semi random yikes

[iftsiga]

"Exxon Mobil prohibits its employees from talking on the phone while driving company cars. It did so after conducting a study finding that the braking reaction time of phone drivers is three times longer than that of drunk drivers. ExxonMobil researchers also found that phone drivers are as likely to rear-end the car ahead as drunks, and that they are unable to maintain position in their lane. As with all other studies, Exxon Mobil found that it makes no difference whether the driver uses a hands-free phone."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9443-2005Feb8.html
http://www.iii.org/media/hottopics/insurance/cellphones/

+So: phone OR drive.

Much as I hate cell phones, I'd like to see more people taking buses or trains or bikes or rickshaws or one-horse open sleighs, ideally. I am still wondering whether an item seen a few days ago about SUV drivers torching their gas-guzzlers for the insurance was true (or significant).

Today I am wondering how one goes about finding out if biodiesel/SVO fuel requires more or less energy to produce than fuel alcohol (the most efficient to produce sort. Is it butanol?). The main complaint against fuel alcohol seems to be "but we'd have to take some crops [or old corn cobs] currently fed to livestock and make that into fuel!" How about drive less and stop sticking cow chunks into your faces. The phrase "livestock overpopulation" pops into mind.

I am curmudgeonly today.

Comments

incidentally

[xauenmurph.livejournal.com]

I'm increasingly skeptical when professional articles about overweight persist in defining it by BMI. Body mass is higher if you are musclier, damn it. I also get really angry with women's charts and "test your body fat percentage" websites that tell ME to get on a reducing plan. My weight and 5'10", say, is a supermodel being fed speed and coke, not a healthy body ideal.

There is, although a correllation with many diseases, not necessarily a proven cause by "fat" (within reason) alone. Someone can be padded and yet cardiovascularly healthy. I'd very much like it if anyone was actually viewing things from an angle of what's genuinely most healthy and discarding their personal fetishes or culturally-instilled beauty standards.

Re: incidentally

[simmeringhatred.livejournal.com]

Diet Coke, surely?
All those sorts of newspaper pieces are not science, or news, but Marketing. The only cure is to go out and spend more.
The kind of people who get sleep apnoea from weight are unmistakably an unhealthy size. Its not a BMI thing, or an ideal body shape thing, its being unable to ever get a good nights sleep because your lungs cannot function optimally when lying down.