Hits and Misses

woman-with-childIf your parent died young, you may too! Death of a parent during childhood is associated with greater mortality in early adulthood.

Don your pith helmet and Bermuda shorts before heading to the burger joint: Eating meat contributes to climate change.

Empathetic people talk with their hands! (But hopefully not with their fists!)

Social media causes antisocial behavior: Facebook usage “is positively correlated with increasing divorce rates

There are regional variations in happiness: Residents of the Rust Belt cities are among the least happy residents of any U.S. city, but so are residents Gotham.

Comments (13)

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  1. Frank says:

    I always laugh when i hear about how meat contributes to climate change. But alas, the data is there!

    • Frank says:

      Also, is it any wonder that social media causes antisocial behavior??

      More interesting is how social media causes depression.

    • Devon Herrick says:

      Humans (and animals) have been changing their environment (and, hence, the climate) for as long s humans have been walking on the Earth. Granted, we don’t have much control over the climate. If we did, Texas and Arizona would have been settled much sooner — and Siberia wouldn’t be as cold.

      Basically, if you want to have as little impact on the environment as possible, buy a little plot of land and become a subsistence farmer. Live in a one-room shack, grow some cotton and spin your own yarn that you make into clothing.

      All in all, it doesn’t sound too appealing!

      • Steve says:

        According to this article, maybe we humans ought to stop exhaling as well….that way, neither we nor the farm animals would produce CO2. Just a thought.

  2. Devon Herrick says:

    Social media causes antisocial behavior

    There is a substantial difference between using social media to stay in touch with far-flung friends, classmates and relatives, and using it as a substitute for human contact.

    It is easier to make new friends on Facebook. But it’s ugly side is that is also makes infidelity easier.

    • SPM says:

      Very true. It also makes people more depressed when they are bombarded with the pictures and stories of other people living lives seemingly happier than their own.

      But Facebook is not reality…it’s people’s narcissistic version of reality.

      • Flyover Country American says:

        Ha, that’s why you need to find only more miserable people than yourself on Twitter or Facebook!

  3. Devon Herrick says:

    Residents of the Rust Belt cities are among the least happy residents of any U.S. city, but so are residents Gotham.

    The original NBER article theorizes that people were enticed into these inhospitable areas through higher pay. Many of the least happy are places where the once-high pay disappeared for most people. There are also some high-cost cities on the list. unhappiness may be worse because for the average person, the higher pay hardly makes up for the higher cost of living.

  4. Mr. Freedom says:

    May I submit my own hypothesis regarding the regional-ity of happiness: liberal meccas, where “social justice” reigns, will be the most envious and miserable places to exist.

    More conservative locales, often in “uglier” areas of the country, are composed of hard working people who don’t think of themselves as elites. No surprise they are happier.

  5. Phill S says:

    The idea that demand for cows contributes to raising the planet’s temperature is absurd! Does anyone peddling this climate change hysteria know that one single volcanic eruption will release more CO2 than could ever be released by all the cows on Earth…several times over?

  6. Jay says:

    “Facebook usage ‘is positively correlated with increasing divorce rates'”

    Is it antisocial behavior that it encourages or confrontational behavior. I know everyone that I see on Facebook I wouldn’t want to be married to.