Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said: “Anything that gets people more active and helps tackle obesity is a good thing in my book. This initiative is a great mix of old fashioned common sense and smart technology to track and incentivise.”Anything?
StepJockey got a £50 million government grant for that website and app. Its founder Helen Nuki says:
"The world is a gym and we aim to label it as such. It has the added benefit of cutting carbon emissions by reducing the number of lift journeys."Ah, these Brits, always leading the way. Shakespeare wrote:
All the world's a gym,
And all the men and women merely gymrats:
They have their sidewalks and their stairwells;
And one man in his time burns many calories...
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36 comments:
You'll have to get a waiver in the future if you have bad knees...
It would seem at only 50 million Euros the project is severely underfunded. Maybe America could borrow another extra 75 billion American dollars from China and show these Brits how it's done.
Boris must like those Olde Tyme "dance boy! BANG BANG BANG" videos with cowboys shooting at the feet of their inferiors.
I don't want obesity tackled.
I want it eliminated.
It is gross. I am offended by it and any fatties ought to pay me for their offense-causing fat. Moreover, fatties ought to get no medical care. They don't care for themselves, why should the medical profession care for them, unless it is to line the pockets of the rich millionaire doctors and administrators?
$75 million!
Just for starters too.
I'm in Washington, D.C. today. Lots of construction, lots of offices, lots and lots and lots.
People are rich, rich, rich in our nation's capital.
Reactionary racists, hearing Marley sing "only the fittest of the fittest shall survive," have obviously decided to become obese to showcase their fat-coded racism and anti-Marleyism.
Are you a racist? If not you shall support Marley, not his racist enemies.
That reminds me of the famous Shakespearean sonnet: "Shall I compare thee to an elevator?"
Shall I compare thee to an elevator?
Thou art more spartan and more caloric.
Long cables lift the cage up to a floor,
And standing in it hath no public physic.
If you walk upstairs for a peanut, you'll lose weight while snacking as much as you want.
One peanut per trip.
Having fun with Billy Shakespeare is not nearly as much fun as having a go at Bob...
Johnson is quite a character. He's apparently not immune to the lures of snake oil salesmen.
Elevators are counterweighted, so the trip up doesn't necessarily take any energy.
It might be zero both ways if the balance is perfect, provided you don't have to call the empty elevator.
"Having fun with Billy Shakespeare is not nearly as much fun as having a go at Bob…"
It’s nothing. It’s something I learned over in England.
"Anything" is not good. What if, to help combat obesity, I authorized people to force people with high BMIs to run on treadmills or be flogged?
"Anything" is such a dangerous thing.
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said: “Anything that gets people more active and helps tackle obesity is a good thing in my book. This initiative is a great mix of old fashioned common sense and smart technology to track and incentives.”
A small c Communist is what passes for a Conservative today in the UK. Of course the easiest way to eliminate obesity is to institute Cuban style food ration books and make it a crime to sell food outside the rationing system.
You know what this means ... SHORTS as far as the eye can see.
"Elevators are counterweighted, so the trip up doesn't necessarily take any energy."
Well the elevator motor does expend energy to accelerate, and to overcome friction. I don't know if the counterweight is selected to balance an empty elevator, or one with an average load. Although I'd agree that not using energy to ride the elevator will make very little difference; it's just not going to save the planet from heat death.
Other than that, the world is indeed a gym- one surely does not need expensive equipment to get some exercise. Although I don't see why it's necessary to spend 50 million euros to point that out.
The Khmer Rouge got people active when they ruled Democratic Kampuchea back in the 1970s. They locked up all the food, too, so by the time they were driven from the scene, there wasn't an obese person to be found in the whole country.
The Khmer Rouge got people active when they ruled Democratic Kampuchea back in the 1970s. They locked up all the food, too, so by the time they were driven from the scene, there wasn't an obese person to be found in the whole country.
We sweat and strain our hour on the stage.
@7:15 NotquiteunBuckley said...
"It would seem at only 50 million Euros the project is severely underfunded. Maybe America could borrow another extra 75 billion American dollars from China and show these Brits how it's done."
This is the best they can do. The poor brits are suffering under a government regime promising life-time austerity. They can only afford 80 million dollars worth of anti-obesity stairwell signs.
(By the way, Althouse readers, try not to be provincial: £ ≠ €.)
Hey Mayor Wimp, here are some suggestions:
Anything that gets people more active...
Zzzzzzzzzzzt.......electrify public sidewalks, stairs and hand-railings. Create dog hurdles in order to access buildings and eliminate all automatic-opening doors. Have police taser slow movers. Sporadically release zoo wild animals to prowl.
Better yet, seal up all doors to public buildings replace with rappelling equipment.
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they took the lift,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
Of the Calories they burned upon the stairwell ...
Boris Johnson is at heart just a silly fop. How he must miss his Bullingdon dining club days, when he could trash restaurants and have daddy pick up the bill for the damage.
I recall that walking a horizontal distance has a larger carbon footprint than driving it in a car, so the same is surely true walking a vertical distance versus riding it in a counterweighted elevator with an efficient electric motor. Sadly the bien-pensant world is filled with traps like this.
Were it not for the cost, this would simply be silly. Given the money, it's grotesque. It presumes the validity of calories-in-calories-out as THE weight-loss paradigm, and as a vast number of bariatric researchers (not to mention desperate overweight people) could tell you, for a lot of unhappy dieters weight loss is simply not a mathematically sterile matter of eat-this-number-of-calories-exercise-this-number-of-calories-SUCCESS,YAY,YOU'RESKINNY!!!! Besides, the actual number of calories someone is going to expend walking up a staircase is depressingly small. Walk a mile in 10-12 minutes, you burn less than 100 calories: row, uninterrupted, AT SPEED for an hour, you burn about 480 calories, eat a hamburger and you've wasted that effort and you're back in the caloric hole.
Were it not for the cost, this would simply be silly. Given the money, it's grotesque. It presumes the validity of calories-in-calories-out as THE weight-loss paradigm, and as a vast number of bariatric researchers (not to mention desperate overweight people) could tell you, for a lot of unhappy dieters weight loss is simply not a mathematically sterile matter of eat-this-number-of-calories-exercise-this-number-of-calories-SUCCESS,YAY,YOU'RESKINNY!!!! Besides, the actual number of calories someone is going to expend walking up a staircase is depressingly small. Walk a mile in 10-12 minutes, you burn less than 100 calories: row, uninterrupted, AT SPEED for an hour, you burn about 480 calories, eat a hamburger and you've wasted that effort and you're back in the caloric hole.
> Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London: "Anything that gets people more active and helps tackle obesity is a good thing in my book."
Using a punching bag burns a lot of calories. (Even the somewhat overweight boxers are quite active. The few that appear obese are actually extremely muscular.)
I thank Johnson for supporting and finding yet another reason to support my proposal to make it legal to pummel politicians.
If we're not going to provide state funded medical care to the obese (or smokers), surely we shouldn't force them to pay taxes that support said medical care.
Since the calorie count associated with stair climbing depends on the mass of the individual, we'll need scales in stairwells that read out calories per flight.
Just curious, what does Helen Nuki look like—objectively?
If she is at the top of the stairs, would I really want to go up?
Not all calories are the same though:
http://www.runnersworld.com/the-starting-line/calorie-count-not-all-calories-are-created-equal?page=single
The idea of calories in calories out is in fact a simplistic understanding of why people get fat. Sugar seems to be the bigger culprit. So. If you have 100 calories of broccoli or some fiber rich food, and 100 calories of cookie dough ice cream its not the same thing.
Therefore, what is the point of posting this information, when its not even accurate or complete.
Liposuction would also tackle obesity. Why not mandatory liposuction?
Put treadmills under everyone's desk and have the phone and computer run based on how fast you run. If you need to get a document out you better run faster!
Simple solutions.
It would seem at only 50 million Euros the project is severely underfunded. Maybe America could borrow another extra 75 billion American dollars from China and show these Brits how it's done.
why go so low tech? Just make an app for it and require everyone to download it. Have it posted on the elevator kiosks. Or instead of Muzak in supermarkets have someone read off calorie counts.
Score the skin through the fat per Martha Stewart, and I agree.
This is duck breast.
Not Oregon Ducks football which broke my heart.
Worst loss of my fan career was Oregon/Wisconsin Rose Bowl.
I really thought the cheating scandals would have been brought to light by now and I would be vindicated, like R. Wilson.
Fat people burn more calories climbing stairs than skinny people do, ever think of that one, ENGLAND?
What's the waiting time for an NHS knee replacement these days?
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