A Risk of Commitment? So is marriage another risk factor for making you fat? The data from this year’s American Sociological Association Meeting are troubling, though not surprising. Studying over 10,000 men and women as part of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth ’79, weight gain was common among both men and women in the 2 […]
Depressed? Use a Systems Approach to Treat It (8/26/11)
Too Many Are Depressed Depression is one version of hell on earth, and Americans have a lot of it. A recent international study run by Evelyn Bromet of 18 countries found America near the top, with 19.2 percent of the population having experienced depression — only France, at 21 percent, ranked higher. With our tottering […]
Use the news – don’t be used by it (4/22/11)
Fascination or Entertainment? You can’t stop watching. Night and day your head and eyes turn to the screen. The images flow like waking dreams. Walls of water lift up Japanese houses and schools like paper toys. Hundreds of thousands in Tahrir Square shout the end of dictatorship, chanting, singing, then cleaning the street refuse of […]
Florida does it again – voting to ban children from playing outside (4/06/11)
Keep Them In Tim Dorsey and Carl Hiaasen, move over – Florida reality again trumps both fantasy and novelistic legerdemain. Perhaps it’s the effect of earthquakes and oil spills (our one year anniversary of the BP disaster) but strangeness pervades the state. Some weeks ago five teenagers in Silver Springs Shore snorted the remains of […]
Thoughts that keep you up at night (3/8/11)
Thinking, Not Sleeping “Honestly, I cannot sleep at night because I get so excited about doing good things for the world, changing the world,” says Miley Cyrus, the Hannah Montana star. Sadly, most of my sleep patients don’t complain of excitement at the wonderful things they are about to do to save our volatile, environmentally […]