http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/12/national/12OBES.html [Companies attempt to slim down the workforce by making employees walk more. Nice idea in principle, but what happens when winter hits and those employees start suing for slip-and-falls while walking from the parking lot? And what about the ADA issues, which also came to mind w/r/t the anti-elevator article (does the presence of elevators, necessary for ADA compliance, result in an unnecessary risk to life & limb, or attractive nuissance, for the rest of us?).]
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/12/magazine/12WWLN.html
[Evidence of the rise of alcoholism in the 1820s apparently indicates that we are fat because food is abundant and cheap so farmers turn it into food sweeteners and other additives to get people to consume the overproduction. Whatever. We should clearly allow food prices to rise so those damn poor people can't afford so much of it and get so fat. But the ariticle contains this rather shockingly offensive, and journalistically unprofessional, passage: "It doesn't hurt that those lightly populated farm states exert a disproportionate influence in Washington, since it takes far fewer votes to elect a senator in Kansas than in California. That means agribusiness can presumably ''buy'' a senator from one of these underpopulated states for a fraction of what a big-state senator costs." I think I speak for natives of thinly-populated states everywhere when I say "fuck you, you self-righteous, anti-federalist, unamerican pinko, if I were a senator from Kansas I'd sue your ass for libel." But, to the extent that this article is a lament that excess corn is being turned into additional food rather than more alcohol, I'm sympathetic.]
