The Wii, the pro-family virtual video game console, is more pro-family than one US soldier bargained for when he returned from Iraq and found that his wife had been virtually bowling with a lover. “Welcome to the digital age,” writes Nick Harding in The Independent, where secrets are impossible to keep, “like specks of DNA sprayed across the bedsheet of cyberspace.” Here’s “The Affairs of Men” author Phil Weiss on what he uncovered about how to tell if your spouse will cheat on you.
Good news for tech-savvy cancer patients: The Boston Globe reports that the internet has not only provided a medium with which to connect with others and share experiences, it may also improve their physical health. An Ohio State psychologist explains this as the “empowering process that goes on when cancer becomes something you can write about. It’s not just this thing that’s invaded you.” Big Think takes this one step further, not only facilitating discussion, but collecting the knowledge of cancer experts and research scientists. Chief of the Breast Cancer Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Clifford Hudis says that “What everyone should know about breast cancer” is “it’s treatable.” He also discusses a new drug that gives him hope for a cure.
Monica Knoll, the Executive Director of Cancer101, gives tips on what one’s first steps should be upon learning of a cancer diagnosis.
Mitchell Gaynor, of Gaynor Integrative Oncology, gives advice to the families of patients with cancer.
While the Internet has empowered patients with the ability to access information about various cancer treatments and facilitated the speed and ease with which researchers can compare findings, Dr. Chudy Nduaka, of Pfizer’s research and development team, reminds us that it takes twenty years for a drug to make it from trials to shelves. So even if a cure for cancer were to be discovered tomorrow, it would be years before it became widely available.
While some political pundits are busy debating energy policy, healthcare, and the war in Iraq, the Urban Conservative blog has turned its attention to a much larger issue: Can liberals and conservatives hit it off in the bedroom? Your political affiliation might determine who you vote for, where you work, and who you hang out with… but does it also determine your sexual compatibility?
I mean, it does make sense. The best way to learn to speak French is to get a French lover, so the same must be true for those trying to learn how to sound like a Republican.
Jonathan Haidt, author and professor and University of Virginia, spoke to Big Think about self-righteousness as it applies to the liberal-conservative divide. Our conviction that we are right prevents us from seeing “that there is wisdom on both sides of almost any long-standing question.” But what political party would you rather have sex with?
The Edwards affair has been a slow-breaking wave. The story broke on the Enquirer weeks ago, and to the frustration of bloggers the MSM (main stream media) apparently ignored it.
What is it about powerful, mostly liberal, men that prevents them from keeping it in their pants? Even Robert Redford’s portrayal of the Democratic hero “Bill McKay” in the 1972 film “The Candidate” depicts a casual affair which the film never addresses. The attitude seem to be “It comes with the territory.” The same way conservative candidates are expected to have funds earmarked for libel suits. Big Think interviewed Philip Weiss, the founder of Mondoweiss and the writer for New York magazine whose article on the Spitzer affair drew the ire of many, (mostly female) readers. Here he explains Spitzer’s affair, (and by extension Edwards’) as a result of the pressure that marriage and sex face under the sexualized American standard. He seems to be looking to draw more fire when he puts forward the notion of a sexless marriage, but…maybe he has a point?
Following the lead of the monumentally less healthy—but getting there—New York City, the state of California is moving to ban killer trans fats from restaurants, in the hopes that weaning people from the deadly ingredient will help save tens of thousands of lives, and stop the spread of fatness, as is cheerfully reported in the blog Vegan.com. This comes on a day heavy with diet news. Exercise, it was reported in WebMD, may slow the development of Alzheimer’s Disease. No kidding—exercise really is good for you!
Relatedly, Dubai, the super-wealthy Muslim city-state, is banning nudity from its beaches in the wake of an influx of morally casual European tourists. But it makes you wonder: if tourists were less fat, would they really want to ban nakedness? Here is what obesity expert George Blackburn has to say about the science of weight loss. Listen, and you could start to look good naked, and experience greater acceptance in California and Dubai.
Although it might appear to be the STD of the stars, the reality of herpes is something less than glamorous. According to a recent New York Times article, herpes simplex-2 has increased more than 30 percent in the US population since the 1970s. Sadly, having herpies makes the transmission of HIV much easier, and can’t completely be prevented by condoms.
Intelligent and responsible New Yorkers know what’s best for themselves though, and perhaps that explains their decision to be the most instead of the healthiest, besting the national average of population infected by herpes infection by 9 percent. Even more depressing, is herpes’ popularity amongst minority populations in New York, with 35 percent of Hispanics, and nearly half of African Americans infected.
How should the nation battle a health crisis of this magnitude, and what role does the media play?
Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says the media allows the public a more sophisticated understanding of their own health options, and helps hold physicians accountable.
Just as actor George Takei, known for playing Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek, and TV talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, started making wedding plans (with their long term partners, not each other), gay marriage snuck back onto the ballot in California.
The LA Times reports that in November, California voters will decide on an amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage.
Neil Giuliano, American gay rights activist and president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), told Big Think that gay marriage is controversial even within the gay community.
Objections to gay marriage have frequently been launched from the religious community. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of The Broken American Male and host of the TV show “Shalom in the Home” discussed the divisiveness some religious Americans levy when dealing with the issues of homosexuality. He proposes a more inclusive approach.
The month of June is the still the most poplar month for weddings in the U.S., which means that it’s likely you’ll be attending one some time in the next few weeks. Along with the hors d’oeuvres and ritual first dances, most weddings include a few “impending divorce” jokes. Either, imbibed guests will (mis)quote divorce statistics to each other while wishing the happy couple well, or they’ll start a betting pool on how many years or months it will be before the bride and groom are only speaking to each other in court.
Add to that the drama of the bride’s parents appearing in the same room for the first time in years along with their new spouses, and no wedding guest could be blamed for scratching their head and wondering how any marriage that starts out so happily could fall apart.
Kay Warren, the author of Dangerous Surrender told Big Think that the attitudes and expectations that a couple brings into their marriage from the start determine whether they’ll stay together.
American Orthodox rabbi and host of the television show Shalom in the Home, Shmuley Boteach, describes counseling couples on the rocks.
The recent deluge of disasters abroad - Myanmar, China, Darfur - and troubles at home from tornadoes in Missouri and Arkansas to the recession beg the question: is it possible to be reality-based and happy? Yes, if you’re a Republican, according to Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, who cites evidence from Syracuse professor Arthur Brooks’s new tome, “Gross National Happiness” that conservatives are happier than liberals because they’re more likely to be married, religious and relish the status quo, apparently a trifecta for positivity. He quotes research stating that well-being begins to erode in mid-life and that the middle class are better off than both the poor and very rich, whose happiness plateaus after a certain dollar amount is achieved, according to “Stumbling on Happiness” author Daniel Gilbert (see below).
Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute argues that the research itself is boggled by disagreement over how to define what happiness is, and how to measure an ephemeral emotion. He purports that a socialist-style income equality will not make Americans happier, but raising the median income while maintaining economic freedom will.
Akiko Busch takes the argument down to the micro level, advocating gratitude for mundane and often futile tasks, like making the bed, as anchors of stability in a world where people’s very foundation can shatter instantly.
Big Think asked happiness gurus to define this elusive benchmark and weigh in on the best way for individuals to attain it.
Author Sam Harris (”The End of Faith”) believes that escaping or quieting the motor mind through all-consuming activities that require focus on the present moment, such as meditation or skydiving, provides access to the elusive state of bliss:
In contrast, Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert, whose bestselling book describes what he calls “affective forecasting” ie. people’s ability to predict what will make them happy and why, believes that the mind’s ability to look into the future and determine what will fulfill it helps guide people to bliss. Those without the resources to attain the McMansion or Porsche need not despair as Gilbert believes that family and friends make people happiest. Looking into the future, he envisions the ultimate election when scientists invent a happy pill and Americans must decide if happiness an unalienable right or should be an earned state of being.
Two economists from the University of Pennsylvania recently presented a rebuttal to the Easterlin Paradox, a study published more than thirty years ago, which argues that money can only buy happiness up to a certain point and within a certain context. The Penn study, which relies on more extensive polling than the 1974 Easterlin study, identifies a positive and simpler correlation between income and happiness: not only can money buy happiness, a lot of money buys a lot of happines. While the new evidence is compelling, experts (Easterlin included) can’t seem to agree on the exact dynamics of the relationship. For an in depth look at the study by the very people who wrote it, check out the series The Economics of Happiness on the New York Times’ Freakonomics blog.
Though they don’t go into the economics of happiness, Dan Gilbert a Psychologist and Professor at Harvard, as well as spiritualist Deepak Chopra offer insights into the nature of happiness that resonate with the new study’s findings in surprising ways. Take for example Gilbert’s assertion: “. . . we are happy when we have family. We are happy when we have friends. And almost all the other things we think make us happy actually are just ways of getting more family and friends.”
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