This seems like one of the oddest tactics yet in the effort to get people to take obesity seriously:

Can this possibly work? I mean, terrorism is scary because ... well, the whole idea is to make something explode and kill a bunch of people when they least expect it. But obesity isn't terrifying. You don't wake up one day with a 50-inch waist where your abs used to be.

I think if scare tactics were going to work, they would have by now.

Meanwhile, how weird is it that researchers are trumpeting their success in mapping the genome of the grain that's launched a billion hips? Or that scientists are establishing a seed vault in the Arctic, which will be impervious to nuclear annihilation or catastrophic climate change.

Good to know that even if our species faces existential crisis, the seeds of our obesity epidemic will remain safe.

(For the record, I'm being facetious. I've seen Waterworld. I know how important those seeds will be if everything else goes to hell.)

Tuesday blog meat

• According to this, "most adults in the U.K. believe that children's well-being is being damaged because childhood has become too commercial." You know, there's a simple solution to this problem: Stop giving so much stuff to your kids! And while you're at it, stop giving them so much crap food. Or at least stop giving it to them in front of my children. (With apologies, I've been angry about this for a long time. I can't pick my kids up at the bus stop anymore without having to pull them through a gauntlet of parents stuffing their kids with donuts, with my kids whining about why they don't get donuts after school. My preferred answer would be, "Let's revisit this question in 20 years. When all these kids are obese, do you still think you'll resent the fact I didn't let you have donuts every day after school?" But, of course, I can't say that, so I just grit my teeth and drag them home. And then bitch about it on my blog.)
• Maybe the problem with modern child-rearing is that we all have too many options, and we're afraid to lose any of them, as John Tierney discusses in today's New York Times.
• The headline on this story is that the FDA is looking into the side effects of botched Lasik eye surgery, including depression leading to suicide. But the story's sidebar notes that only 2 to 3 percent of Lasik surgeries have any complications at all, and the report never attempts to quantify how often serious, lifestyle-impairing complications arise. Speaking as someone who's had the surgery, I guarantee it's not something you should do without serious consideration of the risks. But all the data I've seen suggest the risks are very small, and shrink even more when you pick an experienced, fully credentialed surgeon.