danshamptons.com
DAN’S PAPERS
June 29, 2012 Page 99
Fat
A Solar System View of the Fat Problem on Earth, Especially in the USA By Dan Rattiner
T
he Earth spins like a top as it circles the sun. It’s a pretty heavy thing. On its surface for four billion years have been a variety of animals, birds, bugs, boulders, amphibians, fish and humans. Even, for awhile, dinosaurs. The Earth has handled the weight. In the last 50 years, the population of humans has increased exponentially. Fifty years ago, there were two billion of them. Now there are seven billion of them. This is a heavy burden for the Earth. In the last 50 years, the humans have also, on average, gotten very fat. Studies have been made about the cause of it. Most of
the studies come to the conclusion that the problem is humans stuffing too much food into their mouths. In any case, this is an even heavier burden for the Earth. And the Earth, it is thought by some, is wobbling a little bit under it. But maybe not. Two weeks ago, the United Nations and World Health Organization issued a joint report to quantify the magnitude of the problem. It is quite alarming. The weight of the entire adult human population on the earth’s surface is about 633 billion pounds. Of this, about 30 billion pounds is jiggly overweight fat, enough to equal, if you were to make whole normal people out of it, complete with organs, skin and bones, a country filled with the same number of
adults as are in the United States. Indeed, the United States is the greatest producer of fat. One-third of all the excess fat in the world today is from North America. If fat were marketable, if fat were good for something, all our economic problems would go away. But it isn’t. So they don’t. I mean, if the Earth’s problem were that it was too light on its feet, too much in need of more weight to keep it from flying off into the cold environs of Pluto, we would be the one to supply it. The rest of the world would applaud us. We would jiggle around with joy doing a happy dance. But that’s not what it is. The fact is that all this fat is a big problem, (Continued on page 104)
More at College as It Comes Back to Life By daniel bo dermont
O
n Thursday, June 7, on the beautiful Stony Brook Southampton campus, there gathered a group of truly driven individuals to discuss the upcoming programs on this satellite campus of Stony Brook University. Those who met by the picturesque windmill that afternoon for a pleasant luncheon were dedicated to the continuation of the very successful science programs that have been associated with the campus since its inception. However, aside from its perennial strengths, the campus officials are also concerned with a new path for the campus. The Stony Brook Southampton (SBS) campus—formerly a campus of Long Island University—is often made out to be a central location for education in the marine sciences. While SBS is happy to continue this education,
advocates of the continued success of campus programs are eager to promote the idea of a comprehensive arts department. To a locally minded person, this policy would only make sense. It accurately reflects the creative atmosphere of the Hamptons area. The East End is rich in artistic culture and the colleges that have occupied the Southampton campus have always benefitted from the distinctive array of writers, musicians and visual artists who call the Hamptons home. Very aware of this fact, the Associate Provost Robert Reeves said, “One thing it [SBS] does want to be is connected with the arts.” If you have followed loosely the history of the campus, you may have formed the impression that Stony Brook Southampton had all but closed and that the only viable Stony Brook campus was the main campus in Stony Brook.
This, as faculty member Andrew Botsford assured all who attended, is false. The campus will be offering educational opportunities to about 300 graduate students very soon and is actively pursuing an enrollment of 1,000 grad students in years to come. One hundred students will be participating in the highly praised MFA workshops in Creative Writing and Literature this summer. The administration of SBS is not only invested in an arts program for the future; the campus officials are happy to announce plans for development and creation of a Stony Brook Southampton Film Department. The MFA in Film program will debut with support from the Michael Chekhov Association to develop private-public partnerships in order to help it become sustainable. The culmination of current efforts to push the (Continued on page 104)