SF taxes fat people, reaps budget surplus

Posted: 1 April 2011 in Travel
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The city of San Francisco is enjoying a budget surplus for the first time in many years, thanks to a recently imposed weight tax on fat people. The “fat tax” charges visitors to the city $10 per pound of excess weight over certain prescribed normal weight guidelines. For men, the standard is 165 lbs for a height of 5 feet 9 inches (or 75 kg, 1.77 m); for women, the standard is 105 lbs for a height of 5 feet 6 inches (47 kg, 1.68 m).

According to the San Francisco Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector,  the largest (pardon the pun) revenue generators come from the cruise ships that call into port at San Francisco. “After all those calorie-laden meals and lack of activity, cruise passengers weigh in at orders of magnitude more than the prescribed guidelines.”

Not surprisingly, cruise ship operators have lodged a formal complaint with the SF Mayor’s office citing discrimination. A spokesperson for the Mayor however brushed aside complaints saying, “Obesity is the number one threat facing America today. Our nation spends a disproportionate percentage of its health care budget treating obesity-related diseases. San Francisco wants to be at the forefront of the war on fat.”

San Francisco’s fat tax has attracted a lot of interest from other cash-strapped cities and counties seeking to cover serious budget deficits. Indeed, the federal government is looking into imposing a National Fat Tax and has already begun a series of initiatives to obtain its fair share at San Francisco’s international airport. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has already instructed immigration inspectors at SFO to install weight scales to weigh incoming passengers. The city initially balked at revenue sharing with the federal government, but in the end, it negotiated a deal that will transform the airport’s Fast Track Immigration service to a FAT Track.

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Happy April Fools!

The enchanting Atacama desert, a travel guide

Posted: 24 March 2011 in Travel
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El Tatio geyser field

El Tatio geyser field near San Pedro de Atacama

We are driving through the Atacama desert at sunrise: barren, rugged, pockmarked hills, deep grooves etched into them by centuries of wind and the violence of nature. Nothing grows here! Around us the wind-blown tracks of offroad vehicles zigzag, appearing and disappearing again into the distance. The chilled blue sky slowly loses its deep serenity as it surrenders to the wakening day. Whispy trails of clouds whirl above the distant hills. The desert is still and tense, nervously awaiting the full rising of the sun, when the parched landscape will be turned into a cauldron of searing heat. — from Travel Guide to San Pedro de Atacama

Lucius Seneca on the Shortness of Life

Posted: 13 March 2011 in A Life Worth Living
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Excerpt from Lucius Seneca, “On The Shortness of Life”:

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.

Read On The Shortness of Life in its entirety.

Exercise is the key to staying young, at least among mice

Posted: 4 March 2011 in A Life Worth Living
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NYT article about research on mice genetically programmed to grow old at an accelerated pace — the ones that did not exercise died right away, the ones that ran vigorously everyday lived much longer and looked younger, too:

The researchers were surprised by the magnitude of the impact that exercise had on the animals’ aging process, Dr. Tarnopolsky said. He and his colleagues had expected to find that exercise would affect mitochondrial health in muscles, including the heart, since past research had shown a connection. They had not expected that it would affect every tissue and bodily system studied.

Something has shifted

Posted: 3 March 2011 in Solitude, Silence, Serenity, Stillness
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Beach at Yelapa, Mexico

I went to a yoga retreat for one week in Yelapa, a small village in Mexico, accessible only by boat from Puerto Vallarta. There are no roads in Yelapa and thus, no large hotels, no nightclubs, no casinos. Cell phone signals are weak. The place I stayed during the retreat had no Internet access.

We did yoga twice a day: three hours in the morning, one and a half hours in the afternoon. After each yoga session, we meditated for 20 minutes. In the morning we observed silence during breakfast, on the way to the Sky Temple yoga studio and back down the hill. In the evenings, all we could hear were the rhythmic pounding of the waves, the calls of the birds and the wind. Above us the stars and the Milky Way revealed themselves so clearly. In the city, we never see the vastness of the universe or feel the extreme insignificance of our being.

Esme doing yoga in Yelapa

Something happens to you when you immerse yourself in solitude, when you stop multi-tasking and cease acting like a machine.

When I was not doing yoga or meditating, I read, wrote in my journal, went on long walks, sat on the beach and listened to the birds. Without the constant disruption of email and social networks, I began to settle into a tremendous feeling of calm. By the fourth day of the retreat, I had no desire to check email or go online.

I thought I would fall right into my old patterns on my return home. But this has not been the case. To my surprise, I find myself emailing and tweeting much less, barely checking the social networks I joined, and hardly reading blogs on my RSS newsreader. My powers of concentration have increased and I came to several profound realizations. Something has shifted.

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