And yet, as relentless as the obesity crisis appears to be, it's expansion doesn't have to be a foregone conclusion. That's because, unlike a naturally occurring epidemic, it's almost completely human created -- a reality that allows for the possibility of a human-directed reversal.

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But it's nonetheless disappointing that a man we at Salon bestowed our highest honor to just six months ago has proven himself so terribly unenlightened. In an interview for Examiner.com last week, one of our 2011 Sexiest Men declared of marriage, "It should not be of the same sex so as to adulterate the altar of matrimony, like in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah of Old." Oh dear. Winning lots of fights? Sexy. Getting elected to the Filipino Congress? Sexy. "Donating millions to improve living conditions in his poverty-stricken nation"? Super hot. Not being down with civil rights? Bzzzzzzt!

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They're hoping you don't. And acting like it never happened (even though most of their words are just clicks away online.)

One by one — with the exception of holdout Ron Paul — the GOP also-rans have coughed up endorsements of their onetime rival. And as they do, they're pulling rhetorical backflips to distance themselves from their former harsh assessments of Romney.

Don't try this at home, folks. It takes a professional politician to pull it off with a straight face.

A sampling of the also-rans' anti-Romney rhetoric when they were candidates and their obligatory niceness after endorsing Romney.

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RICK SANTORUM

The former Pennsylvania senator still doesn't have trouble curbing his enthusiasm for Romney. He waited a month after dropping out of the race to endorse Romney, then emailed his tepid endorsement in the dead of night. He finally got out the E-word in the 13th paragraph of his 16-paragraph statement.

THEN:

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Deb Fischer’s late charge to victory wasn’t really rooted in ideology. As Hotline’s Reid Wilson points out, she’s actually racked up a (somewhat) moderate record in the Nebraska legislature, and has some personal connections to the state’s leading GOP establishment figures.

But most GOP primary voters probably didn’t know this. Fischer came to the race with little money or name recognition and spent virtually all of the campaign toiling the shadows of her two better-known opponents. The Palin endorsement came just a week before the primary, giving Fischer a sudden jolt at just the right time. It may be that all Republican voters really knew about her was that she was a rancher and a conservative (per the ads she ran), that she had Palin’s support, and that she wasn’t her rivals. And that was enough to pull out a victory that no one saw coming.

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“I absolutely advocate for comprehensive immigration reform,” Martinez  told reporter Andrew Romano. “Republicans want to be tough and say, ‘Illegals, you’re gone.’ But the answer is a lot more complex than that.”

With those words, Martinez inflicted multiple wounds on whatever slender chance she had to join the national ticket. First, she indicated support for the immigration agenda that President Obama promises to pursue if he defeats Romney in November. Second, the reforms the 43-year-old first-term Republican favors are opposed by every Republican member of the Senate (even those like John McCain, who used to support it) and a solid majority in the House. (In case there was any doubt, the same day Martinez's interview appeared, Politico reported that the Romney campaign was seeking a "boring white guy" as a running mate.)

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One was the Great Recession that took hold before Barack Obama became president. That landmark event went unmentioned in Romney's speech. Another was a series of Bush-era tax cuts that Romney wants to follow with even lower rates.

Instead he laid the blame on Obama, a president who has certainly increased the nation's eye-popping debt — but not, as Romney claimed, by nearly as much as all other presidents combined.

A look at some of Romney's assertions and how they compare with the facts:

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ROMNEY: "America counted on President Obama to rescue the economy, tame the deficit and help create jobs. Instead, he bailed out the public sector, gave billions of your dollars to the companies of his friends, and added almost as much debt as all the prior presidents combined."

THE FACTS. Hardly. Presidents from George Washington through George W. Bush ran the national debt up to $10.62 trillion, the amount it was on the day Obama took office. Today, it is $15.67 trillion, according to the Treasury Department's Bureau of Public Debt. So it has gone up by $5.05 trillion under Obama. That's roughly half of the amount amassed by all the other presidents combined.

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But just mentioning Netflix and Hulu, two companies that have thus far rolled out exactly one original scripted program each to not much fanfare, is a compliment of the “It's better to be talked about than not talked about at all” variety. Hulu and especially Netflix, which will begin airing new episodes of Fox’s former show “Arrested Development” sometime later this year, are on the playing field. Since one of the major distinctions between Hulu and Netflix and broadcast TV is that there’s no proper time to watch their shows, now seemed as good as any to catch up on the two existing series and see if Fox and its brethren have anything to worry about.

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Aides had downplayed the rendezvous as simply aimed at getting to know one another rather than about hammering out any policy. Yet the future of Europe could hinge on whether these two leaders find a way to work well together.

Rarely have two people met for the first time with so much baggage. Merkel refused to meet with Hollande during his election campaign, and made the highly unusual step of publicly backing his rival, fellow conservative Sarkozy. Hollande for his part seemed to be campaigning as much against Merkel as the incumbent, pledging to renegotiate the fiscal pact that she had championed.

Now the two have finally met face-to-face and the encounter seemed cordial if hardly warm. Following the ceremonial reviewing of the guard of honor – during which Merkel had to gently nudge Hollande in the right direction on the red carpet – the two held an hour -long meeting. They then addressed the throng of international journalists in a joint press conference during which Merkel remained stony-faced during much of Hollande’s comments, interspersed with the odd smile.

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There is substantial opposition in both Yemen and the West to the new U.S.-backed Yemeni President, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Hadi was the long-time Vice President of the Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, and after Saleh finally stepped down last year, Hadi became President as part of an "election" in which he was the only candidate (that little fact did not prevent Hillary Clinton from congratulating Yemen "on today's successful presidential election" (successful because the U.S. liked the undemocratic outcome)). As it does with most U.S.-compliant dictators in the region, the Obama administration has since been propping up Hadi with large amounts of money and military assistance, but it is now taking a much more extreme step to ensure he remains entrenched in power -- a step that threatens not only basic liberties in Yemen but in the U.S. as well:

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While the technology isn’t nearly as versatile or as user-friendly as the science fiction dream, the implications include the potential to provide the things we need in much greener, less-centralized, less resource-intensive way. But, as with any new technology, there are also potential negative effects to balance the scales. Over the long run, the human imagination will no doubt concoct new uses that appear grotesque to us now but may make sense as the technology becomes ubiquitous and famiiar.

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And now the same thing may be happening all over again, with Nebraska joining a growing list of unexpected 2012 Senate battlegrounds – at least for the moment.

The impetus is the surprise victory of Deb Fischer, a little-known state legislator, over two seasoned opponents in Tuesday’s Nebraska Republican Senate primary. Fischer’s candidacy seemed dead in the water until about a week ago, when she was endorsed by Sarah Palin. A last-second ad blitz from a super PAC controlled by the founder of Ameritrade added to her momentum, and Fischer ended up beating out state Attorney General Jon Bruning, who had been the favorite, by 5 points.

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Here's how the story got started. Back in October, the FBI announced that it had broken up an international crime ring when it arrested six Estonians in what was then heralded as “the biggest cyber criminal takedown in history.” The Estonians had, over the course of four years, hijacked more than 4 million computers in 100 countries through the use of malware known as DNSChanger. By redirecting the infected browsers of unwitting users, DNSChanger was able to send high volumes of traffic to the criminal ring’s rogue websites and servers, collecting more than $14 million in fraudulent advertising revenue and exposing their victims to information theft in the process.

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Of course not, but Mitt's not giving up.

In Lansing, Mich., last week, Romney derided Obama as an "old school liberal" compared to Clinton, whom he called a "new Democrat." Where Clinton "said the era of big government was over, President Obama brought it back with a vengeance," Romney told a crowd of college students. A campaign official told CNN that Obama "really turned his back" on Clinton's policies, including welfare reform and middle-class tax cuts.

Huh? Of course Obama cut taxes for the middle class in the 2009 Recovery Act, which Republicans consistently lie about, and Clinton controversially raised taxes on high earners (Romney would lower them) to cut the deficit in 1993. Meanwhile, Obama has left President Clinton's welfare reform alone, despite rising rates of poverty and unemployment in the recession.

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How many times have we asked that question across nearly four decades?

"Impossible!" said some in 2006 when Tina Fey, Chris Parnell, Horatio Sanz and Rachel Dratch headed for the door, only to be followed two years later by her friend and "Weekend Update" co-host Amy Poehler.

But in their wake grew one of the most versatile, multi-threat casts in "SNL" history, one that firmly established its own "SNL" era. Kristen Wiig, Andy Samberg, Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis all became cast members in the 2005-2006 season, joining a group that already included Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen and Kenan Thompson.

At the time, "SNL" creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels pronounced them "the wave of the future" and Fey likened herself to a senior seeing "exciting freshmen" arrive. But as this latest season of the sketch institution comes to a close this Saturday night (with host Mick Jagger, and musical guests Arcade Fire and the Foo Fighters), there's a growing sense that another "SNL" class is nearing graduation.

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