Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-27-2010

[andrewducker]

• Scientists recreate Maxwell's Demon
  Clarke's Third Law applies, obviously
  (tags: science TheFuture)
• This is why I was never any good at flirting
  (tags: comic funny flirting)
• Pure CSS 3D Coke Can
  Damn, that's impressive!
  (tags: 3d coke design programming html css)
• FT Alphaville » The bank problem in a single chart
• Whole Foods Offers Employee Discount Based On BMI
  And also campaigns against healthcare reform.
  (tags: health usa EpicFail)
• Blu-ray Maker Re-Boxes $500 Player, Charges $3,500
  Would you like some oxygen free cables to go with that?
  (tags: hardware marketing scam technology EpicFail)
• Teacher Anxieties May Subtract From Girlsâ™ Math Scores
  (tags: mathematics gender society psychology teaching)
• How the brain encodes memories at a cellular level
  (tags: brain science memory neuroscience psychology biology)
• German court finds parent liable for child's file-sharing
  (tags: law germany filesharing)
• Use Google Reader to follow changes to any website
  (tags: google rss)
• UK more liberal on homosexuality, says survey. Still 33% bigoted though.
  Some 36% thought homosexual acts were "always" or "mostly" wrong, down from 62% when the British Social Attitudes survey was first carried out, in 1983.
  (tags: gay politics uk society)

Comments

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Of course, if the boss of Whole Foods market really thought the products on offer were healthy, he'd be offering the discount to those employees who would benefit from using them.

Whilst they're a useful source of veggie food in Nowheresville, USA, the quality is terrible. Their organic dates taste of precisely nothing - an excellent way of putting someone (me) off a healthy snacking habit.

What the holy effing f*&%?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That's what I was going to say: I thought the policy was ill-thought out and potentially insulting and disastrous for all the usual reasons when I read the title, and then I saw that, in order to encourage healthy lifestyles, he proposes to offer greater discounts to people whose BMI is lower. WTF?

The advantages of offering a further discount to people who _may_ need to eat more healthily are potentially troublesome, but at least they COULD be seen as a non-judgemental helping hand. And would work EQUALLY WELL in terms of setting targets. (If you want to lose weight as an achievement, then LOSING your discount is equally an achievement. Unless there are people who are sufficiently-money tight that they can be FORCED into losing weight by holding their fiscal solvency hostage.)

I'm not great at helping people who have some (benign or serious) addiction, but I've seen both the approaches of "YOU SUCK! HERE, HAVE SOME MORE PAIN JUST TO RUB IN HOW MUCH YOU SUCK!" and "No big deal, hey, wanna hang out doing X," and I think the second works better.

Of course, I'm basing this impression mainly on the name of the company and that the products are supposed to be healthy -- assuming they're lying about the quality of their foods, then this is possibly only insulting, not necessarily worse than useless.

Re: What the holy effing f*&%?

[feorag.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that, being in a bit of a bitchy mood earlier today, I suggested to my partner that if the boss of Whole Foods Market wants to reward his skinny staff, he should give them a discount on cosmetics to put some colour back into their cheeks.