| Watch a lot of TV? How sad.
Happy people watch less TV than sad people, a three-decade-long study of 30,000 people has concluded. The General Social Survey, an ongoing project of the National Science Foundation, found that people who described themselves as happy watched an average of 19 hours of television a week, while their unhappy counterparts watched 25 hours a week. The survey also found that people who watched less TV engaged more in community, church, and other outside activities, and they also read more. “TV may provide viewers with short-run pleasure, but at the expense of long-term malaise,” study author John Robinson tells LiveScience. It’s not clear whether TV makes people sadder or that depressed people tend to plop themselves in front of the TV. But Robinson speculates that depressed people turn to television as an escape. “TV is not judgmental nor difficult, so people with few social skills or resources for other activities can engage in it,” he says. “Even the unhappiest people can click a remote and be passively entertained.” ~ From The Week magazine, December 5, 2008 ~ |
I had an incredibly productive day today, and the time just flew by. Mid-afternoon I was invited to a 4:00-5:00 meeting that actually only went until 5:30.
After getting out emails to each of the currently active Drupal migration project leads, I caught the 6:30 bus home.
In its article called Is Miss America Irrelevant, in explaining that the show needs a makeover, it says, “But this year’s gimmick—mimicking popular reality TV shows—won’t restore the old mid-20th century glory.”
And the story ends with, “Come on, said Jerilyn Dufresne in Examiner.com, the organizers are clearly trying [to] make the pageant ‘more relevant and more fun.’ This year they invited the audience to count the number of times world peace was mentioned, and pick the contestant with the best spray tan. ‘That’s a far cry from a contest that took itself way too seriously for most of its almost 90-year history.’”
~ The article in full from The Week magazine, December 5, 2008 ~
I did a load of laundry tonight—darks.
A little kid shares with her mother what she turned in for the previous night’s homework:
Here’s the reply the teacher received the following day:
Dear Mrs. Jones,
I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.
I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn’t show me dancing around a pole. It’s supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.
From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Smith