Having left this board for a long time, and only just come back to find it has dropped in quality somewhat I'd suggest you get out while you still can.

A handful of people are good at sports - let's throw all our health concerns out the window.

My doctor told me I was over-weight, and im only 6 feet (1 inch maybe) and 180 pounds, and very skinny at that. I can only imagine what the world views as obese. I will admit that there are a lot of disgustingly fat people in the U.S. though.gamefan67

Not sure why your doctor would say that given that you are in the healthy BMI range - 180 isn't particularly skinny though either - its what I'd call a normal weight.

Wow...you're not seriously one of "those" guys, are you?

Necrifer

Having been to Italy and eaten pizza there, and having been to local pizza restaurants, I can confirm that one of 'those' guys or not, Costco does not compete with an individually made pizza.

But hey, I tend not to trust food that tastes exactly the same every single time - I just assume that its made from crappy ingredients that come out of a packet from a factory somewhere.

Mmmm, you're right mass produced pizza is the best - when I order I always ask for extra preservatives on mine - I can't stand the natural taste of a handmade authentic pizza.

Objectivity is impossible, every news source has an agenda whether we like it or not, but then our own bias generally decide which version of the news we like to hear, so we are equally to blame.

There will always be an output that is in keeping with your own interests and that's likely to be the one that attracts you - sure the media regularly presents ill informed conjecture as fact, but if you had a news source that simply said 'something might have happened here, maybe, but we don't really know' you'd only be enraged by their incompetence. It would just become blindingly obvious that we're all as confused and lost as one another - and who wants that?

Sensationalisation is a different thing all together, that is unethical, because often we are talking about very serious matters and someone has decided that the story isn't interesting enough so a Hollywood sheen has been applied - like information airbrushing, it is a misinformation, but not misinformed.

[QUOTE="Samwel_X"]

In the UK we constantly hear of the 'obesity epidemic' in the States, but in a world where America is the figurehead for western consumption (how many times have you heard that 'everything is bigger in America'?) I think that image has become kind of exaggerated. The physical shape of the American stereotype has stemmed from American culture.

The UK has an ever expanding waistband, its just a high demand for crappy foods in bigger quantities - kids here get fatter with every year, when I was in primary school there'd be about one fat kid in each class, now I can hardly count them up on my ever ballooning fingers.

And while I hate to say it, I do think that tax measures should be placed on our weight issues - I mean how much is it costing to deal with this? As much as it costs to deal with alcohol or drug addiction? (I really don't know, just throwing that out there). While I understand it is a different situation with privatised healthcare, in the UK obesity is something of a drain on society,

00-Riddick-00

In the same way we tax alcohol and cigarettes (and I imagine the way we'd tax drugs as well) - people should be free to put whatever they please into themselves, but in the UK where we have the NHS I think there should be enough tax on those products to cover the cost of health that they place on the average persons life.

Equally, tax and thus costs are a major contributing factor in the choices people make down at the local supermarket - assuming we both agree that being morbidly obsese is generally a bad thing, in the same sense that say having cancer is bad, then if we tax high fat foods, in the same way we tax cigarettes, we might be adding some longevity to people's lives and beyond that greatly improving the quality of life for some people.

If wholefoods were cheap and 7lb burgers were expensive I think the world would be thankful.

Twofold, she is a figurehead for the Twilight series, which is the target of much unjust hatred (I prefer simply indifference). Secondly, when she stars in smaller indie flicks her characters are often kind of unlikeable, that blank expression that she appears with in paparzzi photos seems like an extention of these blank teenage characters she usually plays. That isn't to say she is a bad actress, she just plays one type of role more often than others and therefore by association is thought of in the same way as those characters.

I always hear people complain that she doesn't smile enough - but hey, that's no reason to hate, I mean, I don't smile constantly either. There's just an image that's been created by the media and people have been sucked into it.

The Dark Knight Rises is the greatest piece of art any human being has made to date and will ever make therefore we should all stop creating - it is an end point for all human expression.

My life has improved for the better because:
Christopher Nolan's unparalleled filmmaking cured my physical ills
Christian Bales performance was so real it brought me to a point of empathy that we became one, and then my mental ills were cured
The film was so good it started the next stage of human evolution, I now have an extra thumb and urinate electricity.

The guy is hardly an autuer - he doesn't have a very specific style per-se, he has produced a bunch of really popular films but that doesn't make him one of the best filmmakers of all time. See what he has brought out ten years from now, then we'll make a more informed decision.