Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The Nanny State Channels Jeopardy



In San Francisco City Hall, cheesy new signage has been installed in front of all of the elevators in the building, guilt-tripping people for not being healthy and taking the stairs instead.



The signmaker also seems to have a thing for Alex Trebek and Ken Jennings, the Salt Lake City champion with 74 straight "Jeopardy" victories, who rather ungratefully trashed the show and its host after winning $2.5 million, according to a Fox News article (click here). Maybe they forced him to walk up the stairs at the TV studio instead of taking the elevator. (Update: According to commenter Jacquelynne, I've been punked. The Jennings dis of Trebek was a "satire.")

6 comments:

  1. I see advantages in better health and lower costs.

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  2. Dear Joe: When I quit smoking cigarettes a decade ago, it was for my own sake, and very much in spite of the holier-than-thou types preaching against the devil tobacco. And as far as actuarial costs, I still haven't seen the statistics that shows it's more expensive to let people die young from various lifestyle-related diseases (ranging from alcoholism to heart attacks and lung cancer) than to let them linger on through very expensive medical old ages.

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  3. Those signs are unreal. Nice catch.

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  4. What you say isn't politically correct, Mike, as though that has ever bothered you, but it is interesting and salient. It's remarkable to see in my lifetime how the average and median lifespans have lengthened, largely due to advances in how to handle heart attacks and health consciousness on the part of the general public.

    My dad turns 80 in May, and he still has a good quality of life. Other people I know of his generation aren't as lucky, and modern medicine looks more like a scam to keep those people alive and in crushing debt than a boon to mankind.

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  5. The Fox News people were commenting on an article that was clearly a joke. It's easy to see how FoxNews, being FoxNews, could miss the over-the-top satire of references to Alex Trebek being replaced by a robot, but how is it possible anyone else could?

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  6. Dear Jacquilynne: When I googled Ken Jennings, it was one of the first articles that appeared so I took it at face value. Ah, so I've been punked by Fox News. Interesting. I'll put in an update.

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