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Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:41:09 GMT

Weather Has Little Effect on Mood

), come to the rather surprising conclusion that there is only a very small effect of weather on mood - and this is backed up by two previous studies.

How are you feeling today?To examine the link Denissen and colleagues collected data over the internet from 1,233 participants across Germany. For one month between July 2005 and February 2007 all the participants completed daily questionnaires. This asked them about both their positive and negative emotions on that particular day. These reports were then compared with data from the German Weather Institute, which was combined to create weather variables: average temperature, wind power and number of hours sunlight.

Once all this data was collated the rather surprising results emerged. On average the weather had no effect on people''s positive moods. In other words more sunlight, less wind or a higher average temperature didn''t make people feel happier.

On the other hand the study did find that the weather affected people''s negative moods. For example, less sunlight was associated with greater tiredness. But, while the weather may have the potential to make us feel worse, the effects measured in this study were tiny: almost too tiny to be noticed. It seems low temperatures, wind and rain may bring us down a little but not as much as we might have thought.

And this study isn''t the first to reach similar conclusions about the connection between weather and mood. Two previous studies, one by Watson (2000) and another by Keller et al. (2005), found surprisingly small or sometimes non-existent effects of weather on mood. And for those of you thinking that it might be the German participants who are unusual, these other studies were carried out on Americans.

Seasonal Affective DisorderSo how come many of us are convinced the weather affects mood? Denissen et al. (2008) suggest that we may be responding to a culturally transmitted idea that weather affects mood. Effectively we think the weather has significant effects on our mood because everyone else thinks and says it does.

We may also pay a disproportionate amount of attention to a very small number of people who really do have what has become known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). These people report that their moods are very strongly associated with the weather. While it might be assumed that this connection is the same for everyone: winter = sad, summer = happy, the data collected by Denissen et al. (2008) doesn''t support this. Instead it suggests there are just as many people with SAD who become sadder in the summer and cheer up in the winter. But for the vast majority of us there is no effect.

Time outsideOne of the things the study didn''t measure, though, is the amount of time participants spent outside. Perhaps the reason for finding little effect was that people in industrialised countries aren''t that exposed to the weather - some estimates suggest we spend 93% of our lives indoors.

Previous research by Keller et al. (2005), however, did control for this variable and found that then good weather did increase positive moods. Still, the effect of the weather remained small, and limited to springtime.

Whatever the reason, winter shouldn''t be as depressing as we might imagine. Just keep telling yourself that as the wind howls, the evenings draw in and the rain batters against the windows!

» Related: Monday isn''t the most depressing day of the week..

[Image credit: EJP Photo] Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:24:39 GMT

Be a discerning smoker

Stepping outside on Saturday evening to go to my car, I was reminded of how wonderful grilling food smells on the cool, crisp, leaf-scented air. Ahhh! I just stood there for a few seconds and breathed in the mingled scents of the neighbours’ grilling pork chops and my maple leaf-covered lawn. A truly Canadian form of aromatherapy!

As I was driving away, I fantasized about how that aroma could have been even more enticing if my neighbour had added some wood chips to his grill as it was preheating to add a smoky element.

Smoke has been a growing flavour trend for several years, but now it''s being more clearly defined on menus and food package labels so that consumers can choose the type and intensity of smokiness they prefer. Besides the wide variety of regular wood chip varieties sold at most hardware stores, these new wood ''biscuits'' are making adding smoky flavour to your food ever easier. All you do is add one to the grate as you preheat the grill. Once the grill is hot, the biscuit will smolder and fill the covered grill with great smelling smoke. Then, after you cook, you dip the spent biscuit in cold water and toss it in the composter. No muss, no fuss!

Truthfully, I think most home grillers can get good results using almost any combo of untreated wood chips, some water, a foil pan and food; however, aficionados who want to match their smoke to the most appropriate foods can use the following guide to help them:

Fruit woods (apple, pear, peach, cherry, persimmon): cooking poultry, fish, shellfish, pork (chops and tenderloin), veal, cheese and fruits

Hard woods (hickory, maple, mesquite): game, poultry, stronger cheeses, tuna and steaks

Soft woods (cedar, alder): salmon, arctic char, trout, turkey, pork (chops and tenderloin), creamy cheeses and fruits.

If you have more basic questions about wood smoking on a home barbecue, check out this post from earlier in the year.

Do you grill into the autumn or pack away the propane until spring?

Posted by: danamccauley      Read more     Source

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:12:08 GMT

College Revelations

I think I forgot to mention that I would be spending the last few days touring colleges. Well, that''s where I was, for the curious. I''m not sure what one is supposed to learn from these visits, but while spending the night in my friend Sherry''s dorm, I learned that my glasses are supremely more flattering than those Buddy Holly geek-chic frames favored by so many hipsters. Shame. They are so fun to wear.

Other fashion tidbits I picked up? Well, one of my tours boasted a few stylish girls who almost manged to steal my attention from the gorgeous campus. One girl, a New Yorker (of course), wore flat, black, vintage lace up booties, ripped red tights, a sweet floral dress, and a baggy plaid jacket. Topped with a blond bob cut completely straight across on the bangs and tips, she looked achingly cool. Another look that captured my attention wasn''t unique enough to bother sharing, but the girl wearing it had drawn wingtip, brogue-like styling across the toes of her Keds, and I thought they looked amazing. And my tour guide had the most perfect pixie cut I''ve seen in ages.

Don''t worry about me, grasshoppers; most of my focus was on the schools I visited. But fashion doesn''t tremble in the light of higher education, and neither does my style-watching brain. Posted by: Kori      Read more     Source

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:14:52 GMT

We hemmed and we hawed

We hemmed and we hawed. We dithered and we debated. We vacillated and we oscillated. We wavered and we shilly-shallied.

In the end our decision to swim or not was made because of a recent visitor to our woods: the sun. The sky had been filled with gray clouds all morning, and while this made doing our chores more pleasant, it didn''t bode well for an afternoon swim. So when the sun started making furtive appearances between the clouds, appearances that lasted longer and longer, we decided to take what was probably our last opportunity to go jump in a lake for the season.

I had chatted with Good Neighbor Brian a few nights before, and I spoke of our thoughts of getting in a last swim, saying I feared the water would be too cold after so many successive cool nights. He guffawed at this, saying that while the top few inches might be cold, the deep water still retained its summer heat. Good Neighbor Brian was mistaken.

We crept into the water, warmer at the surface than deeper down (which I had suspected, actually). You''re probably familiar with the sensation of easing into cold water. The icy feel inches up your legs as you progress. Once your feet have been in the water a few minutes, they don''t seem to feel the cold (and not because they''ve gone numb), but the chill on your thighs is what you''re paying attention to anyway. Then you go a little deeper and the water starts to soak your clothes. Somehow this seems even colder than the icy water against your skin. But you keep going, hesitating most of all before letting the water wash over your shoulders. You shudder and suck in a breath. And then it all passes and you don''t feel so cold any longer.

But cold lurks in the deep waters. Kicking our feet and even paddling with our hands would swirl icy drafts of water up from below. This wasn''t a problem in August when even the deep water was comfortably warm, but actual swimming proved a shivering prospect for us in the middle of September. Thus we swam over to the shallower area where we could stand on the bottom. By not making any movements, we were able to enjoy being in the water without feeling too cold.

The lake was filled, though not to full pool. It was down about two feet from that level, though our earlier inspection of the spillway showed that water had flowed over it not long before. The chunk o''glass I have in the middle of the lake, showing where the best fish structure is hidden, was under water, and it looked like Isla de Peligro was also surrounded by water, but I didn''t venture that far, having found a relatively warm spot in the sun and fearing making any unnecessary movements. This was also the reason I didn''t go after Peregrine, which I could see floating in the shallows to the west.

When I say that we had found a warm spot in the water to stand, what I mean is that we weren''t shivering as we stood there, hugging ourselves. The water was not warm, and every time the sun was obscured by a passing cloud, we could feel it. Our summertime swims can last a couple of hours. I don''t think our swim on this September visit lasted a half hour. Unfortunately, the way out of the water lay across the deep. We had to swim our way over there to clamber out, and this meant stirring up the cold from below. The whole way was probably less than a couple hundred feet, but it was a cold way, and it seemed like the water was thicker than normal as we pushed our way through it.

Once out of the water, though, we felt the warmth of the sun on our skin again. We changed into dry clothes and stowed the rest of our gear to prepare for the drive home. Only a diversion to find a couple of peach Nehi floats slowed our progress, and that seemed worth the detour.

This likely was our last swim of the season, though a spike in temperature coinciding with a visit to the woods may give us just one more chance. A fellow can dream.

Missouri calendar:

• Fawns have lost their spots.
• Persimmons start to ripen.

Today in Missouri history:

• Joseph Nash McDowell died on this date in 1868. As a doctor he founded the first medical school west of the Mississippi in St. Louis. It eventually became the medical department of Washington University. He was an eccentric man who wanted to test the preservative qualities of water dripping in caves by having the bodies of his recently deceased children suspended from the ceiling in one near Hannibal. Some neighbor children, including one believed to be Samuel Clemens, snuck in the cave and were frightened by what they saw.

Posted by: Roundrockjournal      Read more     Source

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:22:54 GMT

A Unique and Stylish QWERTY Clamshell Device

Sprint will be launching the unique LG Lotus in October, which is a stylish and unique QWERTY clamshell device inspired by ladies makeup accessories. Due to its unique and chic form factor it also recieved he prestigious Red Dot Design Award. It will be available in Textured Purple and Satin Black colours for $149.99 on a two-year contract. All in all a perfect fashion device for all the messaging freaks out there.

Here are the specifications:

Network: CDMA 800/1900
Size: 84 x 61 x 18 mm, Weight: 105 g
Display: Main Screen 262k TFT colors (240 x 320 pixels), External Screen 65K TFT colors (176 x 220 pixels)
Camera: 2 MP with Zoom and Video Recorder
Connectivity: GPRS, Bluetooth 2.0,
Memory: microSD / TransFlash
Applications: Sprint Music, Sprint TV, Sprint Radio, Sprint Navigation, Email (POP3 / IMAP4 / SMTP), IM(AOL / Windows Live / Yahoo!), Wireless Backup

Source: Mobiledia Posted by: Umair Khalid      Read more     Source

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:11:31 GMT

Ping Pong Playa.

"After a string of documentaries, including In the Realms of the Unreal, and an Academy Award win for Best Documentary Short, Jessica Yu makes an unlikely, deceptively slight narrative feature debut with Ping Pong Playa," writes Leo Goldsmith at indieWIRE. "What''s perhaps most surprising about the film, however, is that Yu (who has also directed a fair amount of television drama) is actually quite adept as a comedy director."

"Ping Pong Playa proves that Chinese-Americans are not immune from the national stunted-adolescence crisis currently plaguing white comedy protagonists," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "Yu''s film, a 180-degree tonal shift from her previous Protagonist, diligently retreads Adam SandlerNapoleon Dynamite territory."

Updated through 9/5.

Posted by: dwhudson      Read more     Source

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 04:32:32 GMT

Think Yourself Healthy by Appreciating the Exercise You Already Do

by Alia Crum and Professor Ellen Langer of Harvard University suggests the incredible answer is yes.

Dr Ben Goldacre at Bad Science (although this is good science!) describes the study which was carried out on hotel attendants who were informed how much exercise they were already doing as a regular part of their job. Here''s Ben''s conclusion:"....amazingly, despite no change in actual exercise levels, in the intervention group, simply being told about the value of what they were already doing caused a significant change for the better on every single one of the objective health measures recorded: weight, body fat, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio and blood pressure."To illustrate with just one of the outcomes they measured, the average weight of those in the intervention group reduced from 145.5 lbs to 143.72 lbs. Over the same period the control group showed no significant change. For those of you working metric-style that''s 66.14 kg down to 65.33 kg.

That''s like dropping a bag of sugar. In four weeks. With no additional exercise.

Now that''s the power of the mind-body link right there, measured in pounds and ounces.

[Image credit: eef] Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:28:56 GMT

Revolutionary Romantic.

The series Lindsay Anderson: Revolutionary Romantic opens today at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and runs through August 28.



At Moving Image Source, Steve Erickson addresses the question, "If Anderson''s best work ranks among the highlights of British cinema, why has he fallen so far into obscurity?"

Updated through 8/17. Posted by: dwhudson      Read more     Source

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:17:19 GMT

Irritating Psychobabble: Disorders Win!

for your (least) favourite examples of psychobabble - technical psychological terms used out of context.

You responded with many great suggestions, 30 of which I published. 750 of you (and counting) voted for your favourite and now the results are in.

There are three clear front-runners who received one-third of the votes between them. And so, without further ado....drum roll please....the most-hated psychobabble top 3 are:

I get really OCD about.... (12%)

Retard (10%)

Bipolar (10%)

Thanks to everyone for voting in this poll and for the further suggestions in the comments to the vote. I think we have found a worthy winner in the misuse of the diagnosis ''obsessive-compulsive disorder''.

What struck me about the list of psychobabble phrases you suggested and voted for is that many of them are clinical diagnoses. This seems to reflect how much the modern psychiatric professions'' drive to categorise mental illness has permeated our cultural lives. The names of disorders now trip off our tongues like never before - it wasn''t always this way.

A short article from TIME on psychobabble from 1977 lists quite a different set of phrases as an inescapable part of the ''psychological patter of the ''70s'':
"Are you relating? Going through heavy changes? In touch with yourself and doing your own thing? Are you up front, or just hung up and uptight?"
To modern ears these phrases are redolent of a past era. It''s impossible to hear them without visualising the stereotypical hippie. Talking to TIME, writer R. D. Rosen describes this language as:
"....difficult to avoid and there is often an embarrassment involved in not using it, somewhat akin to the mild humiliation experienced by American tourists in Paris who cannot speak the native tongue."
If Rosen thought things were bad in the ''70s, just look at the state of psychobabble now. At least the psychobabble of the ''70s was warm and fuzzy, while what we have now is clinical and cold, cynical even; driven not by the language of intellectual or emotional growth, but by the language of disorder.

[Image credit: Angel Photographer] Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:59:36 GMT

The Germans cars are coming

Just when you thought car makers were about to ditch U.S. Soil, VW announced today it will be building a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee to initially produce 150,000 cars a year and employ 2,000 people.Invading US soil is part of VW's plan to overtake GM and Toyota and make VW the world's dominant car maker. Plans are to sell 8000,000 cars in the US by 2018.

It surely helps that the dollar has fallen and the euro is strong. German maker BMW is also expanding output in the US within their Spartanburg plant.

Maybe if GM, Ford, or Chrystler had plants in a town called Toledo in Germany we could increase production. Posted by: James Koopmann      Read more     Source