I'm suspicious of this new poll showing that Americans are tired of hearing about Palin, and that they follow the health care debate more closely than they follow the news about her. This is a classic in the category of virtuous self reporting, along with studies about diet and exercise. In the study, only 3 percent of Democrats say they paid attention to coverage of Palin's book tour. But there are two big problems with that statistic. One, paying attention to news about Palin's book tour is not the same as paying attention to news about her. People may not even know she has written a book but, as any web site editor can tell you, they will read any story with Palin or Angelina Jolie in the headline. Second, if I asked you to rank your preference about stories on celebrities, child horror or health care, what would you say?

Tags: going rogue, Palin, Palin book tour, tired of Palin

Phil Carter is a longtime contributor to Slate and a personal friend to many of us at the magazine. He also served in the Obama administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy, dealing chiefly with issues relating to the closure of Guantanamo Bay. It was reported last night that he has left that position for "personal and family reasons." Despite some speculation that this was a smokescreen for a break with the administration, we have heard from several sources that there is just no story there; Carter indeed left for personal reasons. We wish Phil and his family the best and thank him for his years of service, in the military as well as in Washington.

Tags: obama administration, Phil Carter

One of the major arguments of the growing fat acceptance movement is that fear-mongering about "health" functions more as a tool to bash fat people than as a genuine expression of desire for a healthier populace.  You couldn't ask for a better argument for that point of view than this article in the New York Times about the dangers posed to contestants on the reality show The Biggest Loser, though the very name of the show has always suggested to me that it's more about mocking fat people than promoting healthy lifestyles. Contestants from the show are claiming that the rapid-fire weight loss encouraged on the program led them to dehydrate themselves, some to the point where they were urinating blood.  These concerns are coming after a recent episode had contestants rushed to the hospital for heat stroke.

But as the article points out, even contestants that didn't try to cheat the system by dropping water weight were still putting their bodies in grave danger by losing so much weight so quickly.  You're not really supposed to aim to drop more than two pounds a week on a responsible weight loss program, because doing more than that can cause heart problems and electrolyte imbalances that could cause a heart attack.  Yet The Biggest Loser is far from the only cultural product that promotes the idea that rapidly turning fat people into thin people is a legitimate strategy for "health."  That message blares at us from a variety of tabloid coves, weight-loss advertisements, TV shows, and puff pieces fawning over fat celebrities that dropped half their body weight in a short amount of time due to gastric bypass surgery.  Why is it not enough for fat people to lose weight?  Why does it have to be so much so quickly?

Part of it is a numbers game.  Look at the numbers given in this Times article: Contestants lost 118 pounds, 112 pounds, 122 pounds.  At the recommended weight-loss rates, that means most of them would have taken more than a year to accomplish their goals.  But searching around the Internet, it seems that the show tapes for only 10 to 12 weeks. Committing yourself to a year or many years of weight loss can seem like an overwhelming goal, especially since the emphasis in the world of weight loss is self-deprivation and pain, as if you're punishing yourself for getting fat.  But most people would like to believe they could give a couple months over to the misery of dieting and exercise, as long as they see a light at the end of the tunnel.

The emphasis on rapid weight loss goes a long way to explaining why diets don't work. The demands of dieting are unsustainable, and people who diet spend all their time thinking about how they're going to reward themselves with all the forbidden foods when they finally cross the line.  It goes straight back up to an American inability to conceive of moderation.  Extreme dieting rests next to virginity pledges or teetotalism, or from the left, Buy Nothing Day or throwing out your television set.  When looking for alternatives to excess, we latch onto abstinence.  But abstinence pledges defeat us, and we don't just fall off the wagon, but fling ourselves off it.  Indulgence/punishment rituals satisfy our need for drama, but they don't do much for our health or well-being.

Tags: biggest loser, dieting

Emily B. maybe the government task force on mammography was actually a plot by radiologists to get more American women to insist on mammograms. This whole mess is partly the fault of the cancer establishment. Think how many times you've heard "one in eight women will get breast cancer in her lifetime” – a slogan that always makes me wonder how you pull off the trick of getting cancer after your lifetime. It turns out that statistic is not about actual incidence, but a projection of how many women would get breast cancer if every woman lived to be 85 – which they don’t. The real numbers are alarming enough without inflating our sense of risk with this statistical trick.  A woman who is 40 actually has a one in 69 risk of getting breast cancer in the subsequent decade. But you can hardly blame women for the reaction that they don’t trust the task force report. First we’re browbeaten into getting mammograms and told if we don’t do this yearly we’re risking our lives and potentially leaving our children motherless. Then we’re told, "Never mind!"

Tags: breast cancer, mammograms, u.s. preventive services task force