melasnus

It's not an "instinct" for humans to gorge.
It is a learned behavior.

Bandoman

No, it's instinct. We need to learn not to do it.

Cellar Door

And we used to have to actually physically exert ourselves to get food through hunting and gathering. You had to burn calories to find more food. You couldn't just make a phone call and have antelope burgers delivered while you kicked back by the fire for some shadow puppet theater.

Josh-da-man

I am convinced that people process calories differently. It's something that nobody wants to admit, so they can hate on obese people.

I know kids who pound away junk food, subsist on fast food, candy, chips, Mountain Dew, and energy drinks, and sit around playing video games all day, and they're rail thin. There's no way that they're burning all of those calories. And on the flipside, I know people who struggle with their weight and have to starve themselves in order to lose weight and maintain the loss. I think that some people are just able to process our modern diet of processed, high-calorie food better than others on a genetic level.

slop101

Sure, but I think a lot of that is societal changes as well - like how now, there are so many more obese people than there were just 80 years ago, and how much more obese they are compared to the heaviest people from back then, before all this processed foodstuff.

Dan

I hate Corden with a passion, but he's fundamentally more 'correct' on this one.

brayzie

Well that's Maher's fault for using punchlines and comedy to argue his point. Maher's priority is to be entertaining and that can be in conflict with making a well-reasoned argument.

I agree with this. For a minute being rail thin was the ideal of beauty in American culture. Little by little, "ethnic" body types, big butts, thick bodies, full-figures, became more desirable in the the mainstream. Great. Women who are just a little thick, or even a bit chunky can be considered beautiful too. Body positivity and all that. But then you got people who want to hop on that trend and include obesity in the body positivity movement and I would think that's questionable and even irresponsible.

That's only in regards to public places, since second-hand smoking can be harmful and also very unpleasant for people. How are fat people producing a comparable effect?

I agree with this too, but what allowances and accommodations exactly has society made for the obese?

Josh-da-man

Airplane seats. Movie theaters. Stadium seats.

Not fun to sit next to someone who's spilling over into your seat.

Still not as bad some asshole blowing smoke in your face.

melasnus

True.

It's not about "shaming," it's about jeopardizing the health of others while in pursuit of a drug addiction.

Agreed.

Count Dooku

I believe that the concerns over health impacts from second hand smoke are overblown (see what I did there?).

In the past, people smoked like chimneys, and if you did not, you sucked it up (see what I did there?) and lived with it.

Once the health risks/impacts of smoking were established, attitudes slowly started to change to the point where if you smoked, you were ostracized. Concerns over the health risks of second hand smoke were an excuse. People's attitudes changed and more and more they did not want to be around smoke. Simple as that.

Which is basically the point I was making. Society did a 180 about smoking, and society could do a 180 about being overweight.

(And just FYI, unlike Maher, I am overweight.)

Count Dooku

I think the foremost harmful effect is that as "fat acceptance" becomes more ingrained, obesity in children becomes normalized. So what adults can say is choice they are making for their lives becomes a choice they make for their children's lives as well.

The other issue is what Maher explains. Fatness is the leading cause of health problems in the US. And there is such a thing as public health policy. In addition, more self-inflicted illness increases the demands on medical resources and insurance rates. And higher insurance rates are very unpleasant for people.

melasnus

I bow to your superior use of puns, sir.
No, I am not blowing smoke up your...

The CDC disagrees:
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_sta...acts/index.htm

Sadly, so am I...and, in my case, it led to diabetes.

Count Dooku

I was not saying that second-hand smoke was not a health risk, but I think that more than non-smokers being concerned about their health, they just didn't want to be around (smell) the smoke. They did not want it affecting their meals. They did not want the smell on their clothes. They did not want to endure the smell of something on behalf of someone else's life choice (just like I don't want to endure the smell of someone else's life to choice to wear a lot of perfume to work).

And this was a HUGE change. The idea that you can't smoke in someone's home because they don't want the smell lingering in their carpet/furniture, for example. When I was growing up, having ashtrays around the house (and a big decorative one on the coffee table) was totally normal, even in homes where the residents did not smoke, because people would visit you and smoke.

And so, this is the last I'll post about this, what I'm saying is that it is not about "fat-shaming" as bullying, it is about shifting the societal perspective that it is valid life choice that should not be viewed with any negativity attached to it. Especially, in my opinion, in the case of parents that are raising obese children.

Josh-da-man

Yeah, I remember in the 70s and 80s where someone would come into your home, light up a cigarette or cigar, and expect an ashtray to be there.

As far as health concerns over obesity go, I'd guess that most obese people are just going to keel over dead if they're going to have health issues.

Whereas smokers and alcoholics end up with things like lung cancer, COPD, liver cancer, and liver failure that are expensive, chronic conditions.

In my family, people live well into their 90s unless they were smokers or alcoholics, in which case they tend to develop health issues in their late 60s and early 70s that require constant and expensive medical care, battling lung cancer for three to five years, or liver failure. And of course the taxpayers end up paying for all of this through medicare, and these same people who curse socialism to their dying breaths are kept alive by the good graces of the government for their own shitty lifestyle choices, and they don't see the irony.

And the overweight people in my family generally outlive the smokers and drunks and are in better health.

But what really grinds my gears is that I have cousins who watch their grandparents, aunts, and uncles slowly waste away with COPD and lung cancer, yet they'll still take up smoking a year or two later.

melasnus

Agreed.

I have seen this before as well...it is almost funny.

What has really extended obese people's lives is the excellent blood pressure medication available now.
The stuff I use now is amazing in its ability to control mine.
Seen that TOO before.
Like Ron White says, "You can't fix stupid."

Paff

After the shit show last night, I might have to delete Maher from my DVR. It hurts, but that was just plain irresponsible. I'm gonna think about it before Friday.

Bandoman

Yeah, I don't get the "doesn't it seem reasonable that SOME kids get autism from vaccines?" mindset.

No, Bill. No it doesn't seem reasonable without ANY fucking evidence.

Jack Straw

I skipped over that one-on-one vaccine discussion as it didn't interest me to begin with and it went entirely too long. I know that Bill likes to have the other team on as much as possible, but Prager was just too much for me to take. Hope he never invites him back.

Paff

Yeah, that was a Greatest Hits of dumb excuses for anti-vaxxers.
"It's too much at once"
"I got the flu from a flu shot"
"Doctors get things wrong all the time"

Then giving air to a dipshit like Dennis Prager. I know not a lot of conservatives/Republicans do Maher's show, but he still manages to get some smart ones. In the politics forum, we use "but her E-mails..." as a fucking PUNCH-LINE, but Prager literally used it as a talking point in the Trump impeachment discussion.

Maher should have called security and had him escorted off the stage.

Eric F

Oh boy, that was terrible. I'm done with the show completely now.

If you bothered to watch Overtime he insulted the audience after they weren't having any of the anti-vaxxer's bullshit.

brainee

I'm curious to hear what Decker thinks of the vaccination argument (since he must have to deal with this frequently). I have no clinical background, but I do research and teach immunology to pre-professional students. Yes, some of the things that they said are true. What might be acceptable science in the present may be debunked in the future. There are many things about biology not fully understood, and continued research is welcome. Scientists shouldn't be afraid to ask tough questions. Vaccines are not 100% effective (and in the case of vaccines against rapidly changing pathogens like the flu, much less than 100%). And vaccines can have adverse side effects. But ... there is no scientific evidence linking vaccines to autism (and the doctor on the show quietly said this outright, but it was quickly passed over). And correlation does not equal causation.

But the panel discussion almost got me to stop watching (I only couldn't because I was watching the show while working out and didn't want to throw off my exercise rhythm). Completely agree with Paff ... I don't mind intelligent debate showing both sides point of view, but that was anything but.

The joke about the emoji made me laugh. Because just minutes before I was texting a friend and I typed out a lot of stuff. And all I got back was a and that was the end of the conversion. And I know it was intended exactly as Bill Maher was talking about (the text version of the fake orgasm to just get you to stop)

Decker

Ugh, do I really want to hear crap like that in my free time? Okay I will check it out today or tomorrow...

Decker

Some thoughts quickly : The flu shot is killed viral particles. It CAN'T give you the flu. You can have a fever and a sore arm from the antigenic response but you don't get the flu from the shot. Jay Gordon knows that but said nothing except "That's embarrassing, isn't it?"

There is plenty of research on shots and autism and after the first discredited study, NONE has shown any link.. Bill even (very briefly) mentioned that. But they just both shrugged and said, well maybe it does sometimes. Which is a totally ridiculous and ignorant statement. "We don't have any proof or indication that it happens but let's assume it's the cause anyway" is not a scientific argument. Dr Gordon is a quick for saying that.
I often refer to this cartoon which does a beautiful job of showing the timeline and the studies done to look for a link between vaccines and autism.


Bill's arguments about changes in discoveries in medicine has NOTHING to do with vaccines which we know are effective and safe. There are a lot of things we are still discovering but we DO KNOW that when we don't vaccinate,the vaccine-preventable disease comes back.

Flu vaccines are very different than other shots. That is a moving antigen target which changes every year. That is very different than the MMR or any other standard vaccines. Dr Gordon should have clarified that, but he just acted like well we never know if it will work or not. Of course he didn't.

I'm always skeptical of these few private practitioners who speak to parents about alternative schedules and vaccinating slower. Most like Dr Gordon have written books and like to appear on TV where the real money and marketing can happen. They aren't researchers and they can't point to any studies to show that there are any significant risks but they like to talk in generalities to parents about things like "slow down, why is the schedule the same for everyone? why is the dose the same for everyone?" Because people who are in the know found that was the safe and effective dose. Parents love looking for that "middle ground" where they can tell themselves that they're being "extra careful" and vaccinating for "the important things, but not everything". That's human nature and it sounds great. It's what some parents want to hear. But it's not what the science says. It's trying to make parents happy and more significantly, making many, many bucks off of those worried parents. It's dishonest.

A very low point for Bill Maher and his cackling studio audience.

If they get there in the round table discussion, I don't have time to watch that right now...

Paff

Yeah, that's the problem. I like the humor in bits like that (and that was a good one), but I'm getting too frustrated at the general conversation on the show. I mean, I could just FF to New Rules. There was one a few weeks back that had me genuinely laughing out loud. He showed the see-saws that had been created on the border wall, and said "you know, if you get a fat enough American kid..."

Double_Oh_7

That was a strange segment. It was basically Bill ranting for 10 minutes and barely letting the doctor speak.