Delicious LiveJournal Links for 3-9-2010

[andrewducker]

• Is it healthier to be slim but unfit or fat and fit?
  (tags: health exercise diet)
• Margaret Atwood admits to writing Science Fiction
  (tags: scifi MargaretAtwood)
• â˜So how do you have sex?â™ and other stupid comments - coming out as queer and disabled
  (tags: lgbt sex)
• Why Doom is more like Robotron than a modern FPS
  (tags: doom games design gaming)
• DNA test could predict most effective diet
  (tags: bbc dna medicine health diet)

Comments

Atwood

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Interesting she cites old mostly-cliched films, but not any modern SF literature. We should send her a crate of talking squid.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Most studies seem to say, "We see you are fat, and have poor health outcomes. Fat causes poor health outcomes."

I'd rather see more studies that go, "Hey, fat people are certainly on the sharp end of a lot of shame and hatred. I wonder what effect that has on their behaviour and mental and physical health? Gosh, being mocked, having disordered gain/lose diet-based eating patterns and being shamed out of doing exercise seems to result in poor health outcomes. I guess we should all STOP BEING SUCH DICKS TO FAT PEOPLE, then."

[meihua.livejournal.com]

... I put that in too victim-blamey a way. I should have said, "Society targets fat people with shaming and hateful language and acts."

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Less competent medical care should be on the list-- it's all too common for doctors to assume that anything wrong with a fat person is the result of their fat, so serious problems are less likely to be diagnosed.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Yes, good point. "That's not a broken arm, that's a fat broken arm."

[0olong.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit bothered that the slim/fit article only looks at mortality and heart disease. I'm pretty sure I've seen evidence somewhere that the overweight tend to be significantly healthier in some other ways than the underweight.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

There's quite a lot on this of late, albeit mostly pooh-poohed by the fat-hating mainstreamers. However, it does apply to people only up to the top of 'overweight' and not necessarily all the way into 'obese'.

Although, for the record, it doesn't take much to make it into the 'obese' category.

[andrewducker]

If you can track anything down I'd apprecaite it!

[0olong.livejournal.com]

Here we are - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18825271.800-will-a-pastry-a-day-keep-the-doctor-away.html

'[...]when Flegal's team looked at the overweight category, they found something astonishing. Being overweight correlated with a reduced risk of premature death - there were 86,094 fewer deaths a year in this category than in the normal range'

[0olong.livejournal.com]

(actually, that's still only looking at mortality... I'll need to keep digging for more on general health effects! I thought this would be easier to find, I must admit)

[andrewducker]

It looks like the reasons behind it are pretty unknown, and it's not clear whether it's showing that BMI is flawed (for the way it covers people who weigh more because they are fit), whether heavier people are richer and have better lifestyles in other ways, or something else.

Interesting though.

DNA and effective diet

[lebeautemps.livejournal.com]

I eat according to my blood type which I presume is related in some way. Low fat on its own never worked for me, low carb did to a point. I know the blood type diet has been criticised but it works for me, not just for weight loss but for feeling good as well.

Re: DNA and effective diet

[broin.livejournal.com]

Like this sort of diet or something else?

Why do you presume there's a connection between blood type and diet?

Re: DNA and effective diet

[lebeautemps.livejournal.com]

Exactly this diet. I hope I don't misunderstand you - I presumed the link between the article and bloodtype diet as obv blood type is linked to your DNA, etc.

As for the link between bloodtype and diet, I have no firm idea. It was something I thought I'd try based on anecdotal success from others with a similar autoimmune problem to me. There have been issues of pH, antigens and digestability, but I don't think there has been any large-scale research into why it works.

Re: DNA and effective diet

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Without reading up (because I'm at work) my memory tells me that the proposed link between blood-type and diet is actually based on the concept that blood-type is related to the historical geographical location of your ancestors, and that you should eat according to what your ancestors would have eaten.

Which is a nice idea but sort of silly if you give it two minute's thought.

Maybe that's what that links says, I dunno as I didn't click it.

Diet as a science

[cdave]

Hypothesis: If I eat this way, I'll feel better, because XXX
Test: Eat that way
Result: Feel better.

The XXX isn't something one person can really test, but if it works for them then fair enough.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the Doom article. I'm going to pass it on to some tabletop rpg designers.

[matgb]

Margaret Atwood admits to writing Science Fiction In 2005, and not for the first time. I had a lit snob English teacher for A level who insisted Tale wasn't SF (and marked me down for disagreeing FFS), but there was loads supporting it as such back then.

It's a myth that she denies writing SF, and always has been. Sure, her publishers don't label it as such, and she's not that keen on pulpy stuff, but...

[andrewducker]

"MARGARET ATWOOD, author: The only reason I use that term is that science fiction often means to people Planet X, talking cabbages, you know, very far-out things, the attack of the lizard men. And that's not what I write."

"Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians." and on BBC Breakfast explained that science fiction, as opposed to what she wrote, was "talking squids in outer space."

[matgb]

OK, not a myth. So she was saying one thing to one person, and another to another, depending on audience.

Do Not Get.

Hadn't seen that quote before, and I've asked for sources from people in the past.

PErsonally, I liked Tale but can't read it anymore, and can't ge through O&C at all, it just bored me, not my style.

Ah well, contradictory stupid, which is weird.

[andrewducker]

I've not read any Atwood, to be honest. And I've mostly just been amused because of the whole Talking Squid thing, which became a bit of a meme on Ansible.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I've not read any Atwood, to be honest.

You are missing out on a treat.

And I've mostly just been amused because of the whole Talking Squid thing, which became a bit of a meme on Ansible.

It is an immensely depressing meme. Here we have one of the world's greatest writers who happens to both like and write speculative fiction and science fiction but draws a distinction between the two which is not immediately recognisable to those within the genre. The response? Ridicule, hate and fear. Talking Squid In Space and As Others See Us have become shorthand for dismissive complacency of exactly the sort they are supposedly attacking.

[andrewducker]

It seems, to me, to be a pretty silly distinction, made up so as to avoid being categorised with a particular label.

I've heard good things about Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale has been on my reading list for numerous years.

[cdave]

I read both of them recently after being leant them by a work mate who probably wouldn't have touched anything in the SF section of the bookshop, but who was clear that they were SF after reading them (hence loaning them to me).

The refusing to be labelled thing does work for her publishers.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

It seems, to me, to be a pretty silly distinction, made up so as to avoid being categorised with a particular label.

I don't think her distinction is useful and the fact she is abusing existing terminology is deeply unhelpful. However, it is pretty clear she has a specific reason for her disctinction beyond simply the fact she doesn't want her work to be labelled SF.

And really who cares? She obviously is interested in SF regardless of what she calls it. Isn't that enough? I mean, according to a recent survey of British SF writers Christopher Priest and M John Harrison don't consider themselves SF writers. Does that make them race traitors?

[andrewducker]

I don't think it's a serious problem. It's not like I'm going to shun Margaret Atwood or anything like that. I merely find the situation _funny_, which I think is an appropriate level of response.

Some other context-free and unattributed quotes:

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

"Sci-fi is sometimes just an excuse for dressed-up swashbuckling and kinky sex, but it can also provide a kit for examining the paradoxes and torments of what was once fondly referred to as the human condition: What is our true nature, where did we come from, where are we going, what are we doing to ourselves, of what extremes might we capable? Within the frequently messy sandbox of sci-fi fantasy, some of the most accomplished and suggestive intellectual play of the last century has taken place."

"I myself have written two works of "science fiction" or, if you prefer, "speculative fiction," The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake."

More.