Tag Archives: Brain

News

A new study finds that too much television hurts your mental health

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Look at this Life Site News post.

Excerpt:

A new study has found that watching more than 4 hours of TV a day has an adverse effect on mental well-being.

The study was conducted by Mark Hamer, PhD, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, and research associates Emmanuel Stamatakis, PhD, and Gita D. Mishra, PhD. It analyzed the association of leisure-time sedentary behavior in adults, measured by television and screen-based entertainment (TVSE) time, and mental health.

The researchers looked at mental health survey data of 3920 men and women between the ages of 35 and 65 years, from the 2003 Scottish Health Survey. The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and the mental health component of the 12-Item Short-Form Survey Instrument (MCS-12) were administered to obtain information on current mental health. Self-reported TVSE time, physical activity, and general health were also measured.

Approximately a quarter of the participants in the study engaged in at least four hours a day of watching screen-based entertainment.

After adjustment for age, gender, physical activity, smoking, alcohol, fruit and vegetable intake, the researchers found that participants with the highest TVSE level had the highest instances of mental health problems compared with participants in the group with the lowest TVSE level of less than 2 hours per day.

The report concludes that, while sedentary behavior is known to be an independent risk factor for physical health, mental well-being also deteriorates with more time spent in front of the TV.

I don’t watch TV, but I really need to get more exercise! This study makes me feel really guilty.

Commentary

Denyse O’Leary asks whether religion has an evolutionary origin

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In her latest column at Salvo magazine. (H/T The Post-Darwinist)

Excerpt:

Did you know that: Religion is good for you; also, Religion is bad for you; also, Religion makes no difference; also, Religion can be explained by a God gene, or a meme, or part of the brain . . . or whatever the editor of your local paper’s “Relationships” section will buy for this weekend’s edition?

You didn’t know any of those things? Aw, no surprise. But never fear: One outreach of the new atheist movement, currently making its way around the lecture rooms of the nation, is the academic attempt to account for religious belief, and to do so on any basis whatsoever, except one.

We will get to that forbidden one in a moment. First, let’s look at the permitted ones.

She looks at the four “official” reasons why religion evolved, then explains the forbidden reason: that religion (true religion) is based on God’s revelation to mankind, as documented in the Bible.

Denyse is right up there on the Wintery Knight pedestal, along with Michele Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn and Jennifer Roback Morse. It’s a big pedestal.

News

MUST-READ: Why our schools are failing boys

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An article from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Excerpt:

According to the federal department of human resources and skills development, 18 per cent of young men 18-24 were in university in 2005-06. The equivalent figure for young women was 28 per cent.

At the same time, the high school dropout rate for male students has remained consistently higher in recent decades than that for girls, another indicator that our education system is failing our boys.

[…]I am blaming “the system” for this because we shouldn’t be blaming young male students for the difficulties they face in what is arguably an increasingly female-programmed educational culture.

[…]”Classrooms keep getting set up more and more around the verbal and less around the kinesthetic and active,” says Michael Gurian author of Boys and Girls Learn Differently. “They are increasingly becoming environments that favour the girls’ brain.”

And as enticing as the notion may be to some radical feminists, we simply cannot re-engineer the male brain. From a teacher’s perspective, at least, boys and girls are simply different.

[…]In fiction, they like text that is funny and they like material with action and description. They also seem to like to solve problems.

So why do we not treat this male brain as a springboard from which we can set the groundwork for a new generation of male scientists, engineers, teachers, journalists and businessmen? As a change from our current one-size-fits-all approach.

Please, read the whole thing. This is a news story in the state-run media of a secular Marxist-feminist welfare state, people. HOLY. SNARK.

(Actually, CBC is less crappy than other state-run media like NPR, BBC and ABC – just look at this recent CBC article by Rex Murphy that ECM sent me about Harper’s decision to prorogue the Parliament)

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