The New York Times California Bars a Firm's Voting Machines in November Election
[requires 'free' registration]

"California will prohibit the use of 15,000 of voting machines from Diebold Inc. in the November election because of of security and reliability concerns, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley announced today."

"The Shelley decision comes after more than a week of furor in California over glitches that plagued the Super Tuesday primary in several counties. Mr. Shelley has said Diebold's missteps "jeopardized the outcome" of the primary, in part because thousands of San Diego voters were turned away from polling places when Diebold equipment malfunctioned. At public hearings about the voting problems, Diebold Election Systems' president, Robert J. Urosevich, said in the company's defense that "We're not idiots, though we may act from time to time as not the smartest.""

redux [04.21.04]
News.Com Voting panel grills Diebold

""Diebold marketed, sold and installed its TSx (voting machine) in these four California counties prior to full testing, prior to federal qualification, and without complying with the state certification program," read a staff report on the investigation of Diebold Election Systems released Tuesday. An audit of all 17 California counties using the company's equipment, the report went on to say, "discovered that Diebold had, in fact, installed uncertified software in all its client counties without notifying the Secretary of State as required by law, and that the software was not federally qualified in three client counties."

Diebold and its handful of competitors are under intense scrutiny as states across the nation struggle to upgrade their voting systems in time for the November presidential election."

Oakland Tribune Diebold knew of legal risks

"Attorneys for Diebold Election Systems Inc. warned in late November that its use of uncertified vote-counting software in Alameda County violated California election law and broke its $12.7 million contract with Alameda County."

"Yet despite warnings from the state's chief elections officer, Diebold continued fielding poorly tested, faulty software and hardware in at least two of California's largest urban counties during the Super Tuesday primary, when e-voting temporarily broke down and voters were turned away at the polls."

redux [03.29.04]
Wired News How E-Voting Threatens Democracy

"Clicking on a link for a file transfer protocol site belonging to voting machine maker Diebold Election Systems, Harris found about 40,000 unprotected computer files. They included source code for Diebold's AccuVote touch-screen voting machine, program files for its Global Election Management System tabulation software, a Texas voter-registration list with voters' names and addresses, and what appeared to be live vote data from 57 precincts in a 2002 California primary election.

"There was a lot of stuff that shouldn't have been there," Harris said."

redux [03.02.04]
Wired News E-Vote Glitches Found in Election

"Scattered technical problems were reported in the early hours as voters in 10 states, including California, New York and Ohio, went to the Super Tuesday polls to choose a Democratic presidential nominee and decide primary contests for congressional and state races.

Advocates of electronic voting say paperless ballots save money and eliminate problems common to old systems. But the technology brings a new breed of security concerns, like software errors and hackers that could make the results unreliable."

Guardian Unlimited The hacks in the machine

"More worryingly, with public opinion so evenly divided, a president can be elected on the basis of 537 votes in one state. The new systems appear so easy to crack that a hacker armed with a telephone and the right numbers can dial into numerous access points, change a few votes for each precinct or hundreds of votes in several - leaving no trail.

There is nothing fanciful about the possibility of things going wrong. In one election last year in Indiana, the new electronic equipment recorded more than 100,000 votes in an election with only 19,000 registered voters."

redux [02.13.04]
Mercury News Opponents of change a threat to electronic voting

"Fear of change is a universal human emotion, and it often erupts when new technology comes along to alter an established and comfortable way of doing things.

This fear can sway people away from thoughtful consideration of risks and rewards, pushing them into panic reactions where new ideas are weighed down by unfair expectations.

That's happening right now with electronic voting."

Wired News E-Vote Machines Drop More Ballots

"Six electronic voting machines used in two North Carolina counties lost 436 absentee ballot votes in the 2002 general election because of a software problem, raising increasing doubts about the accuracy and integrity of voting equipment in a presidential election year."

""If this happened with one version of the firmware, how can we be sure that it didn't happen with other versions of the firmware?" asked Dill. "How can we be sure that other counties didn't lose votes that they didn't catch?""

Salon Will the election be hacked?

"While I sat at his computer, March helped me open a file containing actual results from a March 2002 primary election held in San Luis Obispo County, Calif. -- a file that March says would be accessible to anyone who worked in the county elections office on Election Day. Following March's direction, I changed the vote count with a few clicks. Then, he explained how to alter the "audit log," erasing all evidence that we'd tampered with the results. I saved the file. If it had been a real election, I would have been carrying out an electronic coup. It was a chilling realization."

redux [02.12.04]
MSNBC Online voting clicks in Michigan

"Brewer said Michigan is using state-of-the art security, many parts of which he would not discuss. The vote tally includes a check to make sure no one voted more than once.

Brewer compared the risks to those of paper absentee ballots: "People have decided over the course of time that accessibility and convenience of voting is worth taking that risk -- not that you let your guard down.""

redux [02.02.04]
The New York Times: Editorial/Op-Ed How to Hack an Election
[requires 'free' registration]

"Concerned citizens have been warning that new electronic voting technology being rolled out nationwide can be used to steal elections. Now there is proof. When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails."

"Critics of new voting technology are often accused of being alarmist, but this state-sponsored study contains vulnerabilities that seem almost too bad to be true."

The Mercury News Electronic Voting's Hidden Perils

"Poll workers in Alameda County noticed something strange on election night in October. As a computer counted absentee ballots in the recall race, workers were stunned to see a big surge in support for a fringe candidate named John Burton.

Concerned that their new $12.7 million Diebold electronic voting system had developed a glitch, election officials turned to a company representative who happened to be on hand.

Lucky he was there. For an unknown reason, the computerized tally program had begun to award votes for Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to Burton, a socialist from Southern California."

redux [12.18.03]
The Mercury News Voting machine maker dinged

"Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said Tuesday that Diebold Elections Systems could lose the right to sell electronic voting machines in California after state auditors found the company distributed software that had not been approved by election officials.

The auditors reported that voters in 17 California counties cast ballots in recent elections using software that had not been certified by the state. And voters in Los Angeles County and two smaller counties voted on machines installed with software that was not approved by the Federal Election Commission."

Fortune Worst Technology: Paperless Voting

"Remember all the chads and dimples that made voting for President so chaotic in Florida three years ago? In a well-meaning effort to fix the system before the 2004 elections, many communities--in Florida and in other states--have begun to install direct-recording electronic machines (DRE), which instantly record and tabulate votes; some even use fancy touch-screen technology similar to automated-teller machines in banks. Computer scientists are alarmed, however, by the potential to manipulate the new machines."

redux [12.12.03]
MSNBC The Odd Conflict over E-Voting

"The role of technology in U.S. elections has become the center of a curious fight in which the forces aren't lining up at all the way you might think. On one side, state and local elections officials, often thought to be technological troglodytes, are the most enthusiastic fans of the latest in computerized voting systems.

On the other is a group of computer scientists and other academics who are deeply suspicious of the technology and believe the best answer is, of all things, paper ballots."

PBS: I, Cringley Why the Best Voting Technology May Be No Technology at All

"As for voting itself, I think we have made a horrible decision to solve this problem with technology. While the voting technology we have been considering is flawed, the best answer doesn't have to be some other voting technology that is somehow better. We turn to technology because it supposedly eliminates human error. I suggest that we add humans to the process in order to eliminate technological errors. And we'd save a lot of money in the process.

My model for smart voting is Canada. The Canadians are watching our election problems and laughing their butts off. They think we are crazy, and they are right."

Media Monitors Network Electronic-Voting Debate Heats Up

"Electronic-voting machine manufacturers are circling their wagons trying to ease the security concerns raised in the last few months that their machines are susceptible to being hacked and subject to voter fraud.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University analyzed the software that runs on the voting machines of industry leader Diebold. In their report they stated, "We found significant security flaws: voters can trivially cast multiple votes with no built-in traceability, administrative functions can be performed by regular voters, and the threats posed by insiders such as poll workers, software developers, and even janitors, is even greater.""

CNN Electronic voting no magic bullet

"Several well-publicized flaws in "e-voting," or electronic voting, systems have not led to improvements, said Harvard University computer professor Rebecca Mercuri."

""Officials are not removed from their posts, fired or sent to trial; vendors are not banned from participation; equipment is not recalled; standards are not rewritten; and elections are not re-held," she said."

The Gazette E-mail stolen from Diebold is a call to gouge Maryland

"An e-mail found in a collection of files stolen from Diebold Elections Systems' internal database recommends charging Maryland "out the yin-yang" if the state requires Diebold to add paper printouts to the $73 million voting system it purchased."

"Diebold spokesman David Bear would neither dispute nor confirm the accuracy of the "yin-yang" e-mail on Monday, saying it is "at best the internal discussion of one individual and does not reflect the sentiments or the position of the company.""

BBC US sues 477 more 'song-swappers'

"The US recording industry has sued a further 477 people for online copyright infringement as part of its effort to stop music piracy."

"Wednesday's action was directed at file sharers using commercial internet service providers (ISPs) as well as people at universities such as Brown, Emory and Princeton."

redux [03.30.04]
News.Com Music sharing doesn't kill CD sales, study says

"For the study, released Monday, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they wrote.

"We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales," the study's authors wrote. "While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing.""

redux [08.19.03]
Wired News RIAA: We'll Spare the Small Fry

""RIAA is in no way targeting 'de minimis' users," wrote Cary Sherman, the group's president, in a letter the subcommittee released Monday. "RIAA is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits only against individual computer users who are illegally distributing a substantial amount of copyrighted music.""

"Sherman said that in cases it brought last year against college students who were illegally distributing tens of thousands of songs, the RIAA settled cases for $12,500 to $17,000 each."

redux [08.11.03]
The New York Times Internet Providers Question Subpoenas to Stop File Swapping
[requires 'free' registration]

"Arguing that the record industry is trying to force its members to become the "police of the Internet," a group representing over 100 Internet service providers plans to deliver a letter to the industry's trade association today. The letter asks a series of pointed questions about plans to sue people suspected of illegally trading music files online.

""There has to be a better answer than litigation," the letter says."

The Register Did Loyola University Chicago lose its innocence to the RIAA?

"A U.S. law professor has exposed the feeble backbone of Loyola University Chicago - an institution that handed its students' names over to the pigopolist mob's subpoena machine without so much as a grumble. The precedent set by the university's nonchalance toward privacy bodes poorly for students should the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) get its way and place the children before a court of law.

""A school or university should consider carefully whether it wants to be co-opted into the law enforcement business," D'Amato wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times."

SFGate Download warning 101

"Next week, incoming students at UC Berkeley will receive more than just campus maps and classroom tours: They'll learn about the perils of sharing digital music and movies files online.

Specifically they'll be warned they can lose their Internet access or get slapped with a costly copyright infringement lawsuit if they aren't careful about uploading and downloading files using programs like Kazaa."

redux [07.28.03]
Time Downloader Dragnet

"Bob Barnes never dreamed that the long arm of the music industry would reach into his personal computer. Sure, the bus operator from Fresno, Calif., had used Napster to grab music files off the Internet. And when that file-swapping service was put out of business, he switched to its most popular successor, Kazaa. But he was careful not to leave a trace, transferring all his downloaded songs to separate discs. A visiting teenage grandson wasn't so careful, however, and last week Barnes, 50, was slapped with a subpoena from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It alleged that he had posted online -- for the world to steal -- digital copies of songs by Savage Garden, Marvin Gaye and the Eagles. "This is like shock and awe," says Barnes. "Blitz them until they submit."

Barnes may be a pirate, but he has plenty of company."

The New York Times Subpoenas Sent to File-Sharers Prompt Anger and Remorse
[requires 'free' registration]

"Those on alert include several college students, the parents of a 14-year-old boy in the Southwest, a 41-year-old Colorado health care worker and a Brooklyn woman who works in the fashion industry.

"They could have used some other way to inform people than scaring the bejiminy out of them," said a mother who received a copy of the subpoena last Wednesday, listing several songs that her 14-year-old son had made available for others to copy from his computer. "If someone had sent me a letter saying `this is wrong,' you can bet your sweet potatoes that would have gotten my attention. This just seems so drastic.""

SecurityFocus "Copying is Theft ..."

"As the war over P2P downloading heats up, and the record companies launch the novel marketing technique of suing their customers, I think it is an appropriate time to settle some of the pervasive myths about U.S. copyright law which fuel both sides of the debate."

redux [07.10.03]
BBC File swappers 'buy more music'

"The survey's findings oppose the music industry's long-standing argument that internet downloading is responsible for a slump in CD sales, with album sales falling 5% in the last year.

Market research company Music Programming Ltd (MPL) said 87% of its respondents who downloaded music admitted they bought albums after hearing tracks through the internet."

redux [06.25.03]
Wired News RIAA Threatens Orgy of Lawsuits

"A recording-industry trade group said Wednesday it plans to sue hundreds of individuals who illegally distribute copyright songs over the Internet, expanding its antipiracy fight into millions of homes."

""The RIAA, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to not only alienate their own customers but attempt to drive them into bankruptcy through litigation. So therefore they probably won't be able to afford to buy any music even if they want to," said Grokster President Wayne Rosso, who added he does not support copyright infringement."

redux [03.18.02]
Matt Haughey The future of music

"Everyone with a computer I know uses them, rips them from their CDs, and shares them with others. Napster (and later on, Kazaa) built massive worldwide networks based on the sharing of these files, spreading terabytes of files to millions of users. And yet, you can't walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a physical form of media embedded with mp3s."

"Given the ubiquity of mp3s among consumers, the continued rise in popularity of the format despite anything that's been put in place to stop them, and the millions of dollars being spent on mp3 encoding/decoding software and hardware, I no longer think the RIAA operates solely on fear. At this point, they're simply running on stupidity."

redux [05.02.00]
Infoworld Napster sends a message to music industry: 'Your customers aren't happy'

""The Recording Industry Association of America wants to educate consumers with the message, "Artists deserve to be compensated -- artists won't make music if they can't make money." I can only imagine the public service announcements with multimillionaire artists pleading for their right to a seventh Porsche in the driveway.

There's no rationalization for piracy; it is what it is. However, rampant music piracy online indicates that the music industry's distribution and pricing model is out of whack with what people want. The problem isn't the piracy; the problem is unhappy customers.

And the music industry had better do something about it. This is a dinosaur moment -- with the big rock looming overhead -- where the music industry needs to ask itself how it will adapt."

Editor & Publisher Woman Who Took 'Coffin' Photo Hails Press Coverage

"Former contractor Tami Silicio, fired last week by Maytag Aircraft after her photograph of several flag-draped coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq appeared in the press, believes newspapers have done an excellent job covering her story. "The newspapers have opened my eyes to what that picture meant for everyone in the nation," Silicio told E&P this week. "I didn't realize how censored the United States has been on what's going on in Iraq.""

""I'm overwhelmed with all of the newspaper coverage," she said. "The newspapers have done a lot of good for the country because people are realizing how censored things have been.""

Online Journalism Review Which Words Is a War Photo Worth? Journalists Must Set the Standard

"We have long heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but no one has ever figured out which words an image stands for in the news of war.

Perhaps nowhere has this been as problematic as during the latest war in Iraq, when images of war have been traveling as fast and as furiously as at any earlier time in history. Unlike the words at their side, the images of the war in Iraq have drawn a sustained degree of public attention, as pundits, military and government officials, journalists and members of the public have debated the very issue of image display -- whether to show an image, where to show an image, and how to show an image."

Forbes The Next Chapter In Electronic Books

"The electronic book is one of those technological concepts from the 1990s that seems somewhat of a leftover. It's never really taken off the way it potentially could: It makes so much sense."

"If the e-book is going to be a hit, a few things have to happen. First there has to be a good selection of material to read, and, for publishers, that means taking the risk that their best titles may wind up being distributed for free on the Internet."

redux [10.26.02]
Prospect Good books

"For the next decade or two, the paperback book will continue to be one of the most cost-effective, portable storage devices ever invented. Upmarket hardback non-fiction is increasingly pleasing to the eye and touch and the market for these titles is also likely to remain immune to the challenge of e-books. Nevertheless, the e-book will develop a growing following-a US report claims that 180,000 electronic titles were published there in 2001-and will sit alongside other forms, such as the audio book and the bound copy as it gradually becomes established. As with all technologies, there will be generational differences. The over 35s may still retain an attachment to wads of printed paper, but for younger generations, this affection may be more fickle.

When the shift towards electronic books gets underway, the news for publishing companies is likely to be mixed."

redux [08.26.02]
The Chronicle of Higher Education Students Complain About Devices for Reading E-Books, Study Finds

"E-book technology needs some improvement before students will be willing to use e-books instead of textbooks, according to a report on a study conducted at Ball State University.

The researchers hoped to find out how using e-books compared with using textbooks, and how e-book use affected students' learning. Although the researchers started with the assumption that e-books would be just as easy to use as textbooks, they soon found that students had various complaints about the performance of the e-book devices. But students who used e-books did just as well on quizzes as those who used printed texts."

redux [07.08.02]
Washington Post E-Books Not Exactly Flying Off The Shelves

"There are those in the industry who continue to emote about the e-book and praise its capabilities, but the plain old reading public -- on the beaches, in the coffee shops, at the Metro stations -- just aren't buying into e-books. You don't see a horde of people devouring Huck Finn on a handheld or "Ulysses" on a laptop.

"So much about e-books was about simulating paper on the screen," says Mark Bernstein. "It's like vinyl siding. People rarely like simulations as much as they like the real thing.""

Tim O'Reilly Repeated Misconceptions About eBooks

"Yes, of course paper is a good technology for providing word-based information. But that is to confuse the delivery mechanism for a book with what is being delivered. A book is a wonderful artifact, to be sure, and I have more than 5000 of them in my house. But what does a book contain? Stories, ideas, facts, interpretations, the voices of people long dead or from a faraway land. A book is a user interface to the world of the mind. As Edwin Schlossberg once said, "The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." Or imagine. Or find out what they need to know.

The eBook that simply mimics the print book on screen is a transitional form, just like the early "moving pictures" that simply pointed a camera at actors on a stage."

The Shifted Librarian Ebooks Don't Need To Fly Off Shelves

"Can someone please explain to me when it was decided that ebooks would completely replace printed books? Why is it so difficult for the media (let alone publishers) to view them as a complementary instead? (That's a rhetorical question.

Here's a novel idea - let's think of ebooks the same way we think of audiobooks. No one believes that audiobooks will replace printed material and as a result, the format carries far less pressure for market penetration and sales figures. In fact, this is one area where libraries are recognized as a valuable market. So let's all agree here and now to apply these same principles to ebooks, both text and audio. Growing sales figures and markets are a good thing. Not everyone will choose to use them, and that's okay. And libraries are a valuable market for ebooks, a fact publishers and manufacturers should acknowledge."

redux [01.22.02]
MSNBC Oprah, Bill Gates and the Future of Books

"How primitive is the current system? Later this century, kids will be amazed to learn how we used to distribute books. Think about it. We grow entire forests, chop them down, flatten them out, spread ink on them, turn them into bricks of wood pulp, which we then drive around the country on trucks. Our children won't be amazed because we were primitive--they'll be amazed that we were so rich. Current-day book publishing is a tremendously wasteful way of moving information around: while paper is a terrific display mechanism, it's a terrible transport device. Publishers take huge risks when they print and ship large quantities of books--and that's why gatekeepers like Oprah so utterly control the fate of books and authors."

"While consumers have been quick to buy MP3 players for online audio--not much different, really, than a Walkman that plays cassettes--there's simply nothing in our retail genes that drives us to buy "book players." So the e-book may have to sneak in disguised as something else."

redux [08.28.01]
The New York Times Forecasts of an E-Book Era Were, It Seems, Premature
[requires 'free' registration]

"A year later, however, the main advantage of electronic books appears to be that they gather no dust. Almost no one is buying. Publishers and online bookstores say only the very few best-selling electronic editions have sold more than a thousand copies, and most sell far fewer. Only a handful have generated enough revenue to cover the few hundred dollars it costs to convert their texts to digital formats."

"Consumers appear confused, Mr. Arland said, because the devices are neither computers nor hand-held organizers, nor do they connect to the Internet. The appliances download electronic books over phone lines directly from a central server.

The device has been the kind of purchase people imagined someone else might enjoy."

redux [08.12.00]
SiliconValley.Com Forget the hype, e-books still hard on the eyes

"The publishing industry has gotten very excited about electronic books lately. Random House, Time Warner and just about every other publishing giant has put out a flurry of announcements outlining grand plans for digital distribution.

Adding to the hype, Microsoft last week released its Microsoft Reader 1.5 software for the PC, and Barnesandnoble.com released 2,000 e-book titles, while promising to release 150 more each week.

Ignore all this stuff. E-book technology is just not ready. It's too hard to read on the screen."

redux [03.09.00]
Alertbox Electronic Books - A Bad Idea

"Even when electronic books gain the same reading speed as print, they will still be a bad idea. Electronic text should not mimic the old medium and its linear ways. Page turning remains a bad interface, even when it can be done more conveniently than by clicking the mouse on a "next page" button. It is an insufficient goal to make computerized text as fast as print: we need to improve on the past, not simply match it.

The basic problem is that the book is too strong a metaphor: it tends to lead designers and writers astray. Electronic text should be based on interaction, hypertext linking, navigation, search, and connections to online services and continuous updates. These new-media capabilities allow for much more powerful user experiences than a linear flow of text. Linear text may have ruled the world since the Egyptians learned to produce arbitrarily long scrolls of papyrus, but it's time to end this tradition. Nobody has time to read long reports any more: information must be dynamic and under direct control of the reader, not the author."

Xerox Research and Technology A Comparison of Reading Paper and On-Line Documents

"We report on a laboratory study that compares reading from paper to reading on-line. Critical differences have to do with the major advantages paper offers in supporting annotation while reading, quick navigation, and flexibility of spatial layout. These, in turn, allow readers to deepen their understanding of the text, extract a sense of its structure, create a plan for writing, cross-refer to other documents, and interleave reading and writing. We discuss the design implications of these findings for the development of better reading technologies."

redux [03.28.00]
Salon The revolution that wasn't

"The news that Stephen King would release a story exclusively in digital form and exclusively via the Web rode the media mountain like an intermediate skier on a black-diamond trail -- tentatively at first, then with a little more confidence and, finally, hurtling out of control, crashing into unexpected territory. The trade press gave its imprimatur, and within a few days the story spread like a virus over Web and wire. Television and radio chugged behind.

For those who've watched digital content come into its own, the frenzy was nothing short of remarkable."

"...[Publisher Simon & Schuster] seems to be proclaiming something more insidious with the publication of "Riding the Bullet": that not only can it drag us kicking and screaming into the next era of digital entertainment but that, as a traditional content provider, it can control how and when that will happen. For the consumer, it seemed to say, cyberspace offers much that is new -- speed, efficiency, lower costs. But it also reminded us that, for the moment, Old Media and traditional entertainment still rule."

CBBC Newsround Junk food might be an addiction

"People who say they are addicted to junk food might not be fibbing, US scientists have discovered.

They carried out brain scans on hungry people and found out that junk food sparked a similar reaction to the effect of drugs on addicts."

"The findings might help the argument that junk food advertising is helping to drive the obesity problem in the US."

redux [03.12.04]
Guardian Unlimited US shields fast-food firms from obesity cases

"America's fast-food industry savoured a victory over consumer activists yesterday after Congress approved a "cheeseburger bill" to shield restaurant franchises and food firms from blame for making customers "dangerously fat"."

"However, consumer rights groups say more is at stake with the cheeseburger bill than a wake-up call for Americans to take control of poor eating habits and sedentary lifestyles. Jennifer Keller, a nutritionist on the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine, said: "The unfortunate thing is that without the threat of litigation and lawsuits, the food industry is not going to take any steps to provide healthy options.""

redux [02.16.04]
Policy Review Burgers, Fries, and Lawyers

"While plaintiffs' lawyers vigorously denounce the nutritional content of fast food, they tend to ignore the nutritional content of alternatives. Home cooking, of course, has a nice ring to it, and it is hard to criticize the idea of a traditional meal cooked by mom or dad. But if we put nostalgia aside for a moment, we can see that the typical American meal of 25 years ago might win taste contests but few prizes from today's nutritionists. Meat loaf, fried chicken, butter-whipped potatoes, and a tall glass of whole milk may have kept us warm on a cold winter evening, but such a diet would surely fail a modern test for healthy living. And let's not even discuss a crusty apple pie or bread pudding for dessert. Yesterday's comfort food gives today's dietitians indigestion. It is no surprise, then, that today's fast food derives a smaller percentage of calories from fat than a typical home meal from 1977-78. In fact, even in the 1970s, fast food meals had almost the same fat/calorie ratio as home cooking at that time. By this measure of fat/calories, fast food in the 1970s looked healthier than restaurant cooking, according to usda figures. Therefore, the caricature of fast food restaurants as a devilish place for nutrition makes little historical sense."

redux [11.10.03]
Forbes Fat Food Fight On Two Fronts

"The food fight over what do about obesity is heating up on both sides of the Atlantic as British official are mulling a ban on some television advertising aimed at children, and U.S. officials are considering whether to classify obesity as a disease as opposed to a condition, which would open the door to insurance coverage paying for treatment."

"Under some of the proposals being floated in the United Kingdom, fast-food giant McDonald's would face a ban on its sponsorship of the England football team, as would Pepsi-Cola, its co-sponsor."

redux [09.02.03]
Yahoo! News Food Fight

""Let's say you ate every meal of the year with your child and every meal you delivered a very compelling nutrition message. That's 1,000 exposures for you for every meal of the year," Brownell says. "The problem is the food industry has 10,000 exposures on television alone because the average child sees 10,000 food advertisements every year. They have Madison Avenue doing these wonderful things with animation and cartoon characters and sports heroes, so who's going to win that one?"

He adds, "It's not a fair fight and we've handcuffed parents in raising healthy children.""

Fox News Political Debate Looms Over Obesity

"Even fat is the stuff of politics in Washington. And with obesity a growing health problem, lawmakers, lawyers and activists are lining up the way they do for most issues: on two sides."

"The debate has spilled over into public policy, with proposals for a junk-food tax, limits on food advertising, demands for more details on labeling and lawsuits against food manufacturers. Several states are considering limits on sweets sold in schools; Some are debating whether to force chain restaurants to list nutrition information on menus."

NPR: Talk of the Nation Obesity, Pt. II: Government and Obesity

"Hear Part II of our series on obesity. We'll look at the politics of food -- what can and should the government be doing in the fight against fat?"

redux [07.02.03]
AZCentral Under fire, food giants switch to healthier fare

"So that's not the dinner bell you hear. It's an alarm bell raising Oreo-sized goose bumps for the giant makers of now-unfashionable sugary, fatty and calorie-laden foods. All are now faced with this new reality: As concern about obesity rises, they're within a few cookie crumbs of becoming the next Big Tobacco for trial lawyers.

"You can't stop tobacco from being unhealthy," warns Sam Hirsch, an attorney whose obese clients filed lawsuits against McDonald's. "But you can make food less unhealthy.""

NPR: All Things Considered Kraft Foods Joins the Battle of the Bulge

"Kraft Foods announces it will reduce the portion sizes of its snack foods, stop marketing to children in school and reduce fat in some of its foods. The move is aimed at helping the global fight against obesity. Hear Professor Kelly Brownell of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders."

redux [02.21.03]
The Guardian 'McFrankenstein' returns to haunt fast food chain in new court action

"Judge Robert Sweet was bluntly dismissive of the original complaint last month brought on behalf of two children from the Bronx.

But he left the door open for potential litigants if it could be proved there are dangers in eating McDonald's food that are not commonly known. He said it could be argued that Chicken McNuggets, instead of being simply chicken fried in a pan, are a "McFrankenstein creation of various elements"."

redux [07.26.02]
USA Today Lawsuit: Fast food chains caused obesity

"A man sued four leading fast food chains, claiming he became obese and suffered from other serious health problems from eating their fatty cuisine."

""They said '100% beef.' I thought that meant it was good for you," Barber told Newsday. "I thought the food was OK."

"Those people in the advertisements don't really tell you what's in the food," he said. "It's all fat, fat and more fat. Now I'm obese.""

Common Dreams Fast Food Nation: An Appetite for Litigation

"John Banzhaf likes to pose this challenge to students who enroll in his graduate class on legal activism at George Washington University, in Washington, DC. Think of something that really irritates you or smacks of obvious civil injustice, he tells them. Then think of a way of using the law to right the wrong and seek redress.

In other words, as Professor Banzhaf himself puts it with the freewheeling candor we have come to expect from both heroes and villains in the American legal system, let's sue the bastards."

ABC News Obsessed by Fast Food

"Residents of the United States spend more on fast food a year than they do movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and records combined. Americans shelled out more than $110 billion on burgers, fried chicken, and the like in 2000, compared with $6 billion in 1970."

""Fast food is really moving into schools, which is horrible, because eating habits are formed when you're young, so if you get fat then, you've started a lifelong battle," Schlosser said."

American Psychological Association Fast-food culture serves up super-size Americans

""It's important for us to look at this from a public health point-of-view, where we're not so concerned with how overweight an individual is, but how overweight the population is," said Brownell. "Genetics is what permits the problem to occur, but environment is what drives it."

Of particular concern to Brownell is America's passive acceptance of unhealthy food. Americans fail to recognize, for example, the possible damage done by such fast-food icons as Ronald McDonald. "We take Joe Camel off the billboard because it is marketing bad products to our children, but Ronald McDonald is considered cute," said Brownell. "How different are they in their impact, in what they're trying to get kids to do?""

The New York Times No Accounting for Mouthfeel
[requires 'free' registration]

"In the opening pages of ''Fast Food Nation,'' Eric Schlosser makes a series of observations about McDonald's. The company operates about 28,000 restaurants around the world. It's the nation's biggest buyer of beef, pork and potatoes, and the world's biggest owner of retail property. The company is one of the country's top toy distributors and its largest private operator of playgrounds. Ninety-six percent of American schoolchildren can identify Ronald McDonald. Roughly one of every eight workers in the United States has done time at the chain. The McDonald's brand is the most famous, and the most heavily promoted, on the planet. ''The Golden Arches,'' Schlosser says, ''are now more widely recognized than the Christian cross.'' Of course, McDonald's isn't alone. ''The whole experience of buying fast food,'' he writes, ''has become so routine, so thoroughly unexceptional and mundane, that it is now taken for granted, like brushing your teeth or stopping for a red light.''"