The Times national section today features an article about how the 234 to 195 vote in the House of Representatives against a farm bill "reflects the declining clout of the farm lobby" and "the shift in American population and power to more urban areas."

Fair enough, except that vote (the Times article, as is unfortunately typical, carries no hyperlink to the roll call) was back on June 20. Why should it take 13 days for the Times to figure out and share with readers an explanation of the bill's defeat that is not exactly rocket science in the first place? If the article was bumped from the print paper because of unexpected breaking news, it could have been run on the Times web site, where space is unlimited.

This is an example of how, for all the efforts to speed up the Times' metabolism and adjust to the faster pace of a 24-hour digital news cycle, on some stories the paper can seem glacially slow.

A column item in the Science Times section begins, "Please indulge me as I point out one more fun — and mildly educational — science blog."

This is just bad writing that should have been edited out. If the writer has to beg readers for indulgence, some readers are not going to be inclined to grant it. The item could have begun instead simply, "One more fun — and mildly educational — science blog is..." Or "two cat-loving geologists have created a fun and mildly educational science blog." That way the beginning of the article is about the blog, rather than about the Times reporter and her anxiety about her strained relationship with her readers.

A Times book review of Joseph Ellis's book Revolutionary Summer begins:

In his 1783 Farewell Address to the Army, George Washington called the perseverance of the "Armies of the United States" through eight long years of war, "little short of a standing Miracle" and though not a deeply religious man, he thanked the "singular interpositions of Providence" for his troops' survival and ultimate triumph.

It's not accurate to say that Washington was "not a deeply religious man." There's a fine book about our first president's spiritual life called Washington's God by Michael Noval and Jana Novak that sets the record straight.

"G.O.P. Sees Opportunity for Election Gains in Obama's Climate Change Policy" is the headline over an article in today's New York Times.

This is becoming a tiresome and somewhat reflexive and repetitive trope in the Times' national coverage; a previous example was the headline over the article about the IRS scandal: "I.R.S. Focus on Conservatives Gives G.O.P. an Issue to to Seize On."

Rather than emphasizing the substantive differences or objections conservatives or Republicans have with President Obama or his administration, the Times depicts the Republicans as motivated largely, or almost exclusively, by desire for political gain.

An "editorial observer" column by Lawrence Downes expresses "bafflement" at Anthony Weiner's standing in recent polls about the New York mayoral race. "As the race wades into the murky depths of summer, a half-dozen solid, serious candidates are struggling to outshine a tabloid-tested opponent whose success is improbable only to people, like me, who don't get it."

Since Mr. Downes doesn't get it, here is an attempt to explain: Mr. Weiner is running as the most centrist Democrat in the race. His campaign announcement commercial denounced excessive regulations on the city's small businesses, and he's been supportive of Mayor Bloomberg's policing policies. That resonates with a lot of voters who don't want to see New York's City Hall go back to the kind of naive Manhattan leftism of the Lindsay or Dinkins administrations.

The column by Mr. Downes also reports that Mr. Weiner "said the West Bank wasn't occupied by Israel, then shrugged off the ridicule." Even the Times' own news columns are now referring to "the Palestinian controlled West Bank," so perhaps the ridicule should be directed at Mr. Downes.

A front-page New York Times news article about a bid by the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma to host the Summer Olympic Games in 2024 includes this passage: "As for signature landmarks, he pointed to the Golden Driller, a 76-foot-tall oil worker with cheese-color skin and a giant belt buckle that proudly declares, "TULSA." The main media center would sit at its feet and Olympic medals would hang from its neck."

As a descriptor of skin color, "cheese" isn't particularly helpful. Cheese comes in all colors, from the bright white of a goat cheese to the red rind of cheese that comes with a red rind to the orange of some cheddar to the blue or green hue of blue cheese.

The New York Times public editor, in her June 30 column, took up the issue raised here June 13 about a Times article about a Brooklyn house. The Times article had said the owners preferred not to give their ages. I was happy to be quoted by name in the Times article, though disappointed there was no mention of or link to this Web site, which was quoted in the public editor's column.

David Brooks writes in his column:

Over the past few decades, American society has been transformed in a fit of absence of mind. First, we've gone from a low immigrant nation to a high immigrant nation. If you grew up between 1950 and 1985, you grew up at a time when only about 5 percent or 6 percent of American residents were foreign born. Today, roughly 13 percent of American residents are foreign born, and we're possibly heading to 15 percent.

By truncating the story and fitting it into a frame of his choosing, Mr. Brooks distorts history. He may be right that "we've gone from a low immigrant nation to a high immigrant nation," but he's forgetting (or intentionally omitting) that before we were a low-immigrant nation, we were a high-immigrant nation. As Smartertimes has noted before, in fact census data show that the number of foreign-born Americans peaked in 1890 at 14.8%; the levels in 1910 of 14.7% and 1870 of 14.4% are all higher than the 13% that was the level in 2010.

Finally, while Mr. Brooks makes it sound like 15 percent is a "high" number, he also does not mention that the levels in smaller regions, like New York City, are much higher — about 40 percent in 2001. Compared to all-American New York City, a 15 percent foreign-born population is not much.

Kudos to the alert New York Times editor who improved a dispatch from London.

My print edition of the paper had a sentence saying, "Mr. Osborne sought on Wednesday to reassure voters about policy areas in which the Conservatives score lower, like the defense of Britain's free education and health care."

I was all ready to write a Smartertimes post pointing out that this education and health care is not "free," as the Times news article imagined it, but is rather delivered at a cost of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars (or pounds).

But when I went on to the Times Web site, the language had been fixed so that it now reads:

On Wednesday, Mr. Osborne sought to reassure voters over policy areas in which the Conservatives score lower, for example by adhering to the government's policy of largely protecting spending on schools and the health service. In Britain, voters tend to trust the Conservatives less than Labour to defend education and health care, which is free at the point of delivery. [Emphasis added by Smartertimes].

It may seem like a minor change, and the Times probably won't run a printed correction on the point, but in a subtle way the new phrasing on the Web is better than the phrasing in the print edition, which promotes the illusion that these services are "free" even though they cost lots of money, it is just paid in taxes rather than in fees.

"Army to Cut Its Forces by 80,000 in 5 Years" is the headline over a New York Times news article reporting on an announcement by the Pentagon of a force reduction.

Absent from the article is context that would hold President Obama accountable for breaking his campaign promise. In 2008, while running for President, Mr. Obama said, "I've said that we need to increase the size of our military." In June 2009, President Obama said, "As a nation, we have a sacred trust with all those who wear the uniform: To always take care of them as they take care of us. And that's why my administration is increasing funding for our military, including the Army, and increasing the size of the Army two years ahead of schedule."

In 2009, Mr. Obama said it was a "sacred trust" to increase the size of the army; now, he's cutting it by 80,000. What changed? The Times doesn't really say or explain.

In 2008, the Obama campaign's defense position paper said, "Barack Obama supports plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops...Increasing our end strength will help units retrain and re-equip properly between deployments and decrease the strain on military families."

I'm not saying the president should never change his mind. Maybe circumstances have changed. Mr. Obama has had similar conversions on gay marriage and on the need for an individual mandate to buy health insurance, both of which he opposed in his 2008 campaign but now favors. But when the president changes his public position on a matter like this, it would be nice if the Times would point it out rather than ignoring it.

"For Women in Weiner Scandal, Indignity Lingers," is the self-fulfilling headline of a long-awaited New York Times news article that begins, "Customers taunt Lisa Weiss."

Alas, it's not just customers who are doing the taunting. The Times piles on:

Little unites the five women whose online relationships with Mr. Weiner have become public. Some were self-confident political admirers; some were struggling and insecure, flattered by attention from a man in power. Some fled publicity after his downfall; some sought it out. (Ms. Weiss even appeared on "Inside Edition.")

The Times doesn't say whether Ms. Weiss called "Inside Edition" unsolicited to appear on the program, or whether someone from the program called her first, in which case she wouldn't have been seeking out publicity, she would have just been responding to an inquiry from a television program. In any event, it's a double standard. The Times doesn't fault Ms. Weiss for talking to its own reporter, but it portrays her as a publicity hound for daring to speak to a reporter for another outlet. If the person in the news had declined to speak to the press, the paper would probably describe her as "reclusive," especially if she had a lot of money.

A New York Times editorial urges the government to extract concessions before approving a merger between American and USAirways. It complains that consolidation is leading to fare increases:

Each merger has made these airlines so dominant at their hub airports and on key routes that it is hard, if not impossible, for any competitor to challenge them, especially at airports operating at capacity. The combined American-US Airways, for instance, would control 68 percent of the takeoff and landing rights at Washington's Reagan National Airport. United already controls 81 percent of the slots at Newark Airport.

These numbers are misleading. For passengers traveling from the Washington, D.C. region, the relevant market isn't takeoff and landing slots at Reagan National Airport, but at the combination of Reagan National, Dulles, and Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. Likewise, passengers considering flying from Newark have other options — La Guardia or Kennedy airports if they live in New York or Northern New Jersey; the Philadelphia airport if they live in Southern New Jersey. Plenty of travelers are willing to drive or take a train or a bus to an airport that's a bit farther away from their starting point if the payoff is a cheaper airfare. And the Times keeps plumping for government spending on highways and high speed rail, spending that makes it harder for airlines to compete.

If the Times were really interested in increasing competition in the airline industry, it would target the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, which requires that at least 75 percent of the voting shares of U.S. airlines be controlled by U.S. citizens. By imposing artificial limits on foreign investment, that law makes the American airline business less competitive than it might otherwise be. Alas, the Times editorialists seem determined not so much to help airline passengers as to find a way to justify greater, rather than lesser, government interference in voluntary private business transactions.

A front page New York Times profile of Ken Mehlman, the George W. Bush campaign aide and Republican National Committee chairman who is now a private equity executive and gay rights advocate, reports, "In articulating a conservative case for gay marriage rights, Mr. Mehlman … uses Republican-friendly words like 'freedom' and 'liberty' as opposed to 'equality.'"

Contrast that to the Times' own approach in a news article about a new statue in the U.S. Capitol of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The Times headline is "Statue Unveiled, Douglass Is Hailed for Equality Fight." The article reports on remarks by a descendant of Frederick Douglass. The Times says her "nod to her ancestor's support of equality came as the Supreme Court, in chambers just across the street, was preparing to decide cases involving same-sex marriage, affirmative action and voting rights."

"The next time somebody tells you what a brain scan says, be a little skeptical. The brain is not the mind." — David Brooks, New York Times column, page A25, June 18, 2013.

"Breast Milk Is Good For the Brain, Scans Show" — headline of article, New York Times "Science Times" section, page D4, June 18, 2013.

A Times column headlined "What Sweden Can Tell Us About ObamaCare" reports:

The United States spends more than $8,000 a person per year on health care, well more than twice what Sweden spends. Yet health outcomes are far better in Sweden along virtually every dimension. Its infant mortality rate, for example, was recently less than half that of the United States. And males aged 15 to 60 are almost twice as likely to die in any given year in the United States than in Sweden.

In fairness, those differences result partly from lifestyle. In Sweden, workers are more likely to commute by bicycle than by car, for example, and obesity is far less common. Absolute poverty and income inequality — both associated with adverse health outcomes — are also lower.

This claim that income inequality is "associated" with adverse health outcomes is a weaker claim than that it causes adverse health outcomes, but even so it's worth treating with some skepticism. A 2004 article in Epidemiologic Reviews by S.V. Subramanian and Ichiro Kawachi of the Harvard School of Public Health found "the published evidence so far is by no means conclusive about the relation between income distribution and population health." It also reported, "Some evidence suggests that affluent individuals experience health benefits when they live in an area with high inequality" (emphasis added).

Thanks to reader-participant-community member-watchdog-content co-creator A. for sending the tip.