My desk is a disaster. Let’s see…there’s a pile of notebooks. An extension cord. A Christmas card from Switzerland and a postcard from Oklahoma. Index cards with poems by Wordsworth and Blake. A folder with the notes for a paper I wrote in 11th grade. And the only reason there’s no stack of unread and […]
Mind/Brain
It would start with tapping fingers on my bar, as the house music blared its inane, sometimes nonsensical, lyrics. The hands would be fidgety, the muscles straining for something to press against. Then his legs would start bopping and his face would start working and he’d launch into a violent dance. The shirt would come […]
I am from nowhere. Until my husband told me this — stated it as a fact, like “it’s raining” or “the sky is blue” — I’d never had a truthful answer to a question that has always given me pause: where are you from? “You’re from nowhere,” Dave said. His words hit me like a […]
This post — a proposal which, like Erik’s, could solve a significant world problem if only anybody would listen — originally ran on March 12, 2012. A week or so ago, I commented on an Abstruse Goose cartoon about probabilities. My brother-the-statistician commented on my comment, taking me apart – lovingly — for missing the […]
Ever since I read a New York Times article about the possibility of bedbugs spreading through library books, I’ve been too paranoid to check out a book from my local library. (Yes, I know people have argued that the article was way overblown. What can I say? I have an irrational fear of the bedbug.) […]
This post originally appeared back in February 2011. If you’ve already read it, we apologize. Cassie is frantically packing in preparation for a cross-country move. January 3rd was a bad day for Cee. That morning she had a colonoscopy. The procedure went smoothly. But afterward, Cee felt ill. Something wasn’t right. She had a bite […]
It’s a long-standing mystery in public health: despite the inarguably vast number of psychological and sociological stresses they face in the U.S., African Americans are mentally healthier than white people. The phenomenon is formally described as the “race paradox in mental health”. The paradox became apparent in the mid-1990s. Since then, an overwhelming majority of […]
Fear of insects is so common that it’s hardly worth remarking on. It’s those of us who don’t fear bugs who can seem a little odd. Science and nature illustrator Maayan Harel told us recently that while she’s acquired an appreciative fascination with her insect subjects, acquaintances still ask, with a shudder of disgust: “Are […]