The Most Curious Thing - Errol Morris - Zoom - New York Times Blog

The Most Curious Thing - Errol Morris - Zoom - New York Times Blog: "Fuzzing it up is a common practice in government. You hide intention and responsibility. You have one person say one thing, and another person the exact opposite. You create a blizzard of paper, so much paper that actual evidence is lost in the glut. And of course, you deny anything and everything you can deny — particularly the obvious. (Denying the obvious is always popular.) You produce noise, distraction and confusion. People rarely think of this as a well-established bureaucratic technique, but it is a tried and true methodology."

Inside the Story: Gary Taubes

Inside the Story: Gary Taubes: "I had spent my career writing about good and bad science and the difficulties of establishing reliable knowledge, so I think I am considerably more open to the possibility that academic 'experts' with impressive credentials can be misguided, if not dead wrong. I think the criteria by which I judge science and scientists is very different than many, if not most journalists, and those criteria were passed on to me by some very, very good scientists in the course of some long and arduous investigations, both scientific and journalistic."

Inertia at the Top - washingtonpost.com

Inertia at the Top - washingtonpost.com: "The first signs of trouble appeared in the late 1970s as rates of overweight that had been relatively stable for years started to rise. In retrospect, they were reflecting societal, technological and policy shifts that would turn the youngest generation into the heaviest to date.

For starters, with more women working outside the home, families were eating more takeout or processed food. Spurred by the profit margins of volume production, fast-food restaurants pushed larger portions. Gadgets such as remote TV controls and video games meant children were planted for longer periods in front of televisions and computers. And on and on.

Through the 1990s, the waistline expansion accelerated. On campuses, once-rare vending machines multiplied as administrators signed exclusive contracts giving their schools a share of sales; the money was considered essential for band uniforms, sports equipment and other unfunded extras."