Families facing rising prices might be tempted to hunker down and go the self-reliance route. Grow your own food, for example.

But that might not always be the most efficient, or at least economic, route, according to an interesting discussion that's cropped up on a New York Times blog. Stephen Dubner tells us he spent a fortune on buying ingredients for some home-made ice cream -- and ended up with a product that didn't taste all that good. He could have bought better-tasting stuff ready-made at the store for less money, he tells us.

Then again, he wasn't being totally self-sufficient. He still was buying the ingredients -- not milking his own cow. On the other hand, buying and feeding a cow would involve quite an investment, too.

People in on the discussion pointed out that the economies of the experience aren't factoring in the quality time spent with his kids on the project. And that personal projects usually are less economic when you're still on the learning curve. Someone just learning how to knit, for example, might spend lots of time and money on piecing together a sweater that, well, just doesn't turn out that well. After years of experience, though, that same knitter likely could produce a beautiful sweater for much less than it would sell for in a store.

Many point out that we went to mass production because it generally is more efficient.The survivalists would argue, though, that knowing how to and having the means to support yourself, such as growing your own food,  IS the fallback if the whole economy collapses. 

Where's that victory garden, again?

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I've come across a blogger who delights in data -- and draws some undoubtedly dubious deductions from the digits. "Inductivist" tells us that average IQs of college students have declined over the decades, from 113.7 in the '60s to 105.1 in the current decade. 

He concludes that college grads are getting dumber. But it most likely just means that a college education has been opened up to more people, reaching beyond the elite. Does that mean the education itself has been "dumbed down"? Maybe...

He also developed a "meanness index" for women of various ethnic heritages, basing it on answers to a survey asking if they considered themselves soft-hearted. Based on this, women of Mexican and Italian heritage were at the top, with American women overall somewhere in the middle, and Native American and Polish heritage showing up the lowest on the meanness scale.

Hmmm... so as an American woman with half-Polish heritage, I guess I'm a real softie.

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Maybe you saw the story in today's Journal about risky behaviors that teens engage in. It's another study that came out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that comes up with a lot of numbers that tell us something about our lives. Well, there's a section that tells us a little bit about what New Mexico's teens are up to.

The bad news: Our young people are more likely than the national average to carry a weapon, avoid school because they felt unsafe there, consider or attempt suicide, smoke cigarettes or chew tobacco, use or be offered illegal drugs, and fail to use condoms during sex. Oh, and they're less likely to eat fewer than five servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

The good news: New Mexico teens tend to be more physically active, watch less television, keep their weight down, and drink soft drinks less often than the national average.

And they're just about average when it comes to wearing seat belts, riding in a car with a driver who has been drinking, fighting, drinking alcohol and having sex.

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Hispanic workers are more likely to die on the job -- especially foreign-born Hispanic workers -- than workers of any other ethnicity, according to an interesting new study released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The on-the-job death rate for Hispanic workers was 5.0 per 100,000 from 1992-2006, compared to 4.0 per 100,000 for workers overall. A look at deaths from 2003-06 showed foreign-born Hispanic workers had a death rate of 5.9 per 100,000, compared to 3.5 for Hispanic workers born in this country. Almost all the deaths were among men, with the greatest percentage of them in construction.

Over the 14-year period, deaths from homicides (a category that startled me, since I don't think of people getting murdered on construction sites) fell pretty steadily, while deaths attributed to work-related highway accidents, falls or being struck by an object steadily increased.

New Mexico was one of 21 states studied in the 2003-06 time period. It showed 70 work-related deaths among Hispanics, a 5.1 rate that was a little above the 4.9 average. The percentage of those workers who were foreign-born, though, was only 34 percent -- way below the other states.

Most people think the reasons Hispanic death rates are higher is that they tend to concentrate in the more dangerous jobs, such as construction. Since their death rates were higher than other workers in comparable jobs, though, the study authors speculated that language barriers, inadequate safety training and other issues might be the cause.

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Usually churches are eager to bring more parishioners to their pews. But a church in Minnesota actually has taken out a restraining order to keep one of their members from attending.

The issue, according to a news story, is that the 13-year-old, who has autism, is disruptive. The church is arguing that he even may be dangerous to other parishioners. The mom responds that he is simply misunderstood by people who don't understand his condition.

Such issues are arising more and more as more children are diagnosed with autism, and their families are finding their usual social institutions are not always friendly to including them in activities. 

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Jesse Bering has an interesting blog item about recurring dreams. You know, the ones that keep coming back to you year after year as you sleep. One theory is that it helps us rehearse responses to threats that may face us in real life.

Which probably tells us something about modern-day threats. Reading the comments responding to the post, I see many people share my recurring dream of being in college but forgetting to show up for a class until midway through. In my case, the dream either is that it's the start of the quarter and I can't find a record of what classes I've signed up for, or it's finals week and I realize that I had forgotten I was registered for a course and have to take a final without having gone to any of the classes. 

Other recurring dreams: that a tornado is coming (a result of having grown up in the Midwest, I'm sure) and that I'm back in another city where I used to live, but trying to get back to New Mexico (a sign that this is the place for me). Oh, yeah, and snakes. The ground covered with snakes, so that there's no place to step. Ewww...

But rehearsing for threats? Where does that put my recurring dream about walking languidly along a beautiful ocean shoreline?

What do you think? Do our dreams really mean anything? Do they serve any evolutionary purpose?

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Here's one problem the Department of Homeland Security won't be tackling anytime soon: income insecurity. There's more of it these days, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.

Family incomes have become increasingly volatile -- rising, falling -- over the last three decades, it concludes. Major factors: less health care coverage, fewer pension plans with a guaranteed benefit, higher household debt, fewer public benefits for workers.

Among the findings:

-- Working-age folks who have seen a 50 percent or greater drop in their household income rose from less than 4 percent in the early 1970s to almost 10 percent in the early 2000s.

-- Women's income, usually blamed for sharp upturns or downturns, actually has stabilized in recent years, while men's income has become more volatile.

-- In the last 15 years, income instability has risen faster for college graduates than it has for people with only a high-school education.

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Five Baylor students have been pedaling their way across New Mexico -- on their way from Waco to Alaska -- to raise awareness of suicide prevention. They launched this effort after a good friend surprised them with the revelation that he had attempted suicide.

Their blog chronicles their trip. One not-so-surprising comment about their spring visit to the Land of Enchantment: "The winds were horrific in New Mexico and kept blowing us off the road."

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When you say "domestic violence," the scene that usually springs to mind is of a man yelling and hitting a woman. Well, women are more likely to suffer serious physical abuse, but the hidden truth is that men are victims of domestic violence, too, according to a debunker of myths.

Numbers that came out of a survey of more than 400 men: 5 percent reported being victims of domestic violence in the past year, 10 percent in the past five years, and 29 percent over their lifetimes.

Along with physical abuse, the researchers defined "domestic violence" to include things such as disparaging remarks, threats or controlling behavior.

Hmmm. I wonder, under that definition, how many people would report "workplace violence."

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The Commonwealth Fund has put out a report that  it says shows that states with fewer insured children tend to have worse health care for those kids. Like many such studies, though, it doesn't extend to the truly bottom line: Are kids sicker here than elsewhere? Do they have higher mortality or worse health than kids elsewhere?

 As usual, New Mexico's ranking is not impressive, coming in 40th overall on quality and access measures. Yet, when you look at two actual health measures -- infant mortality and the percent of children at risk for developmental delay, New Mexico ranks in the top 15.

We fall near the bottom of the pack, though, when you look at measures of access to health care, such as referrals to specialists and annual check-ups. And we're up at 12th when it comes to the cost of health care.

What does it mean? Hard to say. Some folks equate getting medical care with being healthier, but others dispute that the connection is that direct. After all, the people getting the most medical care generally are the ones who are the sickest -- those fighting cancers or chronic illnesses, for example.

Still, those preventive visits can mean catching a problem early, or even preventing one from developing.

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Is the traditional American family shrinking? Susan Newman says in her blog that the one-child family is the fastest-growing unit in this country, even though most people in polls still give two children as the ideal.

Her blog is one of many on a new blog page offered by Pyschology Today. A sampling of topics from today's offerings: good pick-up lines, Hillary as an Alpha female, karma, the top seven Kennedy sex scandals, and a reflection on how we can tell whether we're dreaming or asleep.

For those interested in burrowing into our brains and behaviors, it looks promising.

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I've got to credit the science blog, Of Two Minds, for making me aware of an endlessly entertaining and informative web site on vintage drug ads.

You can learn about Pabst extract, a tonic of "malt and hops" that is oh so useful to bring "poise and balance" to women just before baby comes. Or Bayer heroin, the best remedy for coughs. Or how about that all-purpose thorazine, useful for (and I'm not listing them all) asthma, bursitis, menopause, senility, peptic ulcers psoriasis and hyperkinetic children.

Yes, indeed. Calms them all right down. Check it out.

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Some parents undoubtedly wonder if playing violent video games will turn their teens into serial killers. A number of studies have suggested that kids who play the games may end up accepting violence as part of everyday life.

Now we have a dissenter by the attention-getting name of Kierkegaard (Patrick, that is). This British dissenter says those studies are biased and that there's no evidence that video games lead to skull-crushing. After all, violent crime among youths has declined while sales of the games have increased, he said. Maybe kids are able to vent their violent urges with the games, making them calmer in facing the rest of the world, he said.

But he adds that no one really knows for sure what the effects are. Even though there probably are kids sending links of the article to their parents right now...

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In some cases, your delusions might be good for you.

If you think you're popular and well-liked, you can do well in social situations -- even if your perceptions of your popularity are unfounded. The key, according to a recent study, is how good you feel about yourself.

Or at least it was true for teens who participated in the study.

"Adolescents who lacked both a strong sense of their own social acceptance and who were rated by their peers as unpopular fared the worst, according to the study. They were increasingly more hostile, less sought out, and more withdrawn over time."

Maybe self-esteem IS all it's cracked up to be. As long as it's differentiated from arrogance. 

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Here's an obituary of the baby who died in Alamogordo, whose death I wrote about in this morning's paper. 

It's always sad when a baby dies, and media coverage of this one has gotten some heated discussion on an Alamogordo web site. So far, no word on the cause of death, which has gotten attention because of prior meth charges connected to that home.

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OK, I don't want to sound like a shill for Tara Parker-Pope, but I've come across another posting that set off a round of reader reaction. She writes about a psychological interpretation of people's crude behavior on airplanes -- about whether it means folks are retaliating against the cattle-car pressures of airline travel today.

Well, people started writing in with stories about what they've found in the seat-pocket in front of them -- it ranged from clipped toenails to used diapers and air-sickness bags. The discussion evolved into treatises on airline cleaning inadequacies, unhelpful air attendants, and the advantages of having babies and small children travel in a sealed, sound-proof compartment on planes.

Phew. Airline travel always touches a nerve, with everyone eager to tell their own horror story. I had found some curious things left by prior passengers in the seat-pocket in front of me, but nothing so horrible that its burned the memory into my brain. Probably a squashed, half-eaten sandwich was the worst thing.

It does raise the question, though, of where the chicken and egg is in this decline of civility. Have people started behaving more badly because air travel has become more irksome, or has air travel become more irksome because so many people have started behaving badly?

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Many families look forward to a tax refund check showing up in their mail. It's a nice treat that comes with spring. 

Every year, I drop my federal and state tax returns into the mail on the same day. And since I've always gotten refunds, I've played a little game to see which comes first. Some years, they've arrived almost on the same day. The last couple of years, the federal refund outpaced the state by a comfortable margin.

This year? My federal refund came a week ago. I'm still waiting on the state.

Does this mean that the federal government is more efficient than state government? A scary thought.

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Encouraging news for kids getting glasses: Your classmates won't see you as any less attractive. At least that's the implication of an Ohio State study of kids' perceptions of attractiveness.

So forget all those stereotypes of "Four Eyes" teasing. As a matter of fact, the study shows that kids perceive their peers wearing glasses as being more honest and smarter.

Now, I suppose that might be troublesome if some kids don't like to hang with others they think are honest and smart. But why would you want to hang out with the kind of crowd that thinks those are undesirable traits in a friend?

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Tara Parker-Pope at The New York Times had a blog entry yesterday telling why, according to a study, kids at day care aren't taken outside to play. Only one kid showing up in cool weather without a coat, or one kid wearing flip-flops, apparently was enough to make some day care administrators keep them all inside for the day.

She also notes that kids might be kept away from playgrounds with mulch because some kids would eat the mulch, use it as weapons, or get it stuck in their shoes. (Hmmm... I remember many a skinned knee from the gravelled ground under our elementary school swing sets, but that didn't keep the teachers from releasing us for recess each day.)

While the blog item is kind of interesting on its own, it managed to set off a firestorm of comments -- 175 and counting last I looked -- triggered at least in part by one reader who thought mothers were committing child abuse by putting their kids in day care. Check it out.

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Drop some cookie crumbs in a classmate's lunchbox. Go to jail.

That was the recipe for a Kentucky 8th-grader who crumbled some peanut butter cookies into the lunchbox of a fellow student -- one who happened to have a severe allergy to peanuts. The 13-year-old was charged with felony wanton endangerment.

You've got to wonder. Was this a malicious attempt to do away with a fellow student? Or a stupid prank by a muddle-headed teen who thought he might cause hives at worst, not a deadly reaction?

It raises new questions about what can be a weapon in schools. Maybe, besides metal detectors, we need body searches for peanut products. With the occurrence of serious food allergies rising, the notion of contraband may vastly expand.

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About 2.1 percent of this nation's young people 14-21 have a gambling problem, according to a nationwide study. Gambling seemed to increase with major life changes, such as moving away from home, with results showing young people who worked fulltime were more likely to gamble than students (well, you'd think so -- they have more money to gamble with!) and young people living on their own were bigger gamblers than those still living with their parents.

Boys start gambling at younger ages than girls, according to this study. In a state where many casinos are located on Native American lands, it's worth noting that the study also shows that 28 percent of Native American youths reported gambling frequently, as opposed to only 9 percent of Whites.

These findings came from the Research Institute on Addictions at the University of Buffalo.

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Divorce might not be all that bad for kids. It's what happens afterwards that can hurt them, according to an Ohio State researcher.

Yongmin Sun found that what really can affect kids is an unstable family situation -- especially if those family changes occur during the teen years. Shifting family dynamics -- a new step-parent, siblings, moves -- resulted in less education, occupational prestige and income for those teens later in life.

"A stabilized post-divorce family environment is clearly helpful for children, particularly for adolescents, such as those we studied, because stability allows children to focus on their own developmental needs rather than on continual family crises," Sun said in this report.

I guess when a whole lot of change is happening on the inside, it helps to keep things around you pretty much the same.

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Suggestions are cropping up that pediatricians take a few moments to screen for domestic abuse when they see their little patients. Not child abuse -- but spousal abuse. The thinking is that children often witness the abuse, and could end up being a target of abuse down the road. Also, women bringing their kids in for care might take a few minutes to answer questions about their own situation.

It seems like a good idea. Domestic abuse is a sad situation that affects all family members, and early intervention may help turn their lives around.

It can be ticklish, though. How do you know when someone's telling the truth? I remember feeling a little uncomfortable once when I happened to have a doctor's appointment just a couple of days after a nasty fall from my bike. Colorful bruises were blooming on my legs. Before my doctor could even ask, I hurriedly explained what happened. I did wonder, though, if she doubted me and misinterpreted my nervousness. 

Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to ask.

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There's good news and bad news for women on the housework front. A Michigan study tells us that we're doing less housework -- 17 hours/week in 2005, compared to 26 hours in 1976. Men's average has gone up from six hours in 1976 to 13 hours in 2005.

I noticed that, between the two, there was a net loss of two hours of housework per week. I don't know whether to attribute that to labor-saving devices or increased tolerance for a messy house.

The bad news? Going from single to married adds seven hours to a woman's weekly housework load. A man getting married, though, does an hour less of housework per week.

I can't figure out if that means the wife is busy cleaning up her husband's messes, or if living with another person simply increases the pressure to be neat.

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Researchers in Liverpool suggest that the rising popularity in international adoptions may be tearing more children away from their birth families. They found that countries in the European Union where richer folks go to adopt kids end up with even more kids in their orphanages.

The proposed explanation: Poor families are taking their kids to orphanages in hopes of improving their futures.

Dubbing it the "Madonna effect" for her adoption of a Zambian boy who apparently has a living father, researcher Kevin Browne was quoted: "Some argue that international adoption is, in part, a solution to the large number of children in institutional care, but we have found the opposite is true. Closely linked to the Madonna-effect, we found that parents in poor countries are now giving up their children in the belief that they will have a `better life in the west' with a more wealthy family."

 Well, that's one way to move toward income equality.

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OK, this probably comes as no surprise to anyone in touch with youth culture, but now we have a published study letting us know that rap music glorifies drug use. The intriguing angle to my eye was the finding that those positive references to drug use increased six-fold from 1979 to 1997 in popular songs studied. (I guess that excluded the time period that includes "Mellow Yellow.")

Denise Herd at the University of California-Berkeley found 69 percent of rap songs after 1993 mentioned drugs in their lyrics. The news release also tells us: ``The latter time period also saw the promotion of cough-medicine abuse in lyrics from Southwestern groups performing an underground rap genre known as `Screw Music.'"

Huh. I guess I need to stop listening to NPR and those oldies stations.

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Want to have some fun? How about siccing a couple of kids on each other and watching them fight? Even though dogfighting is illegal in most states, it appears doing the same with children is legal -- at least in Missouri. Lyle Fitzsimmons of The Sports Network has a "I-can't-believe-this-is-real" commentary on the practice.

But Missouri isn't alone. A San Diego news article informs us that kiddie cage fighting has reached its shores. ABC news tells us that kids as young as 6 can be seen going at it in YouTube videos. Oh, and, by the way, doctors warn us that it isn't good for kids...

Ummm... and how does this conform with the idea that we're supposed to tell our kids that violence isn't a good way to solve their conflicts?

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