OBESITY VS. SMOKING

I know it is commonly stated that correlation does not equal causation. However, today while sitting in McDonalds I was watching a few people outside the restaurant smoking, and I began to question that assertion.

One statistic that is commonly reported all over the world is that the number of obese people is on the rise. I believe this is true, but I think that our perception of the problem is probably a little skewed. Advertisements and media put unrealistic images in our minds about acceptable body types, and all around the world people are actually becoming economically advantaged enough to eat a proper diet.

Yet I believe there is another significant contributing factor to the world's obesity problem, and nobody wants to talk about it. The amazing correlation, at least in the U.S., is that the increase in obesity is almost directly proportional to the number of people who have stopped smoking. I first started to notice this in China, a land where almost everyone smokes and almost everyone supplements their diet with large quantities of oily food.

Take a look at some statistics from the United States. Here is a graph of the increase in obesity from the West Virginia Health Statistic Center. The light blue line is the U.S. as a whole and the dark blue line is West Virginia.
Here is a graph from the Center for Disease control depicting the number of people who have stopped smoking in the U.S. since the 1970s.
I wish my data sets were a little better, but I think that there is a correlation here. After all, it is commonly accepted that smoking helps a person lose weight.

If my hypothesis were proven true, I'm not sure what conclusions that people could draw except that many people are giving up one bad health habit for another. However, it should fly in the face of people who want to think that the obesity problem is some endemic that suddenly arrived because of increased fast food consumption and easy access to snack foods. My ninety year old great grandmother (much older than McDonalds) talks about how she couldn't live without her "sweets and meats." On the other side of my family, I think I had a grandfather who ate gravy nearly every day of his life.

These reflections should make us question whether the government really needs to be regulating food in an effort to stop obesity. If one cause of increased obesity is a government facilitated decrease in smoking, then do governments need to intrude upon their citizens' diets too? Is the next step forced exercise or maybe mandatory salad eating. Maybe the U.S. government can replace its current agricultural subsidies with tax breaks for people who buy fresh produce.

I believe that the role of a government is not to make choices for its citizens, but rather to make sure that people are educated about the pros and cons about different choices that they might make. We shouldn't be putting extra regulations on tobacco, trans-fats, or slippery banana peels. The government should be facilitating an environment where people can learn the facts, weight the cost, and decide what is best for their own life.

WORD OF THE DAY: PHOTOJACKING

I heard someone talking about the concept of "photojacking" this weekend. It involves getting a buddy and finding some unsuspecting tourists. After that, what you would do is follow the tourists around and try to do crazy things in the background of their photos at popular tourist spots. You might pretend to have an argument, make funny faces, or stand in conspicuous poses in the background of their pictures.

I don't think I'll ever try this type of stunt. But if you get over the oddness of it, the concept still seems kind of funny.

LIVING WATERS VILLAGE, KALIMANTAN MISSION 2006

I have a few Singaporean friends that went on a mission trip to Indonesia. They posted a video of their trip.

NEW ELECTION SLOGAN: OBAMA CAN BEAT OSAMA

I'm sitting in Singapore grading middle school essays, and I just listened to NPR's morning edition on KBIA's streaming audio station. It seems like Barak Obama is generating a lot of presidential election hype around himself. Aside from the fact that he is an ethnic minority who appears statemen like and has strong oratorical skills (maybe that's all it takes), I'm not sure why this two term senator is qualified to be the leader of the free world.

However, it seems like the guy is going to make a run for the president, and he's probably cleaner than other popular choices. Even though I may not agree with his fairly liberal politics, I'm vain enough that I would like to take a moment to coin his election slogan... here it is.

OBAMA CAN BEAT OSAMA

I'm the first to say it! Hooray!

I did quick searches on Technorati and Google, and I think I'm the first blogger to ever publish this on the web. Now, who will start a meme of doctored pictures with Barak's and Osama's heads pasted over stills of Mortal Kombat video game fatalities and action movie climax scenes?

If he does run for president, I want a cut of all of the snarky t-shirts sold at the Democratic National Convention. Oh wait... I think that I registered this blog under a Creative Commons license when I filed it under Feedburner. I guess I can't be so greedy.

Link
Learn more about Barak Obama

REUB'S XANGA: THE RACIST TEST

My Filipino-American flatmate who has lived in China posted a test on his blog that helps people find out if they are racist or not. Here are a few sample questions:



3. Asian music is ___________.
A. played by only using the black keys on a piano
B. defined by William Hung
C. like english music except with more ching, more chong and more gongs.
D. Doumo Arigato Mr. Roboto and Turning Japanese
E. defined by william hung singing "She Bangs" while only playing the black keys on a piano

8. A good Christmas gift for a chinese friend:
A. a clock
B. chopsticks
C. chopsticks sticking up out of a bowl of rice
D. a taiwan independence day t-shirt
E. a white clock with white scissors and cut white flowers and a bowl of rice with chopsticks sticking up with a card written in red ink on 4/4/2004.

Link
The Racist Test

THE INCONVENIENT FALLACY

My Malaysian roommate Rajan, who is bold enough to use his real name on his blog and doesn't mind it if all of his controversial opinions are found with a simple Google search, published an account of going to see Al Gore's movie global warming film An Inconvenient Truth. In his post, Rajan tears the film to shreds, seeing only a film laden with logical fallacies and emotional appeals.

Actually, Rajan is right that it is a biased film presented with an undertone of possibly dubious political and economic motivations.  However, sadly, Rajan doesn't really understand Americans that well.  The intellectual state of most Americans is that it takes polarizing positions, sound bytes, and fanaticism in order get them to think through issues in any sort of intelligent manner (pardon the irony).

When I was at the Bangkok Holiday Inn, Aussie Dave and I would flip between news channels to see what stories were being covered and to analyze the quality of the content.  I distinctly remember in one instance when we watched the Australian news channel, we saw a ten minute clip on power company deregulation and why pending regulation prevented them from adopting green power; we switched to the BBC and watched a couple of stories about African politics and an interview with some Syrian government officials; lastly, we turned to Fox News and learned that it was the anniversary of Groucho Marx's birthday (his death was overshadowed by Elvis's), that some people in congress don't like the Iraq war, and that Kramer said some racial slurs in a comedy club.  (Don't get too cocky CNN fans, we flipped there and Larry King was interviewing Mario Lopez about his performance on "Dancing with the Stars.")

If America had a better diet of news that educated rather than infotained, we Americans might not need our information bathed in nonsense in order to process it and initiate meaningful policy change.

Link
An Inconvenient Fallacy

HOTEL SINGAPURA

I thought of this one evening while I was heading down to a K-Box for a birthday party. The birthday event was cancelled, but I guess it makes a good blog post.

Note- To all of the readers in the U.S., Singapura is the Malay word for Singapore.

"Hotel Singapura"
A parody of Hotel California by the Eagles.

On a sunny tropic island, sweat filling my hair
Sweet smell of durian, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw the Merlion lights
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
The locals stay up all night
In customs check at the causeway;
They check you over well
And I was thinking to myself,
'This could be Heaven or this could be Hell'
Mr. Brown lit up a candle and he showed me the way
In muffled voice down the corridor,
I thought I heard him say...

Welcome to the Hotel Singapura
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Where you save face
Please check out Plaza Singapura
Any time of year (Any time of year)
You can buy stuff here

SPGs are Tiffany-twisted, they want the Mercedes Benz
They got a lot of ang mo, ang mo boys They call friends
How they dance at Raffles, in never ending sweat.
And some drink to remember, but some drink just to get.

So I went down to Guardian,
'Can I have Bubble Yum?'
He said, 'We haven't had that product here since nineteen eighty-nine'
Friends with Skype are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say...

Welcome to the Hotel Singapura
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Where you must save face
Go shopping at Plaza Singapura
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)
There's a new franchise

Geckos on the ceiling,
Lemon barley drink on ice
And Lee Kwan said 'We bring expatriates here, with our own device'
And in the Istana's chambers,
The rich gathered for a feast
Want to stop population control,
But they must kill extremist beast.

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for Changi's door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
'Relax,' said an Uncle,
'Your money's good to receive.
You get PR any time you like,
But pay taxes before you leave!'

I thought that I would mention that one of the photos that I doctored came from this site, which I found using a Google search. I hope he doesn't mind.

THAILAND THANKSGIVING

One of the great things about working at an international school in Singapore is that we get to celebrate Asian holidays and American holidays. (The saddest thing is that you don't get to see your family on those holidays.) Over Thanksgiving, I went with a friend to Bangkok, Thailand. The nation of Thailand is a really great place to visit because everything is cheap, there are many things to see and do, and the citizens always seem to maintain a cheerful disposition.

Whenever I visit a new country, I've gotten into the habit of buying a Lonely Planet book and then trying to see as many sites as I can.

Here are a few pictures of my trip.

The Thai Royal Palace

A Thai Boxing Match

Cobras at the Red Cross snake farm (They use the snakes to help them create antivenom.)

Some statues at the Wat Pho Temple


A huge Buddha Statue at Wat Pho. You can't take a picture of the entire statue at once because it is all indoors.

A Buddhist Altar. I think that this was taken at the national museum.


Strange Foods!
While I was in Thailand I had some delicious food, including locust, squid, and silkworms.