This article at MSNBC explains the history of the term "nervous breakdown." It's rarely used now, except in pop culture. The term — a vague catch-all phrase that could mean anything from a psychotic episode to having a bad day — is not a medical term, doctors say, but it…
There's a new book out on cannibalism, in case you're interested. And, yes, you are interested. It's called "Among the Cannibals: Adventures on the Trail of Man's Darkest Ritual" (Smithsonian Books, 278 pages. $25.95), by Paul Raffaele. Here's a short summary by Malcolm Ritter. Here's an eerie thought: In a…
Americans are increasingly complaining that the cost of food is going up. Two recent articles demonstrate that Americans are profligate wasters of food in at least two major ways: 1) Obese people consume 18% more food energy than lean people and more than sixty million Americans are obese. Simply put,…
Back in February, I posted a quote from The Gods Must Be Crazy about the needless complexity of modern life. The quote has made me stew on the topic ever since. We live in a world awash in technologies designed to make life easier, but that often only bog us down. An air conditioning unit may cool your brow and make you happier and more productive in the summer months, but only if you don’t spend seven months attempting to get your evasive landlord to either have the cursed, broken thing fixed or replaced entirely. Not that I would know. A computer makes it easier to write and send documents- unless it freezes, or the printer jams, or the email server has gone down, or you can’t get a decent wireless connection, or the power goes out. I hear, at least, that can prove extremely frustrating.
More technology spells more helplessness when that technology fails. If only I had just suffered through the heat, and adjusted to it; if only I had elected to write a letter by candle light! Instead, I became attached to the convenience of modern goodies. But technology is not the first or only huge complicator in our lives. No, today I’d like to focus on stuff. Things, junk.
We all have too many pieces of stuff lying around our homes, all designed to make life easier. I often suspect these handy doohickeys waste more space and money than their limited “uses” justify. I’ll take some …
The "American Life League" is putting out this silly garbage. They are trying to make it illegal for anyone to purchase birth control pills. This would put us back to the 1965 case of Griswold v Connecticut. Consider some of the this wacko group's talking points: Q: Is it OK…