JayB

Yes - that about sums it up.

Yeah, I agree it's thier business, but I don't want to pay for it. I want points or a price break on my health insurance for having a normal BMI and exercising and not smoking, etc., just like I get a discount on my car insurance for safe driving. I don't want to pay for someone else's adult onset diabetes and high blood pressure and quadruple bypass. Ditto. A matter of virtue? No. A matter of responsibility? Yes. Many life threatening conditions have an overwhelmingly genetic component. It's not all "personal responsibility" (not even half or a quarter, an a lot of cases). Are you saying that you want a price break (or you want others to pay more, same thing) for your/their genetics? If one accepts the proposition that one has as little control over or responsibility for their behavior as they do their genetic inheritance, then this line of argument might have some merit. There are untold millions of people in this country who have probably inherited traits that make it more challenging for them to avoid harming others in some fashion, yet they enjoy no special exemptions from the expectation that they will do so, unless their impairment is so severe that they are deemed insane and granted a separate legal status whereby they are no longer held responsible for their actions. There may be a certain number of persons who have inherited traits such that society cannot reasonably expect to control the quantity of food that they consume, and they would be afforded exemptions from the expectation that they do so. For everyone else - the fatter they get, the more they should pay for their health insurance. THis is a formula for an even more invasive society. Levy a health care tax on fatties and, faster than you can add curly fries to that shake, they'll class action sue or lobby for legislation and levy a tax on risky behavior that might result in traumatic injury. Remember, the fatties are in the majority. You'll also have to somehow separate out and weigh (no pun intended) the genetic component of disease. That means genetic testing for everyone...and the rampant wholesale denial of insurance that would undoubtedly result. And privacy issues? Pshah! Finally, you'll have to have a system for monitoring behavior (what did you eat today, Mr. JayB?) as part of enforcement. This would undoubtedly result in a health care system many times more expensive due to the aforementioned overhead than the one we have now; hardly a change in the positive direction for anyone. I don't know about you, but pay the same as the two tone tillies so as to enjoy the resultant benefits of a simpler, less expensive one size fits all health care system, and fight obesity through public education: the only method that really works to produce widespread, substantive change in personal behavior. These are good points. As things stand now, the insurance companies can't price risk by simply looking at your age, sex, and driving record and as an effective proxy for your driving habits, and instead had to implement systems to continuously monitor every moment of everyone's driving. It's also true that there's no price competition in this market, so the costs associated with doing so have no bearing on the enthusiasm that any particular company might have on engaging in such monitoring, and if consumers had the option of submitting to continuously surveilance or basing their risk-pricing on their driving record, this would be a matter of indifference to them. The notion that we can distinguish between behaviors that mentally competent adults are capable of regulating, and those that they cannot, and that we can make the distinction between those adults who are capable of performing the mental operations required to do so, and those who can't is the basis of quite a few of the principles that society is organized upon. It's rather odd to observe people arguing so passionately against the same principles that - outside of such a debate - govern their expectations concerning how other people conduct themselves and what they are responsible for. If people can't be expected to govern what they eat, and in what quantities - then they can't be expected to control whether they smoke or not, and the list goes on. I don't think that anyone who argues that the vast majority of people have no control over their weight actually believe such an absurd proposition. So why defend such a specious argument? Why is the idea that there are elements of one's existence that one has substantial control over so threatening?

If the costs associated with any given person's risk were all equal, and no individual had any control whatsoever over the said risks, this would make sense. Kind of like if the transcript on an individual's driving record were determined by pulling citations out of a lotto machine and assigned to particular persons at random, then it would be both fair and rational to charge every driver the same rate irrespective of the documented evidence of their driving habits.

I thought we were charging every individual for the risk they incurred? You can stay perfectly healthy with negligible injury risk riding the stationary bike and using the stairmaster And...?

So really what you and JayB are saying is you want people to be charged by risk as long as your premiums aren't affected. Typical I have no issue whatsoever in paying more in those cases where I'm a higher risk on account of my actions or choices. This is already the case when it comes to life and disability insurance, and I have yet to hear anyone wailing over the gross injustice of this situation.

Perhaps it's who I know, but I know more athletes who've required extensive, expensive, knee surgery than morbidly obese. If there's one thing that has policymakers and actuaries in a tizzy these days, it's how to contend with the costs associated with paying for all of the knee-repair bills for amateur athletes. It's actually kind of flattering when people who can't address an argument intelligently, let alone refute it, elect to respond in this fashion. True - that argument that everyone in the country participating in regular exercise that carries some risk of injury would be far more costly than the the present and future prevalence of obesity had a lot going for it.

Perhaps it's who I know, but I know more athletes who've required extensive, expensive, knee surgery than morbidly obese. If there's one thing that has policymakers and actuaries in a tizzy these days, it's how to contend with the costs associated with paying for all of the knee-repair bills for amateur athletes.

So by that same logic bulimics and anorexics should receive free care? No, I think the logic is that if you are unhealthy in any way, you don't get insurance. Insurance is permitted only for people who don't need it. It would please big business immenseley to enact this change. There's a certain irony in the fact that the word "logic" was incorporated into either post. It's actually kind of flattering when people who can't address an argument intelligently, let alone refute it, elect to respond in this fashion. Bravo.

Yeah, I agree it's thier business, but I don't want to pay for it. I want points or a price break on my health insurance for having a normal BMI and exercising and not smoking, etc., just like I get a discount on my car insurance for safe driving. I don't want to pay for someone else's adult onset diabetes and high blood pressure and quadruple bypass. Ditto. A matter of virtue? No. A matter of responsibility? Yes. Many life threatening conditions have an overwhelmingly genetic component. It's not all "personal responsibility" (not even half or a quarter, an a lot of cases). Are you saying that you want a price break (or you want others to pay more, same thing) for your/their genetics? If one accepts the proposition that one has as little control over or responsibility for their behavior as they do their genetic inheritance, then this line of argument might have some merit. There are untold millions of people in this country who have probably inherited traits that make it more challenging for them to avoid harming others in some fashion, yet they enjoy no special exemptions from the expectation that they will do so, unless their impairment is so severe that they are deemed insane and granted a separate legal status whereby they are no longer held responsible for their actions. There may be a certain number of persons who have inherited traits such that society cannot reasonably expect to control the quantity of food that they consume, and they would be afforded exemptions from the expectation that they do so. For everyone else - the fatter they get, the more they should pay for their health insurance.

How would you feel about all drivers paying the same rates irrespective of their driving history?

Yeah, I agree it's thier business, but I don't want to pay for it. I want points or a price break on my health insurance for having a normal BMI and exercising and not smoking, etc., just like I get a discount on my car insurance for safe driving. I don't want to pay for someone else's adult onset diabetes and high blood pressure and quadruple bypass. Ditto. A matter of virtue? No. A matter of responsibility? Yes.

Really?

Who is talking about virtue here? What anyone chooses to do to their own body is their business, whether that's inhaling smoke or five helpings of curly fries and washing it down with 64-oz Slurpee.

Anything that clearly assigns both the agency and responsibility away from inanimate objects that are eaten, to the people who choose to eat them in quantities that result in obesity would be a welcome step. The fact that we've taken some steps towards transferring agency away from the people putting food in their mouths, and towards the food itself is not a terribly good sign.

Bump. Indeed. I've sucked it up. Friday's ride home sucked ass. The crosswind on the I-90 bridge was fierce and I had to slow to half my normal pace. I've thrown off my sissy ways and am back to loving the suffering of fall/winter riding. I rode today as well, but NO RAIN. WTF? Bring it on, beyotch! Get any new gear?

IMO Watson's views are unfortunate, but they have no bearing on the quality or the significance of the work for which he was given the award. Seems like the case for partitioning the work from the individual is more defensible in technical vs humanitarian awards.

Heh.

Love the Fred Thompsonesque auto-congratulatory flourish that gets tethered to the end of every rebuttal, though.

If it's the only factor that they cite - repeatedly - then it seems reasonable to conclude that they are either unaware other factors, or choosing not to incorporate them into their analysis for some reason.

There also seems to be no comprehension of the fact that some "solutions" could generate more suffering and misery than the warming itself. Also that there may be ways to spend money that reduce aggregate human suffering more effectively and promptly than by curtailing planet-wide warming by a couple of degrees. Also duly noted that the matter of which discount rate to use when projecting costs associated with addressing global warming into the future has yet to even enter the discussion here. This is probably the single most important factor in determining which estimates to base responses on, how much things will cost, etc.

I just think it's kind of silly to base your understanding of something as complex as the history of the middle east in the 20th century on a single variable. While some of the appeal and subsequent political successes of Islamists in the Middle East can be attributed to "blowback" against the US in particular or the West in general, it seems quite unreasonable to conclude that there are no other legacies, dynamics, perogatives, etc operating within the Middle East that have some bearing on this question. Egypt provides a case in point. Islamists tried to kill Nasser - Mister Pan-Arab-Nationalist-and-Heroic-Defier-of-the-West - twice. Ever wonder what their motivations were for doing so, and if they might have been acting in response to motivations that had their genesis outside of a direct response to US foreign policy? Why was it that Khomeni's message, rather than that of the other factions who opposed the Shah, that had the greatest traction in Iran? Pointless tangents? I'm not so sure.

Weren't you the one mocking those not-practicing the art who profess differing opinions? Or did I just imagine your condescension? Opponents of Global Warming are fighting a rearguard action. It shows. Since the person in question is neither an "opponent of global warming," nor professing an opinion that differs from the consensus of those who are practicing the art - I am not sure where you are going with this. Great contribution to the dialogue, though.

Me, I have no problem whatsoever say it was an inevitable consequence of U.S. meddling in Iranian affairs. I was around countless brown-bag, anti-Shah demonstrations and knew more than a few highly disaffected Iranians in the movement to overthrow the Shah. And most all of these folks had no shortage of personal stories to recount relative to the savage level of violence employed by the Shah's security forces. The bottom line in Iran was we attempted to play them, and the entire region, like they were just another country in Latin America where the real roots of U.S. foreign policy lie. In fact, the last hundred years of Mid-East policy has basically been a continous disaster because we keep trying to manage and manipulate cultures and tribes in the Mid-East like they are in Central America. The essential problem however, is there are no Latin suicide bombers - Latin cultures are nothing like Mid-Eastern cultures and you simply can't operate with the same mindset in Sana'a as you do in Santiago and expect the same results. And that's basically what we've been doing again and again in the Mid-East. The Iran-Contra Affair was the recent pinnacle of this disfunctional thinking. You'd think we'd learn eventually - U.S. Mid-East policy and 'diplomacy' has been like the longest running sitcom ever for the amusement of generations of British diplomats. Hell, even our Latin neighbors are finally "getting" it, even if it took them a 100 years. Chavez, Saddam, the Shah, and Ahmadinejad were/are very much creations of a U.S. foreign policy that has been stuck in a revolving, time-warped turnstile still steam-driven by Rockefeller-era corporate sensibilities. Each decade we reap a hard bite on the ass from seeds sewn in many previous decades and yet each time we cry anew, "It's a outrage! How could this evil be happening to us!" Even more miraculously, a mirror is never at hand when we we attempt to clearly point out where the true evil lies, which is generally at our feet - we need merely look where we're aiming our gun. So, clueless as ever, the beat goes on - and everywhere in Africa and South America, that beat is backing lyrics sung in the language everyone on those two continents is suddenly clamouring to learn - Mandarin. Is it vanity or pride that keeps the American Right steadfastly blind and unable to entertain even the remote possibility that many of the affronts to the United States aren't a reaction to our successes, but rather to our excesses?. And is it stupidity or self-loathing that keeps the American Left from realizing that reactionary cultural responses to U.S. hedgemony are only rarely cuddly and good tourist destinations? And how hard is it to realize some of the basic, common sense approaches so useful for getting along in third grade would go a long way in today's world. It'd be interesting to see this model extended to the political dynamics in, say, Egypt. The rise of the Muslim brotherhood, the attempts to assassinate Nasser, the assassination of Sadat - all a response to exogenous forces? There was a long history of democratic rule in the middle east, in which repression was unknown prior to Western meddling, was there? Ditto for Latin America. Land of milk and honey from time immemorial until the US got involved? There are no endogenous forces, mechanisms, ideologies, classes that bear any responsibility for the mire of poverty, corruption, incompetence and failure that's largely prevailed there?

Incidents in question involved folks who were in situations where they'd have had extreme difficulty easing the load on the rope even for a few seconds. I wasn't dealing with completely incapacitated or unconscious seconds, in which case other measures might have been necessary - but merely folks who weren't having a good time and really wanted and/or needed to be lowered to the ground ASAP. At the time - all I could think of were more complicated, more time consuming ways to unload the Reverso, and it seemed to me that there had to be an easier way to do things. The method I proposed works (I used it to easily unlock a 160lb free-hanging load, and I rigged it up in about 20 seconds) - but Petzl's method is better so that's what I'll use going forward.

So agreeing with the scientific consensus, or at least differing to the judgments of those most qualified to evaluate the evidence, somehow constitutes a critique of the said consensus? 'kay. The larger point is that even if one accepts that global warming is real, and that anthropogenic emissions are the most important factor driving global warming - there are still important discussions that need to take place concerning the assumptions about the probable costs and benefits, the assumptions that are factored into the said analyses, etc.