The fallout from the modern world is sickening and killing ever increasing numbers of Alaskans, but the problem stems not from the pollution about which most of us worry.

Obviously, it's good news we're not being overwhelmed by persistent organic pollutants, those so-called "POP's," like the insecticide DDT blowing in from China to the west; or polyaromatic hydrocarbons, the acronymical PAH''s bioaccumulating from oil spills major and minor in Prince William Sound; or the radiation left over from U.S. government experiments in remote corners of the western part of the state; or even the heavy metals blown eastward from the smoking heavy industry of Russia.

The bad news, unfortunately, is that there is a dark and dangerous side to the technology Alaskans love -- snow machines, jet boats, four-wheelers, off-road vehicles and, maybe most of all, televisions. All of these encourage Alaskans to grow wide and unhealthy, as yet another study from the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services warned last week. Alaskans, it reported, look more like overstuffed walruses every year.

Of course, It's not really our fault. We are all to greater or lesser degrees victims of "progress.'' I plead personally guilty. I am writing this while sitting on my big, fat butt in a comfortable chair in a warm office looking out on Alaska instead of being out there fighting for my life in Alaska. There is nothing wrong with sitting on your butt, either, and yet everything is wrong with it.

Humans did not evolve as butt sitters. They evolved as hunter-gatherers. If you believe the Darwinists, 200,000 years of adaptation went into the steady development of humans as creatures almost always on the move. But even if you believe in the Christian bible as a wholly accurate historic document, as does ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, you're still looking at 10,000 years of evolution in a creature fine-tuned by its environment.

There is no disputing the well-documented micro-evolution here. Go look at Olympic records. We've changed. We can run faster and longer. We can jump higher. We are bigger and stronger, though probably not as tough. And we are smarter. Generation after generation has dreamed up and then produced machinery beyond the dreams of the previous generation.

Now, we -- or at least those of us lucky enough to live in the developed world -- are paying a price. We have made so many labor-saving devices we no longer need to labor, but our bodies still do.

All those of years of evolution left us so fully evolved for physical activity that the species requires such activity to stay healthy. If we sit for long, the cardio-vascular system -- the motor that powers the human body -- begins to degrade. We become like old snowmobiles parked uncovered under the bright sun of the Arctic summer. The gasoline in our tanks turns to gel, and the rubber hoses that carry the gasoline to the engine begin to disintegrate.

But this is only part of the problem. Because along with evolving to chase caribou across the tundra, our bodies evolved to efficiently store the energy found in the meat of those caribou. Food is our fuel. Our bodies burn it to power muscles in exercise.

If we exercise.

If we get off the snowmachine and pound out some miles off-trail on snowshoes, or tie the riverboat to a stream bank and go for a hike, or jump down from the four-wheeler to hunt like our ancestors used to hunt, we burn fuel. If we sit on our butts, on the other hand, we store the fuel as fat. If we eat enough and sit long enough, we become fat little boys and girls.

Fatboys, fatboys, what you gonna do? What you gonna do when the reaper comes for you?

He's coming, too, and he's coming fast. Diabetes linked to what doctors call the "sedentary lifestyle" -- they're too polite to say "fat-ass lazy dude'' -- is epidemic in this state. Almost one in 10 Alaskans now suffer from the disease. Most of them have the preventable form called Type 2.