs (in this case, potable water) is, shall we say, at odds with reality. I can understand how that makes someone grumpy.

I’m sure that, when we’ve had a chance to catch our collective breath, more legislation will be called for. Special committees will be struck and boards of inquiry will be convened. Laws will be passed against logging around reservoirs. Protests will be stirred for special deliveries of municipally-funded bottled water to particularly needy people. The passive voice will be used by this blogger to make a point.

That’ll be great, if this particular problem crops up again before swarms of lobbyists tear down whatever procedural safeguards we manage to erect. If something else happens — a three-week power failure, for instance — we’ll be just as fucked. Perhaps we should consider providing for our own well-being, given that the West Coast is one gigantic earthquake zone and all. Some clean water, some canned food, batteries, flashlights… these aren’t unreasonable things to have around the house, just in case everything goes mildly to hell for a few days.

What’s unreasonable, I suppose, is coming to grips with the fact that nobody beyond yourself can reliably provide for your own comfort and safety, then taking responsibility for doing just that. It’s a dangerous idea! First you take your grumbling discontent with the goverment (who, let’s be honest, fucked the dog over this water issue) and turn it into a little bit of action. Then, having taken a little bit of action, you find that you feel a little bit safer for having done so.

Hey, that feels kind of good!

So you take some more action, you prepare a little more for life’s little disasters, and you feel even better.  Sooner or later, you start to take pride in being able to cope just a little bit better than you could a month ago.  You start to develop confidence in your ability to roll with the punches.  And then — here’s where it gets subversive — you start to resent people who try to prevent you from providing for your own comfort and safety “for your own good”.

And who knows where that might go?

CBC still doesn’t know shit about fitness reporting

In the same way that one is horrified by a train wreck (or, say, reality television), but can’t turn away, I can’t help but read CBC health reporting. These fad-following oversimplifying buffoons just can’t seem to get it right, but they keep trying — in their well-meaning, 1950s-vintage way.

Consider, for example, this:

• Obese Nation: Statistics

The article’s primary failure? “It’s all about the weight.” Yeah, it seems that Canadians are gaining weight, and that’s bad. But more Canadians are losing weight, and that’s good. Right?

Sure. You can lose twenty pounds in just a few seconds by cutting off an arm. Will that make you healthier? You tell me. What does CBC think?

More good news: women who lost weight between 2002/03 and 2004/05 reported losing significantly more weight (4.91 kg versus 4.35 kg) than women who lost weight eight years earlier.

Delightful. Get them to start lopping off limbs and they can lose weight even faster! Gosh, think of how fit we’d be.

Let’s apply some basic critical thinking to this issue. (The feel-good relativist grass-eaters are excused from this discussion. Actually, the feel-good relativist grass-eaters are excused from this blog. Go on, get the fuck out, and don’t let the door hit you on the ass.)

Think of all the things that weigh something in your body. There’s fat, of course — and by fat I mean adipose tissue. There’s water — lots of water. There’s muscle, and connective tissue, and bone. There are all kinds of organs, most of which you’ll die without. All of that weighs something, so by getting rid of some of it, you can — wait for it! — lose weight.

The problem is, the only stuff we really want to get rid of is the adipose tissue. The rest of it is, broadly speaking, good, and we want to keep it. (It’s possible to have too much muscle — look at Greg Valentino, for instance — but that’s pretty rare, and you really have to work hard to get there.) Now, do we see the problem with using weight gain or loss as a measure of health?

Let’s say you want to lose some weight. You won’t have trouble finding weight loss methods (even those less extreme than amputation). For example, many athletes competing in a sport with weight classes (powerlifting, for instance, or boxing) will drop five to twenty pounds before weighing in by purposely and severely dehydrating themselves. Then they drink plenty of water before competing — at a much higher weight than their official weight class would indicate.

Will dropping twenty pounds of water make you healthier? You tell me.

Now let’s suppose you take a different approach: instead of trying to lose weight by any means necessary, you get a gym membership and start exercising. (Since I’ve kicked out all the grass-eaters, I think we can say “gym” instead of “fitness centre”.) You lift weights, do some cardio, maybe you start playing a sport once or twice a week. Six months later — you’ve gained ten pounds! Oh my fucking god, exercise is bad for you!

Well, no. What you’ve done is put on ten pounds (or so) of muscle, bone mass, and connective tissue. That’s a good thing, and if your doctor isn’t obssessed with the Body Mass Index he or she will probably be thrilled. CBC, however, will count you as part of the “44 per cent of men and 46 per cent of women (who) will continue to see their waistlines expand until they’re knocking on obesity’s door.”

My goodness. Quick, someone tell Matt Hughes that he’s obese. (I’d pay good money to watch Hughes beat the shit out of CBC’s health reporter.)

When I’m king, only people who can complete all of the Crossfit Girls will be permitted to report on fitness news.