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Study Says Stop Driving, Fatty
Detroit, 7:25 AM
Tue Dec 8
29 posts in the last 24 hours
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Study Says Stop Driving, Fatty |
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12/17/08
And with no cars, the problem is solved.
Maybe that one needs thinking through...
12/17/08
Should we discuss the fact that we could be running diesel vehicles off of the fryer-oil waste... oh wait... we can't buy those here...
and yes... we have SHIT TONS of used vegetable oil that is hauled away AT A COST from every individual restaurant location...
nope... no diesel market here...
goodbye gm, ford, and chrysler.... glad you guys were smart enough to market the same vehicles world wide... would have been horrible if you had only sold the good ones to the foreign markets....
12/16/08
12/16/08
12/16/08
1. Americans eat a lot of crap.
2. Americans don't get much exercise.
3. Americans spend a lot of time driving, much of it to places they could just as easily walk or bike.
4. Most of the world is trying to be just like Americans.
None of this is particularly good.
I live in one of the fittest cities in one of the skinniest states, and I'm astonished every day by how many people are obscenely obese. Really fat people generally aren't all that happy. And they also aren't all that healthy. They get sick, need a lot of medical care that costs me a lot of money through taxes and health insurance, and then they die early, which costs society more. And they're unpleasant to look at while they're doing it.
12/16/08
12/16/08
Didn't change my commuting habits. Didn't change my eating habits. Just bought a dog.
I'm not suggesting it's that simple for everyone, but there are a LOT of people in the US (particularly here in WI) who could benefit from the "dog diet".
12/16/08
Wait, what?
12/16/08
9 bleepin' blocks!
12/16/08
Done.
12/16/08
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12/16/08
i walk 1 mile a morning
im surprised these peoples legs still function
12/16/08
I would also try to take a bike around, but people try to kill you in Boston.
12/16/08
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12/16/08
"THAT'S BECAUSE THE COUNTRIES ARE BIGGER, YOU STUPID FUCKING HALFWITS!"
(Not you, Wes, the people who did the study.)
Of fucking COURSE we drive more! A friend just got back from England, she walked everywhere because she COULD. I have to drive to work because my work is 80 kms from my home, and the only thing in between is a whole lot of Canola field. If I wanted to walk somewhere to get groceries, for instance, I'd be walking for about an hour and a half, two hours, just to get there, then buy my groceries, then walk back. By the time that's done, I've used my whole goddamn day.
When a country has lots of space, as Canada and the US do, we spread out, which means things are further away, which means we have to drive to them. I'm going home for the Holidays, and if I were in Europe, it would be like driving from Belgium to Poland, and I make that trip regularly for a long weekend. If I were still in my old hometown, I would be driving from Brussels to Kiev.
Why the hell do you think we drive more?
12/16/08
12/16/08
I find it sad when i see a queue of people waiting for their Burger King drive thru,they order the large meal & to make themselves feel better they order a fucking diet coke with it.
12/16/08
12/16/08
That's not really the point, though. Your tiny little country holds, what, 200 million people? Canada holds 30 million.If we spread out evenly over the country, the next person would be around 500m away from me. When you've got that much space, why would you build upwards? Why not build outwards? And just keep going?
12/16/08
All I know is that I'm living right near campus at UW-Madison while I work on my Masters, and I probably average about 1.5 miles of walking a day, and in the semester I've been here my average weight has dropped about 5 lbs. Plus, I haven't changed my diet at all.
Really, if you live so far from everything that you have to drive everywhere, it might be time to relocate or you might need to do something extra to keep healthy.
12/16/08
12/16/08
See, I've always had to laugh when people give the "well, if it's so far away, why don't you move closer?" response. Let me flip that around. If the US has so many problems with guns, crime, violence, lack of health care, poverty, Texans, etc, then why don't you just move to Canada? Or Europe? Uh, because it's not a realistic option?
I live where I do because it is the most plausible place for me TO live. If there were a place that was more convenient for me, I would live THERE instead. My point is that it's not a fair comparison to look at Europe and North America without considering the population density equations.
12/16/08
12/16/08
12/16/08
/Says the guy sitting on Jalopnik today. Three more days til vacation. Three more days.
12/16/08
12/16/08
And, if you live in a box within a box with tens of thousands of other people (apartment in a city), I guess "move closer" is an acceptable answer, but I like my 11 acres of private property just fine, thanks anyway.
12/16/08
Now, if someone did a study saying that, for instance, because of all the extra time spent commuting in the US and Canada, that we were more inclined to stop and grab fast food because so much of our day has to be used up on travelling, then I might think they were on to something. But this knee-jerk "blame the car" mentality really pisses me off.
12/16/08
So, if someone IS overweight and doesn't live in such a place that they can walk to some places, it's their responsibility to put in the extra effort to exercise or control their diet to get to a healthy weight. Or they can just go ahead and keep being fat, but they won't get any sympathy from me.
12/16/08
Driving in on this highway,
All these cars end up on the sidewalks,
People in every direction.
No words exchanged, no time to exchange 'em
When all the little ants are marching,
Red and black antennae waving
They all do it the same,
They all do it the same way.
Candyman
Tempting the thoughts
Of a sweet tooth,
Tortured by weight loss
Program cutting the corner,
There's a Loose end
Loose end, Cut! Cut!
On the fence so not to offend
Cut! Cut! Cut, cut!
12/16/08
12/16/08
12/16/08
Admittedly, I have no sources to back up my claims, but we were looking at labour laws in Europe a while ago, and in some Scandinavian countries (and France, I think) the number of government holidays trumps ours by a huge margin, as do the normal starting amounts of vacation days granted by employers, and how long with the employer for them to increase. It's not Europe-wide. Our standard for vacations is 2 weeks when you start, and 7-10 years later it increases to 3, as well as 11 government holidays. Sweden, for instance, starts most workers with 4 weeks, I'm told, and that country has 20 national holidays, and the custom there is that most of them grant two days off, not just one. So as many as 40 national holiday days to our 11.
12/16/08
dependance on foreign oil, obesity, foreclosure signs littering the landscape, decimated formerly-great cities, no transportation advancement, crowded highways, pollution, the death of main street and local business owners... all thanks, thanks, thanks to suburban sprawl.
12/16/08
12/16/08
if Americans moved back to the cities... and vacationed in the "country"... like they used to do back in the day... back when America was THE GREATEST NATION IN THE WORLD.... it would make our country great again.
that's it - condense the population to save America. stop the energy and transportation choke that suburban sprawl causes.
let me see if i can be more succinct...
more sprawl = more bad.
oh, and buy from locally-owned stores/companies. see, what that does is it keeps the money - YOUR money - in your area, instead of sending it all to the Waltons out somewhere near where Dearthair lives. YOUR money goes to business owners who live in YOUR area and spend YOUR money back into your local economy.
this is elementary, people.
12/16/08
12/16/08
I personally advocate a pneumatic tube system employing specially trained carrier hamsters. This scheme has the advantage of producing full employment as we implement the infrastructure construction. And we could avoid nasty winter weather like ice and snow.
12/16/08
12/17/08
(i don't believe that the US doesn't have these things... i was just trying to be funny.... )
12/17/08
a good friend of mine worked at the BK lounge during high school... and he made a deliberate point of asking all drive-through customers who ordered diet coke, "do you prefer the taste of diet coke, or did you order it because it's "healthier" for you??"... (all customers who ordered a giant-sized/no way in hell is this healty meal..)
if they preferred the taste.... he'd go ahead and give them diet coke... otherwise... full strength/fewer carcinogen coke... just because you get a 32 oz. diet drink doesn't make 3.5lbs. of deepfried/barely passable quality food healthy....
wow... i'm going to shut up for a bit here and have a few drinks
12/17/08
understand your argument though... and it is a very valid point.
i, personally, would rather live way the fuck out of the way... just to have a reason to drive regularly... and be absolutely near anyone else...
as long as i'm within an hr. drive of a major metro-type area... i'll live in the middle of no-where...
12/17/08
whoah, whoah, whoah... wait... what??
11 acres, admitting to liking greasy food, and nothing about guns??????
you, sir, live in a different america than i do...
12/17/08
You're in the wrong job, mate.
I work for one of our larger enterprises, and have 30 days leave i.e. 6 working weeks.
NHS folk do better than that.
The man, he screwin' you.
12/16/08
12/16/08
12/17/08
Very high gas prices and a well-developed public transportation system, along with bike paths (everywhere!) and plenty of places to lock the bikes conspire to provide us with longer lives and more beautiful people to look at.
Social democracy for the win.