I'm pulled into the upper right hand corner of The Washington Post — so dangerous, so syrup-drenched.

Here's that corner (9 items):

It's an omakase breakfast — omakase, not omicron — the selections entrusted to the illustrious mainstream newspaper. I will update this post, course by course. 

1. "For Clarence Thomas, avowed critic of Roe v. Wade, Mississippi abortion case a moment long awaited" by Robert Barnes. There's oral argument in the big abortion case this Wednesday, and, we're told, Thomas receives "unprecedented deference" these days — because of all his new colleagues, who "think like him," and because there's a new method of asking questions at oral argument, and not only does he speak now, he goes first, and no one cuts him off. They let him finish "his low-key inquiries." Thomas has repeatedly written separate opinions to say that Roe ought to be overruled. "Thomas’s idiosyncratic views and his resistance to compromise still make him the justice most likely to write a solo opinion," writes Barnes. But what's to prevent these new Justices, who may genuinely respect him, from curing that loneliness? Asking that question, I thought of the adage, "Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already." And then I realized I'm talking about the person named in the next headline down, Henry David Thoreau.

2. "The Black people who lived in Walden Woods long before Henry David Thoreau": "'Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill lived Brister Freeman, ‘a handy Negro,’ slave of Squire Cummings once... With him dwelt Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet pleasantly – large, round, and black, blacker than any of the children of night, such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or since,' Thoreau wrote in 'Walden.'"

3. "Amid massive shortage, Canada taps strategic reserves — of maple syrup": "Petroleum stockpiles aren’t the only strategic reserves being tapped this season amid concerns of supply shortages and sky-high prices." There's a Canadian federation that, we're told, gets called "the OPEC of maple syrup." The shortage seems to have mostly to do with people cooking more pancakes and such on account of the lockdown, but there's also stress to the maple trees from climate change, so make sure to keep worrying about climate change. It affects pancakes!

4. "The Rule of Six: A newly radicalized Supreme Court is poised to reshape the nation" by Ruth Marcus. The conservatives are no longer just looking for a 5th vote. With 6, it's like "an heir and spare." They can afford to lose one. No more need to cajole that last one, the fussed-over "swing" voter. And Marcus tells WaPo readers to be be afraid, be very afraid.

5. "Hanukkah isn’t ‘Jewish Christmas.’ Stop treating it that way. No need to include our holiday in the winter extravaganza of commercialization, thanks." Sample sentence, representing the tone and message of the entire piece: "No Jew has ever gazed longingly at a 12-foot inflatable reindeer and wished in her heart she had an equally large Moses to display in front of her house."

6. "Greece was in deep trouble. How did it right the ship? Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on the arrival of migrants — and tech companies." An interview with the prime minister. Highlights: "We should agree in principle that no country has a right to weaponize migrants. . . . We won’t let people come in as they please." About criminalizing “fake news”: "What we are doing is very measured and very valid."

7. "Five myths about the supply chain/No, self-driving trucks wouldn’t fix all our problems." "Much of today’s mess was caused by relying on extremely fragile — and extremely long — supply lines. Ohno would have shuddered at the thought that his ideas were being applied in this manner." Oh no! Taiichi Ohno originated the concept of just-in-time delivery.

8. "The newest coronavirus variant is raising alarms. The pandemic is not over." "It will take time to determine if the variant is more transmissible than delta, or more virulent, but it is a worrisome development." Won't there always be a new variant so that we will always be told we don't know enough yet and we will need, once again, to err on the side of safety? This feels like a treadmill that we can never step off.

9. "Stephen Sondheim made art that made life more real" by Alexandra Petri. A song "can’t be too clever, and it can’t be too dull. It has to land on your ear as a surprise. If it contains jokes, they have to rhyme. (If it contains rhymes, words that are spelled differently are funnier, Sondheim thought, than words that are spelled the same.)... The song has to take the character singing it somewhere. It has to be essential to the show. 'If you can take the song out,' Sondheim said, 'and it doesn’t leave a hole, then the song’s not necessary.'... Life also exists in time. You cannot stop it and start it and go back and hope to make yourself better understood. You must express yourself in the moments allotted and make yourself heard and choose what to say." 

If I hadn't committed to reading every one of those 9 stories, the ones I would have read would be: 1, 2, and 9. And I would have blogged all 3. 

Having read all the stories, I rank their bloggability, for me, beginning with: 1, 9, 2. Then, there's a big drop off. There's something I'd wanted to say that 8 gave me the chance to say, so I'll put 8 next. I'd put 3 dead last, because I don't really want to blog about the syrup supply, though it would shoot to the top if I had a "syrup" tag (and I might create a "syrup" tag, but it will take a while to add it retrospectively, and it's only interesting if it collects a lot of old things, which it will, more than 10). I put 4 next to last, because it's obvious to me what it will be from the headline and the author, and I don't need more of that. Third from last is 5, which is unnecessary holiday fluff, and I didn't like the insinuation that I was "treating" Hanukkah in any particular way. That leaves 6 in dead center. The Greek Prime Minister. I had to force myself to read that, but he was concise and hard core — quotable.

Oops, I forgot the supply chain. I know it's important, but it's not my thing. I put Greek Prime Minister at what I called "dead center" and in 5th place, so let's put 7 in 6th place. 

Final ranking: 1, 9, 2, 8, 6, 7, 5, 4, 3.

ADDED: I have now made the tag "syrup." Click. It's pretty exciting. 

"Memories of the acrid scents of the hospital burn unit haunted her — she showered three times a day and cleaned her home top to bottom over and over..."

"... but she couldn’t escape the stench of rotting flesh. It radiated off her clothes, filled the RV where she lived with her family, and flavored her food. At night, the sensation of sleeping in a 'heap of bodies' kept her awake. She considered shaving her head to stop smelling her hair."

From "The Stench of Living (and Working) With Parosmia" (NY Magazine).

"I admit to having a complicated relationship with Aunt Jemima... For a period of time in the late 1940s and early 1950s, my grandmother, Ione Brown..."

"... was part of an army of women who worked as traveling Aunt Jemimas, visiting small-town fairs and rotary-club breakfasts to conduct pancake-making demonstrations at a time when the notion of ready-mix convenience cooking was new. I never knew about my grandmother’s work until long after she died... [W]hile researching a family memoir... I learned that she made good money and covered a region including Iowa, the Dakotas, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. She was often treated like a celebrity in small towns, but could not stay in local hotels. She kept an eye out for houses that had a small sign in the window that said 'TOURIST,' a code for homes that provided lodging and meals to black people.... As a family, we are offended by the caricature that Aunt Jemima represents, but deeply proud of the way my grandmother used the stage that was available to lift herself up. You see, in those days Aunt Jemima didn’t look like the lady you see on the box today. She was a slave woman, and Ione was expected to act and talk like a slave woman, using the kind of broken patois that blighted the full-page ads in magazines like Women’s Day and Life.... One of the things that irks me most about the Jemima brand is the way the mammy stereotype hijacked what should be an endearing image for black America and tried to turn it into something toxic. Most of us have someone in our family with fleshy arms and a loving smile who serves up cherished advice along with delicious food. They are our aunts and mothers and grandmothers. Our godmothers. Our queens.
You tried to make us ashamed of what Aunt Jemima stood for."

From "Why did it take so long to set Aunt Jemima free?" by Michele L. Norris (WaPo). (Quaker Foods announced that it is retiring the Aunt Jemima brand because to "make progress toward racial equality.")

ADDED: At the NY Post, I'm seeing "After Aunt Jemima, people call to cancel Uncle Ben’s and Mrs. Butterworth’s." I understand about Uncle Ben, but Mrs. Butterworth? I've never perceived Mrs. Butterworth as black.

The syrup, sold in a matronly woman-shaped bottle, is accused of being rooted in mammy culture and was modeled after the body of Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen, the black actress who played Prissy in “Gone With The Wind.” The Jim Crow-era “mammy” character was often used to show that black women were happy working in white households....

That's news to me. I looked up Mrs. Butterworth on Wikipedia and it did not contain that information. I did learn that the voice for the character was done by Mary Kay Bergman, who looked like this:

"Her parents were Jewish," and she died by suicide at the age of 38 in 1999. She was the original lead female voice on "South Park."

Her characters included Liane Cartman, Sheila Broflovski, Shelly Marsh, Sharon Marsh, Carol McCormick and Wendy Testaburger.... Bergman credited South Park for pulling her out of a typecasting rut. 'I'm known for these sweet, cute little characters,' she said, noting her roles in various Disney films. "So I've been doing them forever. My agents were trying to submit me on shows that are edgy, and they're laughing, 'Mary Kay, are you kidding? No way!'" After Bergman's death, the two episodes "Starvin' Marvin in Space" (the final episode for which she recorded original dialogue) and "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics" (the final episode in which her voice was used via archive footage) were dedicated in her memory.

No comment on the role of Starvin' Marvin and Mr. Hankey in the quest for progress toward racial equality. RIP Mary Kay Bergman. Watch this (it's phenomenal):



Mrs. Butterworth voice at 1:11.

ADDED: Norris writes that her grandmother, in the role of Aunt Jemima had to use a "kind of broken patois." And I see in the comments that David Begley is asking, "Just asking, but isn’t 'broken patois' the language of today’s rap music?" Which makes me wonder, what's wrong with a patois? To answer my own question, I naturally look up "patois" in the OED.

I see that it's "dialect spoken by the people of a particular region (esp. of France or French-speaking Switzerland), and differing substantially from the standard written language of the country" or — and this is "frequently depreciative" — "a regional dialect; a variety of language specific to a particular area, nationality, etc., which is considered to differ from the standard or orthodox version."

I was intrigued by this example from "The Sheltering Sky" by Paul Bowles (who was born in New York City):

Then he remembered having heard that Americans did not speak English in any case, that they had a patois which only they could understand among themselves. The most unpleasant part of the situation to him was the fact that he would be in bed, while the American would be free to roam about the room, would enjoy all the advantages, physical and moral.

"... a fresh human turd — yes, a turd! — her own, one hoped..."

For the new installment of the "Bonfire" project — where we're reading passages from Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" — I offer this, from Kindle Location 3222:

Nick Stopping said he had dinner the other night at the home of Stropp, the investment banker, on Park Avenue, and Stropp’s four-year-old daughter, by his second wife, came into the dining room pulling a toy wagon, upon which was a fresh human turd — yes, a turd! — her own, one hoped, and she circled the table three times, and neither Stropp nor his wife did a thing but shake their heads and smile. This required no extended comment, since the Yanks’ treacly indulgence of their children was well known, and Fallow ordered another vodka Southside and toasted the absent Asher Herzfeld, and they ordered drinks all around.

That's from the point of view of Peter Fallow, a British journalist who works in NYC, writing for a trashy tabloid, and who disapproves of "Yanks." It's a running joke that Fallow orders a "vodka Southside" because of Asher Herzfeld, a rich American, who, according to Kindle location 3195, "had always driven the waiters and the bartenders crazy by ordering the noxious American drink, the vodka Southside, which was made with mint, and then complaining that the mint wasn’t fresh."

I'm intrigued by the issue of freshness — first in the mint that the rich American insisted upon and then in the turd that the American child gave a ride in her wagon. The Brits feel superior, but do they care about freshness? I'm looking up recipes for the vodka Southside, and it's quite clear that fresh mint is crucial. And as for the child, well, the turd was fresh too.

The turd was also "human." It's funny to regard the turd as human. I'm inclined to say that "human turd" is jocose and not a proper usage of "human." As for "turd," the word, I was just opining 2 days ago that "turd" is an uglier word than "shit." I hope you'll believe me that it's just by chance that I'm wheeling "turd" around again, so that makes it  fresh turd.

It's interesting to see, so close to "turd," the idea of "treacly indulgence" of children. Not only does the turd circle the table where people are eating, but "treacle" is a food. "Treacle" is syrup, literally, and figuratively, it's "Something sweet or clogging; esp. complimentary laudation, blandishment." The earliest figurative usage, according to the OED, comes from a 1771 novel that I've read, "Humphry Clinker" by Tobias Smollett: "He began to sweeten the natural acidity of his discourse with the treacle of compliment and commendation." It's just by chance that I'm blandishing the name Smollett.



Smollett doesn't look too fresh in that painting, and it was done when he was 45! I don't know what he thought of the Americans. He died the same year "Humphry Clinker" was published, 5 years before the revolution that shook off those censorious Brits.

Canadians complaint that their new plastic $100 bills smell like maple syrup.

Link. 

Maybe the inconvenient truth is that maple syrup smells like plastic.

"In case you missed it, there's some news out of Colorado that's better than hot pancakes and syrup. (If that's even possible.)"

Email, received just now, from Donna Brazile, the longtime Democratic Party character, identified in the email as Vice-Chair for Voter Registration and Participation/Democratic National Committee.

What subdivision of the supposedly sophisticated Democratic Party database am I in that my email address got selected for this especially folksy presentation of the news? Does the Democratic Party think I look fat? Does it see me as self-indulgent and pleasure-seeking? Does it assume I'm the kind of person who won't find it offputting to use Donna Brazile as the African American woman coming at me with a plateful of comfort food? And why pancakes? If I were cooking up this propaganda, using Brazile as the email signatory, the last comfort food I would choose is pancakes! And syrup... Like that's going to stir up sweet, mystic childhood memories without causing me to think that's racial and wrong.

(Cue the usual: If a Republican had done it....)

ADDED: Full text of the email:

Ann --

In case you missed it, there's some news out of Colorado that's better than hot pancakes and syrup. (If that's even possible.)

Governor John Hickenlooper signed a new elections bill into law that will make it easier for Coloradans to vote -- and takes some of the most proactive steps to do it that we've ever seen.

Under the new law, every registered voter in the state will be mailed a ballot, while keeping the option to vote in person. They're creating convenience centers for in-person early voting, and making it easier for people to register to vote.

Colorado is modernizing their voting process to make it consistent with how we are living our lives these days -- something that every state should be trying to do.

Agree? If you do, join me in thanking Gov. Hickenlooper for taking such an important step to improve the voting process in his state -- and for creating a model for other states to follow.

Republicans across the country have carried out an assault on voting rights over the past several years -- and we've been fighting them at every turn. But this new law in Colorado reminds us that it isn't enough just to fight efforts to restrict voting rights -- we have to find innovative ways of making it easier for Americans to participate in our democracy.

This past November, thousands of Americans stood in line for hours and hours to cast a ballot. That's not right -- and we should be taking every step we can to make the voting process easier for people to participate in.

Colorado just took a great big step in that direction. Join me and thank Gov. Hickenlooper -- let's make sure that Colorado isn't the last state to pass a law like this:

http://my.democrats.org/Colorado-Voting

Thanks,

Donna

Donna Brazile
Vice-Chair for Voter Registration and Participation
Democratic National Committee

I see that when I click on those links, the URL opens up with some elaborate code (which I'm assuming gives them information about what prompts me to click). 

Everything Mark Twain wanted to eat...

... when he arrived home in the United States of America after traveling around in France and Italy in 1870:

Radishes. Baked apples, with cream Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. American coffee, with real cream. American butter. Fried chicken, Southern style. Porter-house steak. Saratoga potatoes. Broiled chicken, American style. Hot biscuits, Southern style. Hot wheat-bread, Southern style. Hot buckwheat cakes. American toast. Clear maple syrup. Virginia bacon, broiled. Blue points, on the half shell. Cherry-stone clams. San Francisco mussels, steamed. Oyster soup. Clam Soup. Philadelphia Terapin soup. Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style. Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad. Baltimore perch. Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas. Lake trout, from Tahoe. Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef. Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock. Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore. Prairie hens, from Illinois. Missouri partridges, broiled. 'Possum. Coon. Boston bacon and beans. Bacon and greens, Southern style. Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips. Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. Butter beans. Sweet potatoes. Lettuce. Succotash. String beans. Mashed potatoes. Catsup. Boiled potatoes, in their skins. New potatoes, minus the skins. Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot. Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes. Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper. Green corn, on the ear. Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style. Hot hoe-cake, Southern style. Hot egg-bread, Southern style. Hot light-bread, Southern style. Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk. Apple dumplings, with real cream. Apple pie. Apple fritters. Apple puffs, Southern style. Peach cobbler, Southern style Peach pie. American mince pie. Pumpkin pie. Squash pie. All sorts of American pastry.

Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. Ice-water--not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

Funny about the frogs! I thought that's what they ate in France that we think is yucky.

(Via Eve Tushnet.)

ADDED: I've redone the text so it looks the way it appears in my Kindle version of 300 works of Mark Twain. It's not written in list/poem form. It still, however, says "Prairie liens, from Illinois," which Nichevo, in the comments, surmises is a misscanned Prairie hens, from Illinois. Ah, yes, here's an article about "The 'Prairie Hens' of Illinois" with the subtitle "Mark Twain’s favorite birds ... to eat." I'm going to correct the text above.

"Gossip as high-fructose corn syrup."

A theory:

There's this idea that modern diseases of excess are due to the human metabolism being evolutionarily keyed for need. Our bodies haven't become accustomed to the wide availability of nutritionally empty yet calorie-rich foods, hence the obesity epidemic.

Maybe everyone's "social metabolism" is different. Some folks can say and hear whatever they want and always feel great. Others have to be more mindful....

A product, Avena syrup, gets a sudden boost in publicity, with a bad celebrity endorsement.

Bin Laden's herbal Viagra.

I wonder if that helps or hurts business. Probably helps!

All I need is a big bottle of syrup...

... can sit down to Madison's biggest sno-cone.

I'll have caramel!

Caramel knowledge.

A phrase Google is cruel enough to tell me I wasn't the first to invent. Nevertheless, I love caramel. Handmade caramels with coffee at my favorite café, caramel syrup in my coffee at home, creme caramel, chocolates with caramel inside....

UPDATE: The way Google works, my first link isn't doing what it originally did, as this post is elbowing its way to the top of the list. Less that 2 hours after I posted, I'm already second on a search for "caramel knowledge." I may not have been first, but being first is not what matters most to Google.

"While pouring syrup on your Eggo waffles, you note that you missed a few voxels."

Jokes for brain scanners.

"Survivor" finale!

Talk in the comments. ADDED #1, spoiler: Ah, didn't you know as soon as you saw the challenge that Yau-Man would win? But it was impressive of Boo and Dreamz to keep up, and bizarrely embarrassing for Earl and Cassandra to get left back where they were. Now, what's to stop Yau-Man from winning? Can you imagine Dreamz double-crossing him on the deal about the truck from last week? I can't. I'm picturing Dreamz getting voted out at this point, just as a deal to try to stop Yau-Man. ADDED #2: Oh, no! They voted out Boo. Doesn't this mean Yau-Man will win? ADDED #3: The final immunity challenge requires you to just hang on while lying on a plank that is moved to a more and more difficult angle. How long will Cassandra even bother to hold on? She doesn't even try to win. That is a strategy. Dreamz really should try to win, even though he'll have to give his immunity to Yau-Man. It makes him more sympathetic. ADDED: #4: Earl has the best strategy, getting over to the side and out of the water flow. But it gets harder and harder. Cassandra goes. Earl goes. Yau-Man goes! So it's Dreamz! Perfect! Does he renege? No, he can't. ADDED #5: Oh, no! Dreamz! [Dreamz reneges on his deal with Yau-Man and keeps the immunity.] ADDED #6: Ohhh! Yau-Man. [Yau-Man is voted out.] Poor Dreamz! What a bad decision. Yau-Man says, "Enjoy the truck." The deal was not enforceable, so Dreamz, apparently, will keep it. But I don't see how he can possibly win the vote, having reneged in front of the jury and doomed the most brilliant player. It's quite obvious now that Earl will win. Who would vote for Dreamz? (Which is why, even out of pure self-interest, he should have given the immunity necklace to Yau.) And who would vote for Cassandra? What has she ever done? But Earl was a good player. It's all downhill from here. I think we know Earl will win, right? ADDED #7: "It's a game and everybody else played it and slithered through this game," says Dreamz, who's blustering, trying to convince himself that what he did was okay. Hmmm, mmm-mmmm, Cassandra looks happy. I think maybe she knows she's the only one no one has anything against. At breakfast, food has been delivered, and Dreamz is drinking syrup out of a champagne glass. He's so happy, he says: "I feel like I'm standing next to... Oprah." ADDED #8: The questioning by the jury was intense. Most amazing was Eduardo Boo, who repeatedly challenged Dreamz for his failure to be a good Christian. I can't think of any time I've ever seen a reality show contestant talk not just about his own religion, but actively challenge another contestant to live up to his religion. Extraordinary. [MORE: There must have been a lot of discussion of religion, especially between Boo and Dreamz, that was edited out of the show all season. Now, it seems very weird to have Boo go all religious, but I assume it was a natural part of the interaction, a theme that the editors rejected as a story line. In the end when Boo was entitled to his turn as a juror, we saw there was dimension to this enigma, but because it suddenly burst out at the very end, it made him seem nutty. Religion: too nutty to show consistently, and because it's not shown consistently, it's really nutty.] ADDED #9: Back in NY, announcing the vote. Oh! All three of them got so chubby! And Earl wins! Unanimously, as far as we can see. Oh, poor tragic Dreamz! Jeff tells us that all 9 votes went to Earl, and that this was the first time ever on the show that the $1 million was won by unanimous vote.

More fat.

That post on NYC's trans fat ban got a lot of attention yesterday, and I've added a big update to respond to a key question that was raised:

I should add that I do realize that trans fats and the fats that will substitute for them are equally caloric, and presumably equally fattening. Saletan's piece is clear on this point, and I assumed readers would take the linked article as background and assume that I understood it. But I see from the comments that some readers think I didn't. Nevertheless, it's fair to ask why I think people are really alarmed about appearances, not health, when they back a regulation like this, considering that it's rather unlikely to make anyone thinner. I'm talking about the emotions here, not reason. I think people are buying into the theory that the food industry is nefarious and must be controlled because they see a problem and they want a villain. People support ineffective regulation all the time: they want to see something done. Look at all the people fretting about "high fructose corn syrup," with assertions that it's making everyone fat, even though, if it were banned, other, equally caloric sugars would be substituted. Yet people think there's some special problem with the stuff. They want to blame the food industry. One thing I didn't think about, however, and wish I'd put in the original post, is that plenty of fat people themselves support regulation like this. It's not just a matter of feeling alarmed about what is happening to other people. Some of this is alarm about one's own body. People cannot control their own weight, so it must be some outside force making them fat. This failure to take personal responsibility is a downward spiral. There will never be enough regulation to make people thin. After every ban, people will wolf down whatever is still legal, and then cry for more help. If you keep an honest tally of how many calories you consume, you'll see it's your own fault if you're fat. It may be a terrible fault to overcome, but it is still your fault. If you think it isn't, it will only become harder to overcome. Which may be why people are getting so fat. They've been lured into thinking that their bodies are not their own responsibility.

I also want to say that I do accept government regulation of dangerous substances. I only object to bad regulation, and I'm suspicious of this one. I'm sure there's a big emotional component to my thinking too. Growing up, we almost always made pie crusts and Toll House cookies with Crisco. We tried butter too, but we thought the final product was better made with Crisco. It was lighter and less greasy. I find it hard to believe the mothers of America were serving their kids a toxic chemical all that time. But I accept the scientific evidence for whatever it is worth. I'm a little concerned that the oil substitutes won't hold up to high heat frying and there will be a lot of food cooked in rancid oil. But if the proof is strong enough, I would be willing to support a ban, it may surprise you to know. And I'd be quite likely to support a labeling requirement.

What I think is really going on in the war on trans fat.

William Saletan on the "war on fat":

The whole world is engulfed in a war on fat. On one side are health crusaders. On the other side are food sellers and libertarians. Lately, the health costs of obesity have prodded politicians into the war, shifting the balance of power to the crusaders.

I simply do not believe that the so-called health side is really composed of people who are solicitous about everyone else's health. I can't prove it, but my intuition is that all the strength on the "health" side of this war comes not from people who really care whether other people are healthy, but from people who don't like having to see fat people. They are concerned about their own aesthetic pleasures, and they think fat is ugly. And that argument about how much money fat people are costing us? I say it's bogus... a strategy to win more support for more restrictions. Fat people burden the taxpayers? I simply don't believe it. I'm sure fat people have various ailments they need to put up with, and some of these are going to tap into public funding -- drug benefits for blood pressure medicine, amputations, and so on. But what about the offsets? They are going to die younger. (On average. Not you, of course.) I don't trust the numbers concocted by the people who want to intrude here. Those who want to be left alone don't work hard enough at putting together their own facts. Saletan:

Purging trans fats in New York would save at least 500 lives a year and possibly 1,400, said the health department. That's more than the number saved by seat belts.

Where does that number come from? If people are dying of trans fat, won't we save on Social Security and Medicare? If fat is so fatal, why do fat people walk among us?

The instigator of the New York ban, city health Commissioner Thomas Frieden, says chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes are eclipsing infectious diseases. Most experts and politicians share that view. We already regulate restaurants for infectious disease; why not extend that scrutiny to chronic disease?

Regulate restaurants because they cause the "disease" of making people fat. That's the argument. But he's NYC's health commissioner. He must have thought this through. You remember Frieden. He's the guy who offered the explanation “This is something we hadn’t fully thought through, frankly,” when withdrawing that proposal to let people change their sex on their birth certificates, even if they hadn't had sex reassignment surgery. (Are you fat? Try the Atkins diet! It's about eating fat.) ADDED: I should add that I do realize that trans fats and the fats that will substitute for them are equally caloric, and presumably equally fattening. Saletan's piece is clear on this point, and I assumed readers would take the linked article as background and assume that I understood it. But I see from the comments that some readers think I didn't. Nevertheless, it's fair to ask why I think people are really alarmed about appearances, not health, when they back a regulation like this, considering that it's rather unlikely to make anyone thinner. I'm talking about the emotions here, not reason. I think people are buying into the theory that the food industry is nefarious and must be controlled because they see a problem and they want a villain. People support ineffective regulation all the time: they want to see something done. Look at all the people fretting about "high fructose corn syrup," with assertions that it's making everyone fat, even though, if it were banned, other, equally caloric sugars would be substituted. Yet people think there's some special problem with the stuff. They want to blame the food industry. One thing I didn't think about, however, and wish I'd put in the original post, is that plenty of fat people themselves support regulation like this. It's not just a matter of feeling alarmed about what is happening to other people. Some of this is alarm about one's own body. People cannot control their own weight, so it must be some outside force making them fat. This failure to take personal responsibility is a downward spiral. There will never be enough regulation to make people thin. After every ban, people will wolf down whatever is still legal, and then cry for more help. If you keep an honest tally of how many calories you consume, you'll see it's your own fault if you're fat. It may be a terrible fault to overcome, but it is still your fault. If you think it isn't, it will only become harder to overcome. Which may be why people are getting so fat. They've been lured into thinking that their bodies are not their own responsibility.

Couch recipe.

I was looking for an ice cream recipe that would fit the Atkins diet, and I found this:

1/2 cup heavy cream 1/3 cup water 2 packages artificial sweetener 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 1/2 teaspoon syrup of your choice(or extract) Place ingredients in a small ziploc and seal well. Place inside a gallon sized ziploc with ice and salt. Set bag on a towel beside you on the couch and flip and jiggle the bag around for about 15 minutes, until set.

This is the first time I've ever seen the word "couch" in a recipe! I love the way the assumption is that you will already be sitting on a couch. I'd make fun, but I note that 15 minutes of modest exercise is involved.