Linkdump #2.

* Why you're still fat: “The message of our work is really simple,” although not agreeable to hear, Melanson said. “It all comes down to energy balance,” or, as you might have guessed, calories in and calories out. People “are only burning 200 or 300 calories” in a typical 30-minute exercise session, Melanson points out. “You replace that with one bottle of Gatorade.” The only real success I've had with weight loss has come through obsessive calorie counting through fitday.com. Nothing else makes a dent.

* Oh, Cleveland. (N.B.)

* More good news from the Obama administration: details of the secret ACTA copyright treaty. Terrible.

* Soviet advertising. More. Still more. Via.

* The New Yorker pushes the vegetarian agenda in a review of Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals.

Foer seems particularly incensed by the suggestion that deciding not to eat meat represents a delusion of innocence or, worse still, sentimentality. “Two friends are ordering lunch,” he writes:

One says, “I’m in the mood for a burger,” and orders it. The other says, “I’m in the mood for a burger,” but remembers that there are things more important to him than what he is in the mood for at any given moment, and orders something else. Who is the sentimentalist?

Still waiting.

* It's not exactly Douchiest College honors, but Duke is #14 on the Times's ranking of top 200 universities worldwide.

* Bitter Laughter reports by way of Nate Silver that public option opt-out may be a compromise that can actually get through the Senate—and Steve Benen agrees it's not a bad thing.

* Also in health care: Olbermann's hour-long "Special Comment" from last night, which wasn't nearly as unbearable as I imagined it would be when I heard it was coming.

* A second NJ-GOV poll—albeit one taken before Fatgate—shows Corzine up, this time by three.

* Lots of talk today about this New York Times genealogy of Michelle Obama, focused on an enslaved ancestor who was raped by her owner.

* Pee before you fly. It's funny how low-cost, outside-the-box carbon solutions—like Stephen Chu's suggestion that we paint our roofs white—are never taken seriously. It's like our society has a death wish.

* The literary journal is dead. Long live the literary journal.

'Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food.' See also: 'As Waistlines Widen, Brains Shrink.' Both via MeFi (come for the steak, stay for the flamewar).

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.

Livin' in the future.

* World’s first flying car prepares for take-off.

* First baby born screened for breast-cancer gene.

* Obese Americans now outweigh the merely overweight.

* Giant plasma TVs banned in Britain to fight climate change.

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.

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.”

Time for a science and technology minute.

* All blue-eyed people have a single, common ancestor.

* Diet sodas make you fatter.

* With news that Netflix is going to stop carrying HD-DVD discs, it looks like Blu-ray is going to win the format war. (I wonder how big a role the Playstation 3 played in this—I suspect it wasn't small.) Like kottke, I still wonder whether these companies aren't fighting over a graveyard. On-demand digital delivery seems like the future.

I don't care what you say about me, Clear Channel—I can take it—but leave Bruce Springsteen alone.

What would Earth be like if there were no moon?

Americans are now officially too fat for the rides at Disneyland. How big do we all have to get before we figure out we're eating garbage?

Beyond the age of petroleum: enjoy the wars.