2526 Bits

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Scott Adams: "All meetings last longer than they should."

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I can't believe it's Wednesday already. I'm starting to panic. Tomorrow is shot - I'll be volunteering at the Ulster County tourism booth at the county fair. Saturday I want to go to Red Rock mountain to visit Jay, and then Sunday to the top of the mountain to see if there'd be anyone I know at the Lopez Old Home Day. And then it will be August. What the devil happened to July?

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Nutrisystem report: I'm still at 10 pounds lost. The food is mostly ok. Not great, but ok. I do have a few complaints:

1. Most of it is to be heated in the microwave. The cups or trays are sealed very tightly with plastic, which is understandable because the meals are not frozen, but have real meat in them, like canned in the trays. I have great difficulty peeling that plastic off! And if there's a sauce in there, I end up squirting or spilling it all over trying to wrestle it open. I gave up. Now I run a knife around the inside edge and just cut a hole in it.
   
2. When I chose my 28 breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks, I went through the lists and chose everything I thought I'd like, then went through and ordered multiples of certain things, because there was nothing else on the list I wanted to eat. The plan I chose included seven free days-worth of meals that they would choose for me. It never occurred to me that they'd choose from the ones I didn't order. Yuck. Wouldn't it have made more sense to double up on things I'd already indicated I expected to like?
3. I have always been very regular, once a day every day, usually late morning. On this stuff it's four or more times a day, not diarrhea, but urgent anyway. Is it possible to have TOO much fiber?

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Something I don't understand. The government is taxing cigarettes heavily because they're not good for people, so they want to discourage purchase. All that means is that poor people have to cut out other stuff (like food) to buy cigarettes.

Now there's a "let's fix obesity" movement afoot to heavily tax "bad" food, like fast food, rich food, fatty/sugary snacks, to discourage people from buying them.

I don't know if you're aware, but grocery stores in economically depressed areas are very small and very expensive. Fruits and vegetables are outrageous in those stores because of delivery and storage problems and the lack of bulk discounts to the stores. Fast food and snacks are not only cheaper, they're convenient! When you work two jobs, convenience and opening times is important, as is keeping the kids happy.

So taxing fattening foods is only going to take money from the economically stressed. It doesn't solve the basic problems of availability, expense, ignorance, and convenience.

The other thing I don't understand is howcome universal medical care is "bad" because it's socialism (I don't see that socialism is all that bad, actually), and cameras at traffic lights are "bad" because they're a privacy intrusion when you want to break a law, but taxing things to discourage people from buying them is ok. It's not. It's a government fine on a legal lifestyle choice (especially egregious because some people don't feel they have that much choice). Isn't that "Big Brother"? And an even bigger privacy intrusion?

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My season of twice-a-day annoyance is starting. The Saratoga racetrack season opened today. That means fully 1/3 of the local TV news time will be devoted to Saratoga every day until it closes. As if nothing else is happening in the world.
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