Weighing In

    If you happen to find yourself in a large crowd, you will likely notice that the people in it are rather large as well. My observation is that obesity is now the new normal and so obvious that I won't bother supplying you with sources. In support, I will simply say, I should also be dieting.

Flying the Crowded Skies
   Perhaps the portly people are more noticeable at airports since we naturally have a fear of flying next to one of them. It is also the case that even those with a very basic knowledge of aeronautics must wonder if the plane will be able to lift off, after seeing a Hummer-sized couple try to stuff several hundred more pounds in your overhead bin. 
  Airlines are paying some attention to the added pounds since it is clear that the average guy today probably weighs as much as both Wright brothers. This startling headline is offered as proof: "Airline Starts Weighing Passengers at Gate." The airline is Finnair, and Korean Air and Air New Zealand have also conducted weight surveys. You will be less startled when you learn that your weight on the scale is not displayed for all in the terminal to see, and the data anonymized so that no one will know that it is you carrying all that extra fat.
   The issue of stoutness has come up recently in relation to Southwest Airlines' announcement that their open-seating policy is being changed. Those of you who think that, generally corpulence is something that can be controlled will be astonished to learn that Southwest sometimes provided an extra seat for free to those who did not fit very well into the one they purchased. Members of NAAFA are looking into the matter. You can as well by looking at these sources.

Sources:
"Airline Starts Weighing Passengers at the Gate," Julia Buckley, CNN, Feb. 9, 2024.
"Why Korean Air Will Be Weighing Some Passengers Before Their Flights," Lilit Marcus, CNN, Aug. 24, 2023.
"Air New Zealand to Weigh Passengers Before They Board the Airplane," Lilit Marcus, CNN, May 31, 2023.
"Plus-size Travelers Ask Southwest Airlines to not Abandon Them: Advocates in the Plus-Size Community Are Urging Southwest to Keep Its Free-Second-Seat Policy," Andrea Sachs, Washington Post, Aug. 2, 2024.
NAAFA - National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. 

The Bonus:
  I wasn't familiar with the phrase "plus-sized", but it dates back to 1927 when people were already looking for a euphemism for "huge" and it now applies to a large segment of the clothing market.
  Readers of MM will know that I have done a series of posts about magazines, called "Periodical Ramblings".  I now realize that I could do one about "Plus-Sized Periodicals", but won't . Here is one of the titles: The Pretty Pear Bride, "the world's only magazine dedicated exclusively to plus-sized brides." 

Evidence Of End Times at Costco?

    It is accidental that I have covered Costco in three posts over recent months. In one, I called to your attention the fact that Costco was going to stop selling books and, in the others, that the company was now purveying both gold and silver (the links to those subjects are provided in that sentence.) Costco is again a topic because the company we all associate with abundance is now selling something that will be useful when we are dealing with scarcity. 

   The new product can be loosely described as "food" and more closely as "meals ready to eat" (MREs.) This chow is constituted in such a way that it will last during the long lean years that may soon arrive. The good news is, I suppose, that Costco shoppers can also become preppers without much effort. The bad is that apparently the food does not taste very good. 

   I know about this and am again writing about Costco because of this article: "Costco's Emergency Food Kit Makes Us Dread the Apocalypse Even More: The Buckets Sold at Costco Include Just-add-water Packets That Are Supposed to be Edible For 25 Years - They're Not Good," Emily Hall, Washington Post, August 9. 2024. Although the article is helpful and you learn, from just the title that the meals are not delicious, she does not let us know where we can get the water when the time comes.

Be Prepared
   If you are not a prepper type, or eschatologically inclined, you may pooh-pooh the notion that a backup larder of food is something for which you should start shopping. On the other hand, without an actual Armageddon or apocalypse there are reasons to believe that food could suddenly become scarce and, chances are, you don't know how to grow a turnip.
  There was, for example, the "Northeast Blackout of 2003", and although it only lasted for hours, it seemed like Armageddon since the food in the freezer was starting to melt and we couldn't access our electronic devices to find out how to start growing turnips.
   That the power could suddenly go off and stay off for quite a while was the subject of another recent article which made more resonant the Costco one and it doesn't mention climate changes or earthquakes either of which could leave us hungry and in the dark. The power could go off on purpose and because of people. In short, "Why White Supremacists Are Trying to Attack Energy Grids," Sara Ruberg, The New York Times, Aug. 8, 2024. (By the way, they are not the only ones.)

CANCON

   It is only mildly reassuring that, like most of the food we eat, we will be able to buy MREs from somewhere else. I didn't go to Costco to check the shelves, but it appears that the container pictured above is available to order online. If you think the neighbours or other family members might come foraging, larger quantities are available from other suppliers. For example: 

  Or, if you are among the growing numbers of Canadians who no longer want to work and think the government should feed them, then let your local government representative know that bulk quantities of MREs are available for purchase.

Sources: 

   The bulk order above is available from Total Prepare Inc. Canada. 

   See also: Survival Food: "Canada's Survival Food Experts."
   Or shop locally at: "Forest City Surplus Canada."

"Making Light of Heavy Things Since 2016"

A London Scavenger Hunt

    I have been away for a while and lazy for much longer, but now the weather is bad and I don't  have an excuse to keep from you the valuable information I typically supply. What follows is admittedly shallow and related to London, but it allows me to limber up before attempting something more arduous. It also presents a bit of a challenge and if any local readers stumble upon it, they can take advantage of some dining and shopping experiences of which they may not have been aware. If they can figure out where these places are.
   They were discovered yesterday on my bike ride which was only a bit off the beaten path. I noticed first a rather posh-looking place, posh-looking enough that I did a u-turn. This is from the website of that establishment.

   If you also need shoes, this store is close by and you will likely agree with their advice that, "Life is short, buy the shoes!"

  You will not need to travel far to dine at a place that features items such as those pictured below. 

  You will by now have guessed that such places are not likely to be found in the downtown core or east of Adelaide.

  It is unlikely that even my wife will read this so I will note that I will take her out for  a Pimm's Cup and some gnosh if she discovers it and figures out where these places are.

Post Script:
   Since very little has been offered here, I will provide a picture which indicates that such stores used to be located in the core. You will be able to guess what store it was.

   
   Also, I can take the opportunity to allay the anxiety of those of you who are worried about the convenience of making alcohol available in convenience stores. It's just a return to the good old days. Here is a description of London, c1837:
“Besides the seven taverns there is a number of little grocery stores which are, in fact, drinking houses. And though a law exists, which forbids the sale of spiritous liquors in small quantities by any but licensed publicans, they easily contrive to elude the law; as thus:- a customer enters the shop, and asks for two or three penny-worth of nuts, or cakes, and he receives a few nuts, and a large glass of whiskey. The whiskey, you observe, is given, not sold, and no one can swear to the contrary.” 
 That is from this post in MM which presents another mystery for you to solve - i.e. what the title is about: “Dorfläden.

The London Free Press

 

The Good Old Days
   Seventy-five years ago that brief article was published in The Times (of London - the other one, June 14, 1949) when The London Free Press turned 100.  It is obviously a slow news day here and I just thought I would take the time to remind you that newspapers were once thicker and there were more of them.
    Although one can now find and read the older and much thicker newspapers that were published in the United States, and in B.C. and Alberta, that is not the case for most newspapers in Ontario unless you have access to some commercial database or travel to a library and attempt to read them on a microfilm machine. You can, however, view over a million photographs that were published in The London Free Press, by going up to the Western and consulting The London Free Press Collection of Photographic Negatives. 

   One can, of course, search the U.S. newspapers for articles about London and many are found.
   

For example, The Nome Nugget noticed in 1946 that reporters here had their own plane.
   

London is also found in many advertisements, the loss of which is the reason why we now don't have many papers. Here is one from the New York Tribune, July 18, 1909

The Bonus:
   I was able to find a partial copy of The London Free Press centennial edition in the County of Brant Public Library. Here is what the front page looks like and the readers back then still had 231 left to read. 

Shipping Costs

 Postage Prices
  I just received an email from AbeBooks suggesting some books I should read, based apparently on the titles I had already purchased. It was an interesting list, to me at least, because it was created from the types of titles I had purchased from them before.
   From the list of books I picked one, which is omitted from the screenshot above. I want you to focus on the costs, rather than my choice of books. You can see that the books costs about $12 US and AbeBooks provides a useful currency converter which reveals that I will have to pay about $16.50 in Canadian currency.
  If you are ordering books from AbeBooks, you should pay some attention to the shipping costs before you put them in the cart. In this case, it will cost me $100 US (about $140 CDN) to buy a used book which costs about $15 bucks. The book, by the way, is a used and small one, not for the coffee table, but it would have to travel all the way from Texas to Ontario. This has happened before and I have often spotted a cheap book that was too expensive to ship.
  This is not the fault of AbeBooks and I did find other copies of the same book from other places with much cheaper shipping prices and AbeBooks should not be blamed for the weakness of our currency. Just make sure to check before you check out.

Post Script:

   AbeBooks is not named for an "Abe", but because it began as Advanced Book Exchange in Victoria and still has a head office there, even though it is now owned by Amazon where things are often shipped very cheaply.

  Canadians should know that one can order from Canadian bookshops on AbeBooks to avoid the currency problem, although the shipping costs still are often hefty. Some sellers also offer free shipping to Canada, but in both cases the inventory will be much smaller. 
   

AbeBooks is invaluable, however, as a global 'bookstore' which provides access to local bookshops. You can, for example, find and search for books at Cardinal Books in Birr, just outside of London and then go and pick them up without spending on shipping. 

   

  

PANDEMIC-RELATED

What Isn't?
   A quantitative analysis by me has not been done, but I think that among the most popular news topics -- right up there with the Middle East situation, the U.S. presidential election, the colour of one of the candidates and Taylor Swift -- the Covid pandemic still maintains a high ranking. Our era is likely to be divided for study by the historians into pre- or post- chunks. Our plague period seems to have had an impact on everything. 
   We learned from the pandemic, for example, that people do not like to work and really find it inconvenient to go to it. All kinds of social changes and behaviours are now attributed to the Covid years. To prove my point I will show some results quickly found by doing this simple google search: "Pandemic related."

Pandemic-related stress affected babies' brain development;
School's in for summer; Reading, math program helps young students close pandemic-related gaps;
Pandemic-Related Disruption and Positive Adaptation: Profiles of Family Function at the Onset of the Pandemic;
Pandemic-related impacts and suicidal ideation among adults in Canada: a population-based cross-sectional study (CDN);
The contribution of pandemic relief benefits to the incomes of Canadians in 2020 (CDN);
The impact of pandemic-related stress on attentional bias and anxiety in alexithymia during the COVID-19 pandemic;
Pandemic-related experiences, mental health symptoms, substance use, and relationship conflict among older adolescents and young adults from Manitoba, Canada (CDN);
Pandemic-related stress (OMA);
COVID-19 and your mental health;
Pandemic-Related Violence;
Pandemic-Related Workplace Violence and Its Impact on Public Health Officials;
COVID-19 pandemic related supply chain studies;
The impact of pandemic-related worry on cognitive functioning and risk-taking;
Internet use and COVID-19: How the pandemic increased the amount of time Canadians spend online (CDN);
Pandemic-related behaviours and psychological outcomes; A rapid literature review to explain COVID-19 behaviours;
The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the postsecondary graduating class of 2020(CDN);

   I am not sure what all of this means, but the good news is that the people doing all of these studies were likely able to work from home and present the results via Zoom. 
   Perhaps I am a bit suspicious. I did recently provide a post where I questioned the degree to which we can generalize about people within a particular generation. I suppose one can also question the degree to which a society has changed because of one cause, even a big one like the pandemic. 

When Was It?
   The pandemic, that is. In case you have forgotten, as I did, exactly when our plague started and how long it lasted, I will provide an answer here. 
 A beginning point: "On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared this novel coronavirus outbreak a public emergency of international concern. A few weeks later, on March 11, 2020, it declared COVID-19 as a pandemic."
An ending one: "On January 30, 2023, the Biden Administration announced it will end the COVID-19 public health emergency declarations on May 11, 2023."
Sources: Here are two Covid timelines:
"COVID-19 Timeline" (CDC)
"COVID-19 Pandemic Timeline"