Why You’re So Fat

Serving size edition.

Quick Hits

* “Proposed new calendar would make time rational.”

According to Richard Conn Henry’s calendar, eight months would each have 30 days. Every third month would have 31 days. Every so often, to account for the leftover time, a whole extra week would be added.

The upshot: Years would proceed with clockwork regularity, with no annual re-jiggering of schedules required. Each day would occupy the same position as it had the previous year and would in the next. Were this 364-day calendar, known officially as the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, adopted on the first day of 2012, both Christmas and New Year’s Day would forever fall on Sunday.

If the bonus week can be a work-free jubilee, I’m in.

* And then climate change ate all our peanuts.

* And then Rick Perry annexed Canada.

* The SSA said 50 percent of workers made less than $26,364 last year — and most Americans have fewer job opportunities available to them. But the wealthiest Americans are relatively unscathed, with those earning $1 million or more jumping 18 percent from 2009. More here.

* Charles Taylor asks, “Is there any other living novelist who calls for a perpetual re-evaluation as much as Stephen King?” I’m not exactly a fan (though there’s quite a bit I like), but he’s definitely someone I’d like to teach a class on at some point.

* Death of cinema watch: Bridesmaids is the only top fifteen film this year that is neither a sequel, a reboot, or an adaptation.

* Bad news everyone: Clean paper towels are filthy. Your only hope now is to finally build that cleanroom.

* Why you’re fat and will always be fat. Via MeFi.

* Robert Reich predicts Obama-Clinton 2012. The Clinton-Biden switch has seemed like the only possible option for ’12 since at least 2008; it’s a huge unforced error if they don’t.

* And TEDxBrussels predicts 2061. No word on if there will still be peanuts.

‘Is Your Shampoo Making You Fat?’

I knew it was the shampoo’s fault.

What’s Making You Fat

Oh, potatoes, I wish I knew how to quit you.

The Fatpocalypse Is Coming

A new study claims that in 2018 an astonishing 43% of Americans will be obese.

Monday Night Links

Monday night links.

* After a brief flirtation with “top five” status, Brüno is back to being a box-office disappointment.

* Top ten comics cities. #2: Chris Ware’s Chicago. Via MetaFilter.

* xkcd tackles the frighteningly addictive power of TV Tropes.

* SF by the numbers. Via Boing Boing.

* Why are we so fat?

* Also in the New Yorker: profiles of Al Franken and Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, last seen ratifying nature’s right to exist.

* And allow me to offer my heartiest gerrycanavan.blogspot.com welcome to North Carolina’s newest resident.

Quik Lynx

Quik lynx.

* Is Obama too skinny to be president? Once again, the media outdoes itself.

* The newspaper crisis comes home to Northern Jersey—the Star-Ledger has announced a large-scale buy-out offer for employees, with the threat of a sale if costs are not cut.

* The Antikythera Mechanism has been decoded: it was apparently a Olympic calendar and solar-eclipse predictor.

* Episode Synopses for the Never-Aired TV Cop Drama Razor and Smith.

* The Sci-Fi Rejection Letter That Time Forgot.

* And I’ve linked to a lot of these before, but it’s neat to see them all in one place: retro posters for sci-fi travel destinations.

In the Future, Everyone Is Fat

Fatopia? Fatpocalypse? Can it really be true that 86 percent of Americans will be overweight or obese by 2030?

“National survey data show that the prevalence of overweight and obese adults in the U.S. has increased steadily over the past three decades,” said Youfa Wang, MD, PhD, lead author of the study and associate professor with the Bloomberg School’s Center for Human Nutrition. “If these trends continue, more than 86 percent of adults will be overweight or obese by 2030 with approximately 96 percent of non-Hispanic black women and 91 percent of Mexican-American men affected. This would result in 1 of every 6 health care dollars spent in total direct health care costs paying for overweight and obesity-related costs.”