The Sunday Times featured a long and detailed article about the costs of colonoscopies, which the Times says explain "Why U.S. leads the world in health expenditures."

It was a fine article, but I thought it would have been even better had it included two thoughts that were missing.

The first is ObamaCare, which wasn't mentioned at all. One of the promises of ObamaCare is that it was supposed to help rein in these out of control costs and "reform" health care. But the problems outlined in the Times article seem to be going on despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and the article gives no indication at all of what the effect, if any, that the implementation of the law will have on the problems.

The second is compensation for physicians. The Times article reports on how much gastroenterologists and anesthesiologists are paid for each procedure, and there is a mention of a company called Physicians Endoscopy that "tells prospective physician partners that they can look forward to 'distributions averaging over $1.4 million a year to all owners.'" But there's no aggregate data on how much money anesthesiologists or gastroenterologists earn each year, or how it compares to what physicians in those specialties earn in other countries.

Today's New York Times devotes more than two full pages of newsprint in its Home section, including 16 photographs, to covering an apartment in Russia that has been decorated in what the newspaper calls "Stalin Empire Style."

There's some attempt made to acknowledge that Stalin wasn't exactly an admirable figure, including this passage:

He is quick to clarify that he is no Stalin sympathizer. "Stalinism is repulsive, like Fascism," said Mr. Bobovnikov, who decided to use the apartment as a place to show off his art and meet with clients, as well as a space for overnight guests, instead of as his primary residence. "But Italian Fascist design, for example, is very popular now, and I understand why, as I like it myself. I didn't know when I started that Stalinism would be a trend, too."

As it happens, Stalin Empire style, which draws on Art Deco and the clean lines of Mussolini-era Italian design, is enjoying something of a mini-revival in Russia, said Xenia Adjoubei, a lecturer in architectural history and theory at the British Higher School of Art and Design who also has a design practice in Moscow.

Stalinist-era interiors are now widely appreciated for their beautiful and minimalist look, she said. But recreating one of those interiors from scratch, she acknowledged, might strike some as odd — even a little creepy.

"But it is only unnerving if you see this person as wanting to recreate the lifestyle of a member of the NKVD," Ms. Adjoubei said, referring to the secret police of the 1930s. "He's probably just appreciating the aesthetic value."

Mark me down in the camp that finds this more than just "a little creepy." Stalin was, with Hitler, one of the two most blood-drenched murderers of the 20th century. And we're supposed to put that aside and just appreciate the "trend," "clean lines," and "aesthetic value"?

The New York Times has ratcheted back its description of businessman and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson from "ultraconservative" (May 20 article) to merely "conservative" (today's article). Today's article also includes this passage:

As for the Palestinians, Mr. Adelson said, "They teach their children that Jews are descended from swine and apes, pigs and monkeys." Then he questioned their existence as a distinct ethnic group, saying they were "southern Syrians" or Egyptians until Yasir Arafat, who was leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, "came along with a pitcher of Kool-Aid and gave it to everybody to drink and sold them the idea of Palestinians."

These ideas, staples of the far right, are deeply offensive to the Palestinians — perhaps partly the point.

The Times tells us these ideas are staples of the far right and deeply offensive to the Palestinians, but it doesn't pass any judgment on whether they are true, which might be something that Times readers might be interested in knowing. As for the idea that Arabs teach their children that Jews are descended from swine and apes, this is hardly an idea confined to the far right. And it's not Darwin's theory of evolution we are talking about. Here is a New York Times news article from April 1, 2008 that appeared under the headline, "In Gaza, Hamas's Insults to Jews Complicate Peace" and reports:

At Al Omari mosque, the imam cursed the Jews and the "Crusaders," or Christians, and the Danes, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He referred to Jews as "the brothers of apes and pigs" … The chairman of the Palestinian Scholars League, and a Hamas legislator, Mr. Abu Ras is popularly called "Hamas's mufti," because he is ready to give religious sanction to Hamas political structures. Last month, he criticized Egypt for closing the Gaza border at Israel's request. He complained, "We are besieged by the sons of Arabism and Islam, as well as by the brothers of apes and pigs."

A New York Times editorial issued January 15, 2013, headlined "President Morsi's Repulsive Comments," condemned remarks made in 2010 by the man who is now the president of Egypt in which he, as the Times put it, "urges Egyptians to 'nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred' for Jews and Zionists. In a television interview months later, he described Zionists as 'these bloodsuckers who attack Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.'"

The Times business section reports on the liquidation of Better Place, an electric vehicle infrastructure company that had raised $850 million in private capital. The firm was founded by an Israeli entrepreneur named Shai Agassi.

The Times news article makes no mention of Tom Friedman's July 27, 2008 column describing Mr. Agassi as "the Jewish Henry Ford" who "could sell camels to Saudi Arabia."

Maybe Mr. Agassi will succeed in some future venture, and maybe some future businessman — perhaps even one who buys some of Better Place's assets — will succeed in making a business out of electric vehicle infrastructure. But anyone who invested in Better Place even in part in the basis of Mr. Friedman's enthusiasm might consider asking him for their money back, or, at the very least, for a follow-up column explaining what went wrong and why.

"Though Enrolling More Poor Students, 2-Year Colleges Get Less of Federal Pie," is the headline over a news article by Times Washington Bureau Chief David Leonhardt about "a report to be released Thursday."

True to form, the Times includes no hyperlink to the report and no quotes from anyone critical or even skeptical of its findings. The notion that federal funding might be allocated to support scientific, academic, or medical research, and that such research dollars might go disproportionately to professors at major research universities rather than community colleges, goes unexplored in the article. In other words, the point of federal funding to higher education isn't solely to subsidize poor students, but to fund research.

The article is also flawed by the unquestioned assumption that government money spent on colleges somehow goes to the students rather than to professors or administrators. The Times article says:

"Many community colleges end up receiving minimal federal support," said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, which is publishing the report. "The kids with the greatest needs receive the fewest resources."

What is it with the New York Times that it can't write about the Boy Scouts without making mistakes? (For earlier examples, please see here and here.)

Today's example comes in the latest installment of the Times' coverage of gay Boy Scouts and leaders. (This is the main issue for the Times when it comes to the Boy Scouts, an organization that saves lives, teaches skills, and performs community service while attracting little attention from the Times for anything other than its policies on gays.)

Today's Times article reports "Glaad and other rights groups took up the cause, enlisting celebrities like Madonna, who wore a Boy Scout uniform to an awards ceremony."

The Times already reported that incorrectly once before; after we ran an item here pointing out the error, the Times ran a correction, which is now appended to the original article. Now they've repeated the error that they've already corrected once before. It'll be interesting to see whether they choose to correct it again, or if they just let the inaccuracy slide this time.

A truly nasty column by Michael Powell in today's Times relies on an anonymous source to smear the insurance executive Maurice Greenberg.

The column says that Mr. Greenberg "has fought a lengthy battle from his Fifth Avenue aerie to avoid acknowledging anything sounding like personal responsibility for the disaster that befell A.I.G. and its shareholders."

This is an odd formulation. First of all, Mr. Greenberg's office is on Park Avenue. Second of all, the "disaster that befell A.I.G. and its shareholders" was really what happened after Mr. Greenberg had been forced out as CEO.

The anonymous smear comes here:

"Is there personal affection for him? Very little," said an executive whom Mr. Greenberg has called upon to defend him.

This is a clear violation of the Times policy on anonymous sources, which states:

We do not grant anonymity to people who use it as cover for a personal or partisan attack. If pejorative opinions are worth reporting and cannot be specifically attributed, they may be paraphrased or described after thorough discussion between writer and editor. The vivid language of direct quotation confers an unfair advantage on a speaker or writer who hides behind the newspaper, and turns of phrase are valueless to a reader who cannot assess the source.

This sure looks like an anonymous personal attack using the vivid language of direct quotation, in violation of the Times policy.

A news article from Tel Aviv about the Israeli politician Yair Lapid includes a reference to "the revelation that he met in April with Sheldon Adelson, the ultraconservative financier who backs Mr. Netanyahu and owns the Israel Hayom newspaper that loyally supports him."

It'd be great to have a little more transparency from the Times about precisely what makes the difference between a plain-vanilla conservative and a full-on "ultra" conservative. What is it about Mr. Adelson that merits the label "ultraconservative" as opposed to merely "conservative." Is it that he supports Jewish causes? Is it that he has a lot of money? A quick look though the Times online archive indicates that the term has been previously used in the paper to describe the Taliban, the Afghanistan-based Islamist group whose political ideology doesn't seem to me to have much in common with that of Mr. Adelson, an American Jewish hotel and casino executive. From the perspective of an ultraliberal New York Times reporter, editor, or reader, even mildly right-of-center individuals appear "ultraconservative." It tells you more about the New York Times than it does about Mr. Adelson.

"Urging Government Action on Water, Roads and Power in Texas" is the headline on a New York Times article supplied by the Times' non-profit partner, The Texas Tribune.

Like other Texas Tribune articles highlighted here earlier, this one has a left-wing slant. It's not government action that's being urged, it's government spending. And a reader could easily think that the one doing the urging is the Times (or the Tribune) rather than the subjects of the story.

The article quotes four sources supporting more spending — Governor Perry, Bill Hammond, Ed Emmett, and Robert Nichols. Three other sources quoted in the article — Linda Watson, Michael Cline and Stephen Klineberg — don't explicitly call for more spending but talk about the state's growing needs, which the others argue can be addressed by more spending.

The opposition is relegated to a single paragraph in the 23-paragraph-long news article. That paragraph reads:

Efforts to find at least some of that financing have met significant resistance this session, particularly from Tea Party-friendly Republicans uninterested in raising vehicle registration fees or allowing the state to take on more debt. Talk of increasing financing for public transportation, which planning experts consider crucial for absorbing urban growth, has also met stiff resistance.

If that resistance is so "stiff" and "significant," you'd think a fair journalistic effort would attempt to give its spokesmen a chance to explain their reasoning. But not a single opponent of the spending is quoted or even named. The whole article is almost comically one-sided.

A dispatch from Jerusalem in today's New York Times reports: "Although Israel's economy is regarded as relatively strong and stable, having weathered the global economic downturn, the growth of recent years has directly benefited a small percentage of the population, living costs are high — perhaps because of a lack of competition, experts say — and the gap between the rich and the poor has been increasing."

In fact, to the contrary, the most recently published report on the topic from the Bank of Israel says, "Since 2006, the level of inequality in Israel has stabilized and even declined slightly...The increase in the rates of employment among population groups that are characterized by low participation and employment rates and a high incidence of poverty (particularly among Arab women and the ultra-Orthodox) has increased their relative share of income and has contributed to a reduction in the inequality of economic income."

The Times op-ed page is pushing pretty hard for this idea of a tax on processed food. First was Mark Bittman's op-ed calling for "a tax on prepared food, but not on raw ingredients." Then over the weekend, less than a month after Mr. Bittman's article, came another op-ed piece, this one by Kristin Wartman, suggesting:

Stay-at-home parents should qualify for a new government program while they are raising young children — one that provides money for good food, as well as education on cooking, meal planning and shopping — so that one parent in a two-parent household, or a single parent, can afford to be home with the children and provide wholesome, healthy meals. These payments could be financed by taxing harmful foods, like sugary beverages, highly caloric, processed snack foods and nutritionally poor options at fast food and other restaurants.

That would be some bureaucracy to decide whether each item sold at a restaurant or supermarket is worthy of having this tax imposed, and at what level it should be taxed. And then to enforce and collect it.

In the middle of an article about the supposed disappearance of the New York accent, the left-leaning columnist in the Times Sunday Metropolitan section (in which there is no right-leaning columnist) hits us with this:

The film, though, is not intended as a sophisticated lesson in linguistics but instead as a tribute to what New York sounded like when the working class stood as a more central cultural presence. Or rather, when they stood as a presence at all, before the vibe of the city came to be dominated by the world of $15 million apartments on the one hand, and housing projects with yearlong waits for repairs on the other.

Readers hoping they might get a Times article about New York accents without having to endure a geschrei about the supposed decline of the "working class" are left disappointed. Does the Times author think that the people who buy $15 million apartments do not work? There are vast areas of the Bronx, Staten Island, Upper Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn full of people who live in neither housing projects nor $15 million apartments. Some of these people might be "working class," by the definition of the Times reporter, who, concerned as she is about class boundaries, doesn't bother to offer us a definition.

A front-page New York Times headline declares, "After Plant Explosion, Texas Remains Wary of Regulation."

Less wary of regulation, apparently, are the New York Times reporters and editors, who engage in a misleading use of statistics to try to advance their case for additional regulations (though the Times acknowledges somewhere in the middle of the article that "it is impossible to know whether tougher regulations would have prevented the disaster," and toward the end that the fertilizer plant that exploded "fell under the purview of at least seven state or federal regulatory agencies.")

The misleading statistic comes earlier on in the article, right at the jump from page one to an inside page, where the Times tells readers, "Texas has also had the nation's highest number of workplace fatalities — more than 400 annually — for much of the past decade."

Well, the geniuses at the Times might consider that one reason that Texas is at or near the top of the nation in terms of workplace fatalities is that it is at or near the top of the nation in terms of the number of workers and how many hours they work. If you adjust for that, and take the rate of workplace fatalities — that is, the number of fatalities from workplace injuries per 100,000 full-time workers, Texas isn't worst in the nation, but somewhere in the middle, 33rd according to this ranking. As I looked at the ranking, it also occurred to me that the fatality rankings might measure not only how dangerous the work or workplaces are, but also how long it takes an injured worker to get treated at a good hospital. The state with the fewest workplace fatalities, Massachusetts, is relatively compact and has a lot of good hospitals, while the state that is the worst on the list, New Mexico, is relatively sprawling (I recall from a long-ago bus-ride from Albuquerque to Cimarron) and isn't exactly an internationally known center of excellence in health care.

If the editors at the Times are too innumerate to understand this concept, they might think of it in terms of automobile accident fatalities. California has the most traffic fatalities. Does that mean that California's roads and drivers are the most dangerous? No, not any more than Texas' workplace fatalities mean that Texas' supposedly lightly regulated workplaces are the most dangerous. It just mean that California has more drivers, and more vehicle miles traveled, than other states. If you use a rate — deaths per 100,000 vehicle miles traveled — California's rate of 1.0 in 2009 puts it somewhere in the middle of the pack. Again, the safest state for traffic is Massachusetts, with a rate of 0.6 (again, given the lousy reputation of Boston drivers, this makes me think this is a measure more of access to health care and quality of health care post-accident than safety on the road or in the workplace). The most dangerous for the year 2009 was Montana, with a fatality rate of 2.0.

If one wanted to get really careful about these statistics, one might also adjust for occupation or industry. A Dallas Morning News article about the matter paraphrased Karen Puckett, director of outreach and workplace safety for the workers' compensation division of the Texas Department of Insurance, as saying "it's unfair to cast Texas as a dangerous state without looking at per-capita injury rates in individual industries. Puckett said that comparing Texas, which has booming construction, oil field and logging operations, to, say, Connecticut, where the insurance industry is a major employer and with only moderate construction and virtually no logging or oil field industries, creates a distortion."

This would be a good paper for some economics doctoral student — look at workplace fatalities by state and other variables, such as number of state regulatory personnel or number of words of state health and safety regulations, along with number of doctors or hospitals per square mile (or some other measure of health care access or quality). The Times thesis is basically that the lack of regulation is the cause of the workplace fatalities, but it doesn't offer up much by way of proof other than that Texas is lightly regulated and has the nation's highest number (but not the highest rate, which the Times doesn't mention) of workplace fatalities.

A Times article about the Sierra Club ceasing its ad spending on Facebook because of the involvement of a Facebook founder in a pro-immigration-reform group that aired a commercial about the Keystone XL pipeline includes the following passage:

Cathy Duvall, director of strategic partnerships at the Sierra Club, said her group was especially disappointed to see the technology industry adopt a strategy that was more typical of old-fashioned, brass-knuckled Washington lobbying.

"When the ads came out they were politics as usual and divisive and pitting one issue against another," Ms. Duvall said. "We were really surprised that Silicon Valley would be moving into the political space by doing the worst of business-as-usual politics."

Talk about brass knuckles — this from a group that just pulled its advertising from a company because of a complaint about the CEO's politics?

The Times takes no note of the irony, nor does it mention the Sierra Club's long history of anti-immigration policies.

A Times article under the headline "Israel Moves to End Gender Segregation in Public Spaces" reports on a move by the Israeli government to, among other things, force fervently Orthodox Jewish Israelis to take down street signs urging women to dress modestly and to force radio shows catering to that community to include female broadcasters. The Times article includes two reactions to the decision, none of which comes from the fervently Orthodox community itself. One person quoted by the Times says, "From their point of view, this is a huge attack against their style of life...That's how they will see it."

It's nice to see that point of view represented, but it's a bit of a shame that it has to come second-hand. Instead of interviewing someone to speculate on how fervently Orthodox Jews will react, why not call up an actual fervently Orthodox Jew and ask directly?