Since food addiction can shorten a person's life just like drug addiction, then it seems logical to me that we should start copying the War on Drugs.

We could make a law to revoke the federal financial aid of anyone who gains more than ten pounds after starting college. And we could refuse college financial aid to kids who are unable to get their weight down in high school.

Drug paraphernalia is illegal. So we could make it illegal to make attractive clothing for fat kids. Let's dress them up in orange prison jumpsuits, like imprisoned drug addicts have to wear. The shame will make then thin again.

We could use asset forfeiture to close supermarket chains that sell ice cream.

Asset forfeiture a powerful weapon. It's what the DEA is using right now to shut down all the medical marijuana clinics in California. (You'll never find that out from Salon, but it is happening as I write this.)

So let's make asset forfeiture our friend and use it to save the lives of children from Hot Pockets and ice cream and all that nasty drug-like food that supermarkets push on their hopelessly addicted victims.

After that we can send armed troops to any country that we label a "fat exporting nation." Triple creme Brie is indictment of the French. France has to be first on our list.

And don't forget the power of random urine testing.

We can conquer this problem just like we've conquered drugs.

That would be so comically tragic if the hippie haters were depriving the world of an effective Alzheimer's medication as a consequence of their hatred for the hippies.

Watching Crocker makes me jump up and down and scream "It's not an ethnic-sectarian competition. It's a full on tribal war."

We took an authoritarian modern society and reduced it to pre-modern tribal rubble.

Oooooh victory for Western civilization.

We took a modern authoritarian country and reduced it to pre-modern tribal rubble. That doesn't feel like much of a victory, especially not given the price this country has paid.

A lot of people in physics have Asperger's and are socially awkward, but Asperger's doesn't necessarily make someone unattractive.

There is no correlation that I have seen in theoretical physics between math ability and physical facial attractiveness. I mean there are some BABES in this field. Absolute total babes.

And a lot of the women are good looking too. I don't want to brag but I really literally did stop traffic when I was in my 20s. And now I get called a cougar although I'm not really trying.

There are nerd babes, nerd cougars, and delightful nerds who are neither.

Let's stop with these idiotic stereotypes about who can do math and who can't.

I've never heard of a drug for Asperger's.

ON THE OTHER HAND a federal study of where America's potheads are working finds a lot of them employed in exactly the same professions where people with Asperger's also cluster -- in physics and computer science.

So maybe cannabis is the preferred drug for Asperger's? Why else would there be such a strong correlation?

I saw evidence of this correlation at a physics conference. During a coffee break I was giving my spiel on cannabinoid science to three theoretical physicists of very high professional rank, two of whom had Mac Arthur genius grants, and they said,

"We don't care about medical use. We just want to get high. Can you score?"

I wonder why Asperger's and cannabis use cluster in the same professions. That's an interesting question for science.

Too bad America isn't a more curious country.

Instead people want to make do with stale old stereotypes -- like nerds are ugly slobs and attractive women can't do physics and all potheads are dumb as dirt and lack ambition.

I rememeber the original tabloid article on which this urban legend was based. A tabloid, perhaps the Star, assembled a panel of "experts" and showed them several photos of Demi Moore when she was fat and when she was thin.

Then all the experts speculated on how much the surgery would have cost if she'd made all those changes through surgery instead of through exercise, diet and Botox.

They added in the cost of hair styists, personal trainers, spa sessions, fashion stylists, clothing, cosmetics, and even the salary of the nanny who watched the kids while all above speculative alleged services were allegedly being performed.

That was the original source of that story, and shame on Salon for never having made an effort to dig it up.

If, say, Bush were making this same claim about Hilary Clinton -- then of course people would demand REAL evidence -- which doesn't exist.

Since Demi Moore is a cultural figure, then you give yourselves permission to say anything at all about her even though you don't have any kind of source that would be recognized as a legitimate source for someone doing real journalism.

It's not reporting without verifiable facts -- it's "cultural criticism" -- so that allows you to excuse yourself.

No way would you excuse this kind of unsupported allegation if Bush were making it about Hilary Clinton.

If Bush made these allegations about Clinton, he'd be forced to come up with some real evidence, not recycled tabloid bullshit swept under a rug called "reportedly."

I read the Daily Mail article. They somehow neglected to mention the fact that their one and only source for this story was an article in an American tabloid that was purely speculative and completely unsourced.

They can't even quote an "inside source" -- because that wasn't how the original "story" happened.

That is so scary when the tabloids do a speculative story without any actual sources but then become an AUTHORITATIVE source -- without attribution -- for real newspapers.

That breaks so many basic rules of responsible journalism, it's just nausea-inducing.

I don't believe that calling it "cultural criticism" makes it okay.