Weighty Matters:

While American cars, on average, now tip the scale at over two tons, American drivers are transporting an extra load themselves. My wife Terry theorizes that the two go hand in hand. We are supersizing ourselves, so we supersize our running gear. Airlines have had to recalculate plane payloads in light of the obesity epidemic. Fashion designers have surreptitiously redefined dress sizes to help maintain the illusions of the not-so-thin and rich. As for diets--who knew that all one had to do to change a bacon double-cheeseburger into health food was to throw away the bun? To quote Odo, the founder of Annares in the anarchist utopian novel The Dispossessed, "Excess is excrement." And boy--are we full of it.