2-WHEELED IMPROVISATIONS
Vietnamese ingenuity

These photos were recently emailed to me. As you can see, necessity is the mother of improvisation.


























The next photo shows a water buffalo being transported. A small adult will weigh nearly 900 pounds (400 kilos).





The next photo shows several roasted dogs being brought to the market. That’s correct. These are dogs. They will be eaten.





The next photo shows two hogs being transported. They will also be eaten.

AN EPIDEMIC OF OBESITY

There were far fewer overweight people in 1985 when I arrived in America. That recollection didn’t come to me until I read the following article: Ten things the food industry doesn’t want you to know.

Another investigation behind the scenes. Okay, it was worth skimming. Unfortunately, as I went down the list I slowed down. Hence this entry.

Yes, 23 years ago there were far fewer overweight Americans. I do remember that.

So I let my curiosity do the walking and I unearthed one article. It was a sign of the times and also quite disturbing.

THE WIDENING OF AMERICA

CBS News reported it in 2005. The original article links here. Here are the salient points.

Note that this article was written just before the housing bubble burst (brought about by the sub-prime crisis). Its significance? McMansions. Sorry but this is a high-context entry. These two links will explain the term but it’s up to you to connect the dots. Link-1. Link-2.

Here are the salient points:

NEW YORK, July 24, 2005

(CBS) All over America, the buzzword is big: big houses, big malls, big cars, and big Americans inside them.

“Sixty-five percent of Americans are overweight or obese. Overweight is the new average," observes International Design magazine. Designers and urban planners are creating an America that accommodates its increasingly overweight population, but you'd never know it.”

“There is tremendous profit potential out there for companies and designers who cater their products to obese people. The challenge, though, is to give them that product that allows them to function in everyday life more easily and more comfortably without making them feel disabled, without calling attention to themselves. Fat is a four-letter word.”

One of the most common ways of making overweight people feel smaller is by expanding the world around them. Architectural designers call it “framing.”

“A person who is big does not want to look big. So if their house is bigger, they will look of a more average proportion.”

Big homes, bathrooms, beds and cars can provide a large frame for people in private and now, when they go out to public spaces, architectural regulations make it so everyone fits most anywhere, anywhere, that is, that was designed recently.

A stadium seat from 100 years ago like Soldier's Field in Chicago might have been 16 or 17 inches, maximum. When they designed the new Soldier’s Field the expectation for new seats was many inches more than that.

The same applies to public transportation around the country. It has become roomier.

AN INHERENT CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Now, go down that list with me. For brevity, each item was stripped of further explanation. You can read the entire article by clicking here.

Ten Things the Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know
by Adam Voiland, Oct. 20, 2008

Two nutrition experts argue that you can’t take marketing campaigns at face value.

With America’s obesity problem among kids reaching crisis proportions, even junk food makers have started to claim they want to steer children toward more healthful choices.

In a study released earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that about 32 percent of children were overweight but not obese, 16 percent were obese, and 11 percent were extremely obese.

Food giant PepsiCo, for example, points out on its website that “we can play an important role in helping kids lead healthier lives by offering healthy product choices in schools.” This page offers to provide nutrition information for all Pepsi products. The company highlights what it considers its healthier products within various food categories through a “Smart Spot” marketing campaign that features green symbols on packaging. PepsiCo's inclusive criteria—explained here—award spots to foods of dubious nutritional value such as Diet Pepsi, Cap'n Crunch cereal, reduced-fat Doritos, and Cheetos, as well as to more nutritious products such as Quaker Oatmeal and Tropicana Orange Juice.

But are wellness initiatives like Smart Spot just marketing ploys?

Such moves by the food industry may seem to be a step in the right direction, but ultimately makers of popular junk foods have an obligation to stockholders to encourage kids to eat more—not less—of the foods that fuel their profits, says the pediatrician co-author of a commentary published in the Oct. 15, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that raises questions about whether big food companies can be trusted to help combat obesity. The other author, a professor of nutrition at New York University, both of whom have long histories of tracking the food industry, spoke with U.S. News and highlighted ten things that junk food makers don’t want you to know about their products and how they promote them.

COMMENT: There is, in other words, an inherent conflict of interest. It doesn’t mean that these companies are doing wrong. It just means that there is a natural conflict of interest.

1. Junk food makers spend billions advertising unhealthy foods to kids.
2. The studies that food producers support tend to minimize health concerns associated with their products.
3. Junk food makers donate large sums of money to professional nutrition associations.
4. More processing means more profits, but typically makes the food less healthy.
5. Less-processed foods are generally more satiating than their highly processed counterparts.
6. Many supposedly healthy replacement foods are hardly healthier than the foods they replace.
7. A health claim on the label doesn't necessarily make a food healthy.
8. Food industry pressure has made nutritional guidelines confusing.
9. The food industry funds front groups that fight anti-obesity public health initiatives.
10. The food industry works aggressively to discredit its critics.

CAN WE OBJECTIVELY MEASURE THE BENEFIT OF FIGHTING THE WAR IN IRAQ?

I believe it’s possible. There’s an economic tool called marginal analysis that can do it. After reading both parts of this blog entry, tell me if you agree.

Are you familiar with the concept of marginal analysis?

It’s an economic concept that you actually apply in everyday life. We make important decisions based on the concept all the time. Let’s use a real-world example.

How many laptops would you like to have? One or two? For most people, one laptop is sufficient, would you agree? You enter a store with $10,000. This is more than enough money to buy two powerful laptops. Would you buy one or two? If you’re like most persons, you’d buy only one and either save the remainder or spend it on another toy. The additional benefit you would derive from a second laptop is marginal (i.e., minimal). That’s the reason why you probably wouldn’t buy a second one. But let’s say you bought that second laptop anyway. How likely is it now that you would buy a third laptop? You probably wouldn’t, would you? In fact, only a very few would.

MARGINAL ANALYSIS EXPLAINED

This is the concept of marginal analysis. The marginal utility (i.e., the additional benefit) you would derive from a second laptop is minimal compared to the marginal utility you would derive from a first laptop. A third laptop will provide even less utility than second.

Marginal analysis, therefore, is concerned with analyzing the value of additional benefits compared to the cost of additional resources. In this case, your resources consist of $10,000. If each laptop cost $3,000, your marginal benefit from the first laptop exceeds the marginal cost of $3,000. In other words, you felt that you gained more—a lot more—by exchanging $3,000 for a laptop. Will you feel the same gain if you bought a second laptop? Probably not. If you’re like most, you would decide that one laptop is enough. In other words, the marginal cost of exchanging another $3,000 outweighs the marginal benefit of owning a second laptop. But let’s say you bought the second laptop anyway, would you take it another step further and buy a third laptop? At this point, 99% of you would say “No.” In other words, 99% of you will decide that the marginal cost of spending another $3,000 outweighs the marginal utility (or benefit) of a third laptop.

Instead of laptops, you can substitute your weekly grocery money and your list of groceries to buy. You could also substitute your appetite. Would you fill yourself up on one dish and not leave room for another? Or would you rather have one of this so that you leave room for that.

This is marginal analysis in action and as this example illustrates, you use it every day.

Marginal analysis is useful because it determines the optimal or best combination of goods and services for a given amount of resources. How about another example? This time we’ll use your hunger as the resource. You sit down to eat. There are three kinds of equally tasty and nutritious dishes on the table. Would you satiate your hunger by eating all of one dish or by eating some of all three? If you ate only one dish, you would deny yourself the benefit of the other two. If you ate two dishes, you would have a tastier and more balanced meal. But if you ate some of all three dishes, you would have eaten the tastiest and most balanced possible meal. It’s in your best interest, therefore, to eat moderate portions of each food in order to have the most satisfying meal. Would you agree?

Marginal analysis determines the point where your marginal benefit is equal to your marginal cost. At that point, you have optimized your choices. Each dish adds to your marginal benefit. Each dish also “costs” you something in the sense that it partially satisfies your hunger.

Marginal analysis can be applied to many things. It can be applied to complex decisions. Like war. Should you wage war on an enemy or find another way to resolve your conflict?

Continued here.