SYNERGY

I had a post about ready to go on these two stories about a weight-loss study and a weight-loss drug, but then I repurposed it for Vegcast, so please avail yourself of it there. Thanks.

6 MILLION POUNDS OF GROUND BEEF RECALLED

The ingenuity of our USDA, in conjunction with their meat-industry masters, is, as always, remarkable. Rather than dump a headline like that into the work week where people might see it and think something's up with their meat, the USDA starts nice and small: On Sunday, 75,000 pounds is recalled. On Wednesday, that's expanded to 300,000. That's 1,500 tons of meat, of course, but that amount is dwarfed by the second expansion, which happens - of course! - on Saturday, to the tune of 5.7 million pounds now suspected of E.Coli. Wonder how many Sunday papers had that news? Well played. (Special kudos since it even escaped my radar up till now!)