Pressing the Question

"For Oprah, the damage was ultimately forty pounds, as she now admits to feeling 'like a fat cow' at over two hundred big ones. For us, the numbers went the other way, but with no less shame. Bloated debt turned into lost life savings. The results are obviously different in scale -- Oprah having a muffin top is not the same as a family losing their home -- but the cravings that caused her to overindulge on éclairs (I'm only guessing on that detail) are not so different from the ones that led us to binge on SUVs."

Nothing like tying one woman's weight problem to the global financial crisis.

Hobson's Choice

Provocative question of the day goes to Ron Rosenbaum in Slate:

"Do you want to die because President Obama is dying for a smoke?"

Hmm . . . Let me think. Okay, here's the premise:

"It's the winter of 2009, and a crisis has erupted between the United States and the former Soviet Union. Putin (surprise!) is acting arrogantly and aggressively, trying to push the new American president around. Do you want Barack Obama, the guy who has his finger on our nuclear trigger, notorious nicotine addict, to be dying for a smoke? All irritable, his nerves and famously smooth temper on edge? No outlet for his intolerable frustration but . . . a butt. But no butts to be found.

"OK, so Obama isn't going to start a nuclear war because of the well-meaning but counterproductive no-smoking rule. At least, I hope he isn't. I don't smoke, but I know smokers, and I know smokers trying to quit, and they scare me."