Making hate and arrogance a virtue - the war on fat people

In chapter 6 of 2o2o: Our Common Destiny, we included a snarky reference to Mayor Begrich's Task Force on Obesity. We joked that maybe if we took a scale around, along with our surveys we were taking regarding the Anchorage 2020 Comprehensive Bowl Plan, we could get a grant.

But it was never a joke, was it? It's serious as a heart attack. This War on Fat People is like every other communitarian war. The communitarians have to create conflict among people so they can step in and mediate a solution. The dialectical evolution of mankind can't progress without the full participation of useful idiots. Now, Marx (wrongly) predicted the conflicts would arise globally from poor people fighting the rich people. Our people never fell for that one. So the comms looked for other avenues to create discord amongst free people. The race wars worked out well for the comms during my generation, but then all the kids started marrying each other and had babies together, and humans don't normally hate their own grandchildren.

The creative communitarians continually come up with neo ways to build walls between Americans, walls from which one side can look easily over from their loftier side and spit down on the people trapped on the other. The communitarian walls come in many shapes and sizes. For an example of Etzioni's most successful communitarian wall to date, go here: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60E37H20100115

For years the focus was on alcohol, anyone who drank in poor neighborhood bars could be accused of being an alcoholic. Then community police task forces began targeting and shutting down the pubs by haraassing the patrons. Then the focus moved to smoking cigarettes, where anyone who smoked was an easy target for children, could be banned from jobs and be subjected to all kinds of new Soviet regulations in public and in private. This helped to further destroy the genuine community meeting places, formerly called pubs and bars. (The communitarian "recovery" business is thriving.) Then the coms moved on to junk storage in yards, (perfectly timed with LA21 plans for a cleaner, safer planet, starting with the neighborhoods) and anyone who didn't have a middle class home with a perfectly manicured yard was labled a pig.

Over the last decade spent studying communitarianism, I have learned to hate evolved, skinny robots who use food as a weapon against humans who've remained human. Communitarian behavior modifications are already so much a part of American culture that we all go around as either accusors or defending ourselves against accusations of being someone "bad," only because we are not robotlike in our appearance or thinking. And connecting obesity to health care costs is brilliant since that's the most convoluted scam they've presented to the already confused public.

When I first warned Nancy Rising, a Seattle Democrat about the inside home inspections planned by our neighborhood action team, she replied, "Oh my, they'll arrest me for my house!" We laughed, because the absurdity of teams of inspectors entering her privately owned home in Bellevue was just too far out there to be taken seriously.

Fed up with fat and saying something about it
As obesity rates rise alongside healthcare costs, slimmer people are saying enough already
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-fat-fatigue1-2010feb01,0,1902979.story

The war on obesity is not about laziness, it's about the right to be. I've witnessed the transformation into "perfect" specimens in many people I used to call friends, and needless to say they are not friends anymore. One observation I've made is that the most jealous and empty people I know are the ones who are absolutely convinced of their superiority and right to rule, only because they exercise. Their obsession with their own petty achivements is the basis for their entire lives. They never exercise their brains (although they've become adepts at memorizing and repeating propaganda). I always thought our minds were the only thing we could possibly count on to get better with age. Our spiritual health isn't even a consideration to these neo gods, that part of human existence is being saved for later. That veganism is a religious cult is still hidden from most people, especially the ones who practice it! Like Obama says, Believe!

Now I do love my sports, grew up on baseball and will never give it up. I'm way skinny now but I have been fat twice in my lifetime, both times because I had babies. It took over a year after my second to lose about half the weight gained, and 140 became my "normal" weight. I was ready to look like my Grandma Rose and Henrietta, grow old gracefully into a stocky woman with a big bosum for hugging grandbabies. The only reason I'm a skinny bitch now is because I starved almost to death working on the Dawson lawsuits in 2002, and then my teeth started falling out. Which, in today's American communitarian consciousness, makes me just a crackhead.

My whole lifestyle has been under constant attack from people who cannot read and therefore can never understand why I devoted my life to studying and exposing communitarianism. I gave up everything, a modern home, a good paying job, entertainment, and regular meals to defend legitimate constitutional American law that protects individual natural born rights. It's a real Catch-22 to have to defend the communitarian thinker's rights along with everyone whose rights have been attacked by these very same individuals.

So yes I know that to hate these people I am making myself part of the dialectic. But I hate them anyway, and so much so that am putting them on the top of my list, above Etzioni and W.I.S.E. And again, Consuelo has provided me with a reason to write another article... thanks Consuelo! :)

Added February 11, 2010 (forward from Consuelo)

CNSNews.com

Experimental Devices Keep Track of Eating, Exercise Habits of Overweight People
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
By Alicia Chang, Associated Press

Alhambra, Calif. (AP) - The fight against fat is going high-tech. To get an inside look at eating and exercise habits, scientists are developing wearable wireless sensors to monitor overweight and obese people as they go about their daily lives.

The experimental devices are designed to keep track of how many minutes they work out, how much food they consume and even whether they are at a fast-food joint when they should be in the park. The goal is to cut down on self-reported answers that often cover up what's really happening.

In a lab in this Los Angeles suburb, two overweight teenagers help test the devices by taking turns sitting, standing, lying down, running on a treadmill and playing Wii. As music thumps in the background, wireless sensors on their chests record their heart rates, stress levels and amount of physical activity. The information is sent to a cell phone.

"I can't feel my legs," 15-year-old Amorette Castillo groans after her second treadmill run.

Traditional weight-loss interventions rely mainly on people's memory of what they ate for dinner and how many minutes they worked out. But researchers have long known that method can be unreliable since people often forget details or lie.

The new devices are being designed in labs or created with off-the-shelf parts. Some similar instruments are already on the market, including a model that tracks calories burned by measuring motion, sweat and heat with armbands.

But the devices in development aim to be more sophisticated by featuring more precise electronics and sometimes even video cameras. Many emerging systems also strive to provide instant feedback and personalized treatment for wearers.

At the University of Southern California lab, the teens alternated between being sedentary and active as researchers resolved the technical bugs. Later this year, some will wear the body sensors at home on weekends. If they get too lazy, they will get pinged with a text message.

"We'll be able to know real-time if they're inactive, if they're active," said Donna Spruijt-Metz, a USC child obesity expert in charge of the project.

The devices are made possible by advances in technology such as accelerometers that can measure the duration and intensity of a workout. They also use Bluetooth-enabled cell phones that can take pictures of meals and send information back.

Will all this wizardry lead to a slimmer society? Scientists say there's reason to hope. Getting an accurate picture of what people eat and how often they move around will help researchers develop personalized weight-loss advice.

Obesity is epidemic in the United States with two-thirds of adults either overweight or obese. It's a major health concern for children and adolescents, who are at higher risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes as they grow older.

A federally funded pilot project by the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana is exploring whether people can lose more weight when tracked by technology.

Participants carry around Blackberry Curves to snap pictures of their meals and leftovers. They also wear a quarter-sized device on their shoe that counts the number of steps they take.

Counselors pore over the incoming data and give individually tailored health advice through e-mail or telephone. Every month, the participants get their weight checked, and their progress is compared against a separate group that receives only generic health tips.

The study involves just seven people, but researchers eventually hope to have 40.

"It's highly personalized. You get feedback very quickly," said Corby Martin, who heads Pennington's Ingestive Behavior Laboratory.

By using technology to capture eating and exercise details, researchers hope to bypass self-reporting that can sometimes give an incomplete picture.

But some medical experts are concerned about ethical questions. Even if people agree to be tracked, researchers worry about intruding into the rest of their lives and the lives of those around them.

"As a researcher, I'm a professional voyeur, and I like to find out whatever I can about human subjects," said William McCarthy, a professor of public health and psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. "But if I were a subject, I'd be concerned about the level of detail that's being captured about my behavior from moment to moment."

University of Pittsburgh engineer Mingui Sun has developed a necklace equipped with a video camera that records where a person goes and what he or she eats. Before a researcher sees the data, it's filtered by a computer that blurs out other people's faces.

The device is not smart enough to know whether the wearer ate a Big Mac or tofu. So a researcher inputs the food, and the computer calculates the portion size, calories and nutrients.

Sun's lab workers are wearing the prototype, and he hopes to test it on real people by the middle of the year.

Another concern is whether people, particularly youngsters, will stick with it.

Fellow Pittsburgh researcher Dana Rofey recently completed a study of 20 overweight female preteens and teens who wore armbands tracking the number of steps taken and calories burned daily.

Researchers found the armbands were worn 75 percent of the time. Though the study did not include a comparison group, researchers were pleased with the high compliance rate.

On a recent weekday, Castillo and another study volunteer, 13-year-old Eric Carles, headed straight from school to the USC lab, where they strapped the sensors on and went through a sort of circuit training. The project manager timed them as a postdoctoral student recorded the session through a one-way mirror.

Through periods of sitting, standing and exercising, they chatted about scary movies and upcoming exams. Wearing the devices felt "weird" to Castillo initially, but she has since grown used to it.

Castillo admits she doesn't exercise as she often as she would like and has a sweet tooth for chocolate. Carles, who plays after-school sports, confesses he eats a lot. The teens were willing to try anything to help them lose weight.

After enduring more than two hours of required physical activity, the two were allowed to do whatever they want. Researchers called it "free living," and it offered a glimpse into the activities teens would choose when they test the sensors at home.

The two chose to play a music video game. With Castillo on drums and Carles on the guitar, they rocked out to Duran Duran and Bon Jovi as researchers looked on.

(Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)