Newsweek has a sobering article about websites that support young women with anorexia, to the point of encouraging it:

A Web page labeled “Ana Boot Camp” recently offered its members a seemingly irresistible proposition: a 30-day regimen designed to help them drop some serious pounds, no exercise needed. The catch was that the group’s members were to vary their daily caloric intake from 500 (less than half the daily minimum requirement for women recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine) to zero. They were supposed to track their progress, fast to make up for the days they accidentally “overate” and support each other as they worked toward their common goal of radical weight loss.

Pro-anorexia, or “pro-ana,” Web sites (with more than one using the “Ana Boot Camp” name) have for years been a controversial Internet fixture, with users sharing extreme diet tips and posting pictures of emaciated girls under headlines such as “thinspiration.” But what was unusual about the site mentioned above (which is no longer available) was where it was hosted: the ubiquitous social networking site Facebook.com. The (largely female) users who frequent pro-ana sites have typically done so anonymously, posting under pseudonyms and using pictures of fashion models to represent themselves. Now, as the groups increasingly launch pages on Facebook, linking users’ real-life profiles to their eating disorders, the heated conversation around anorexia has become more public. Many pro-ana Facebookers say the groups provide an invaluable support system to help them cope with their disease, but psychologists worry that the growth of such groups could encourage eating disorders in others.

HT: Frank Sonnek, who asks “will this kind of openness increase the misery that is a consequence of sin or allow treatment of it or both?”

Michael Gerson is impressed with Obama’s centrist appointments, seeing in them signs of true statesmanship. He then says that they also reveal some things about the current president:

Obama’s appointments reveal something important about current Bush policies. Though Obama’s campaign savaged the administration as incompetent and radical, Obama’s personnel decisions have effectively ratified Bush’s defense and economic approaches during the past few years. At the Pentagon, Obama rehired the architects of President Bush’s current military strategy — Gates, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Raymond Odierno. At the Treasury Department, Obama has hired one of the main architects of Bush’s current economic approach.

This continuity does not make Obama an ideological traitor. It indicates that Bush has been pursuing centrist, bipartisan policies — without getting much bipartisan support. The transition between Bush and Obama is smoother than some expected, not merely because Obama has moderate instincts but because Bush does as well. Particularly on the economy, Bush has never been a libertarian; he has always matched a commitment to free markets with a willingness to intervene when markets stumble.

The candidate of “change” is discovering what many presidents before him have found: On numerous issues, the range of responsible policy options is narrow. And the closer you come to the Oval Office, the wiser your predecessors appear.

From Anne Rice goes from vampires to Jesus biographer: “Her memoir, ‘Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession,’ is the latest piece of evidence that Rice is reinventing herself in an attempt to build a reputation as a serious Christian writer.”

I read her first “Christ the Lord” book, on the childhood of Jesus, and was impressed with it. I haven’t read the next one that has come out, nor have I read this memoir. Have any of you? How are they?

Read Iowahawk’s reconstruction of the letters that now Treasury Secretary Paulson must have written home when he was a kid at summer camp. Here, it is alleged, he learned his method of saving our economy.

Also, read P.J. O’Rourke pleading for a bailout of print journalism.

HT: Vere Loqui