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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Have you ever wished you could follow your teen around everywhere? Some day you may have a chance. (Consider this a heads-up to any teens who might be reading this.)

Researchers report that an experiment with GPS-equipped cell phones showed they could trace the meanderings of girls 14 to 16 years old who were in the study. And, not surprisingly, they found out the ladies weren't always where they were supposed to be.

So some day the cell phone may become even more of a leash than it already is. Not only will you be able to reach your child -- or significant other -- whenever you want, but you also might be able to swipe their phone and find out if they really were at the library -- or working late at the office.

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As that demographic bulge known as the Baby Boomers moves into their Golden Years, many of its members no doubt are reflecting on where they've been and where they're going.

If you're one of them -- and you're able to laugh at yourself -- check out this animated cartoon. And thanks to my brother-in-law for passing it on.

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Here's a depressing statistic (or maybe not, depending on your point of view): In the last 20 years, state spending around the nation has increased 21 percent for higher education while spending on prisons has gone up 127 percent.

When you look at the state-by-state comparisons, though, New Mexico comes out pretty even-handed: From 1987 to 2007, spending on higher ed increased 81 percent, with corrections only a little bit higher at 97 percent.

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A new study has come out with the hook: "Money buys happiness -- but only if you spend it on someone else." Apparently people given a bonus were happier with themselves if they gave it away -- or bought someone else a present -- rather than splurging on themselves.

Does this mean that indulgent grandparents are the happiest people of all?

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Sometimes gender equality has a down side.

A Chicago newspaper report on a sexual harrassment trial of an Illinois state official  says that the boss called her employee a "boy toy" and a "nice armpiece."  He claims she fired him after he refused her advances in a hotel room on a business trip.

According to the story, the man was a high-school drop-out making $70,000/year as the woman's chauffeur and "special assistant."

Very special, indeed.

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This may come as a surprise with all the news about scanty savings and consumer debt, but a new survey asserts that tightwads  outnumber  spendthrifts 3 to 2.

This part may be no surprise: Men are more likely to be tightwads than women, and people over 70 are in the age group most likely to be tightwads.

And apparently there's a difference between being frugal and a tightwad. "The evidence suggests that frugality is driven by a pleasure of saving, as compared with tightwaddism, which is driven by a pain of paying."

I'm so glad to hear that. I think it means I'm frugal, but not a tightwad.

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I was hiding from the knock-you-over wind gusts this weekend when I came across an interesting commentary in Ode magazine. In it, author Tim McGill argues that kids and their activities are so controlled by their parents these days that the little ones don't get a chance to learn how to handle their own lives.

Simple play, he says, helps them learn how to manage their own safety and work out problems that develop with their playmates. He suggests we "remind ourselves of the value of tasting freedom."

A resident of the United Kingdom, he cites statistics there that the average 7-year-old went off to school by himself in 1971, but that didn't happen until age 10 by 1990 -- and last year parents in a survey said kids shouldn't play with their friends unsupervised until they are 14.

Is the world more dangerous now? Child abductions and murders, he writes, are the same now as they were 35 years ago. Of course, I suppose parents can argue they'd be higher if kids weren't watched as closely as they are now... 

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If you find yourself switching to glass baby bottles, you're not alone.  Babies  "R"  Us has reported a five-fold increase in the sales of these bottles.

The shift is coming from fears over BPA, a compound used in some plastic baby bottles that has been found to have hormone-like effects in some studies. Glass isn't the only option, though, since some plastics don't have BPA in them.

 Experts remind moms (and dads!) that glass bottles can break and probably shouldn't be carried around by babies that have started walking.

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I remember the days when t-shirts were common suggesting that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. The same, though, apparently isn't true for their children.

A review of studies on family life noted that kids with fathers in the home had fewer behavior and criminal problems. They also were smarter, stayed in school longer, and had better friendships. Girls who had good relationships with their fathers when they were 16 had better relationships with their partners and a greater sense of well-being when they are 33.

There's a bit of a catch to these studies, though. They note that the improvements come from positive interactions with their fathers. Mere presence doesn't count. So stick with your kids, guys, and let them know how fascinating and utterly wonderful they are.

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I'm ba-a-ack! After covering state government for more than seven years, and then health for about 10 years, I took a year off for rest and recreation (and reading). I rejoined the working world this month, covering children, families, mental health and related issues.

And, what do you know, around the first day back I saw a short story in the Journal that began this way: "To the list of simple childhood pleasures whose safety has been questioned, add this: Eating snow." It went on to say parents must be wondering if it was safe for their kids to eat snow because of the presence of Pseudomonas syringae, a bacteria that can cause plant diseases.

"Say it ain't so!" I thought. Eating snow is such a traditional pasttime that even a Peanuts Christmas special shows Charlie Brown and his buddies catching snowflakes on their tongues.

Well, don't worry. A little research shows the genesis of this story came from research on whether or not bacteria might help snowflakes form -- as well as raindrops, for that matter. That little bug mentioned was one of the suspects. It notes that ski resorts often add dead microbes to their snow-making machines to help the flakes form.

That doesn't mean dastardly infections are falling down on little Johnny or Maria. That same Scientific American story I linked you to also noted that one researcher identified some 2,000 varieties of microbes above Texas cities. (I don't think we can pin the blame on Texas for this.) Bacteria are everywhere. Many of them are incredibly helpful. As a matter of fact, there are ten times more  bacterial cells in our bodies than there are human cells.

Chew on that the next time you see one of those TV news stories going breathless about sampling some common surface and finding -- gasp! -- several different kinds of bacteria.

They're everywhere. Our kids will survive.

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   Can natural birth control be as effective as The Pill? That's what a German study found. The technique, referred to as fertility awareness, requires women to track signs, such as their cervical mucus, that indicate whether or not they are entering a fertile period.

   The catch, of course, is that the technique has to be used correctly. That means abstinence during the fertile part of the cycle. It also means paying attention to and correctly interpreting bodily rhythms. Still, it worked for a lot of the folks in the study.

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   Prenatal vitamins -- the big player is folic acid -- appear to significantly reduce certain cancers, such as neuroblastomas and leukemia, in children, according to a new study.

   Now, keep in mind that the study was funded by a company that manufactures such prenatal vitamins. Still, if the findings are supported, it sure appears to be a cheap way to avoid a good share of heartache. And medical costs, too.

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   All those grandmas who called fish "brain food" may have been on the right track. More research suggests that kids' IQ tends to be a little higher and their social skills a little better if their moms ate fish a few times a week while they were pregnant.

   Interestingly, they had to do the study on British moms because they couldn't find enough Americans who ate fish several times a week, at least during pregnancy. That may be because of warnings to pregnant women not to eat fish, because of fears the mercury content would harm their babies neurological development.

    However, the omega-3 fatty acids abundant in many types of fish also are considered helpful to neurological development. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.

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   Will a vasectomy make you lose your mind? A preliminary study has suggested certain types of dementia may be more common, and occur earlier, in men who have had vasectomies. The researcher warns that the study was done in a small number of people and needs to be repeated to see if there's any validity to the link.

   How could one possibly have anything to do with the other? Speculation is that sperm might leak into the blood, causing the production of antibodies that can cause inflammation and damage to parts of the brain.

    But, guys, don't forget that health problems have been associated with your ladies' birth control pills, too.

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   Here's something else we all should have learned in kindergarten: Napping is good for you. A newly-published study of Greek men showed that those who took advantage of a mid-day nap a few times a week were less likely to die of heart attacks than those who didn't. And the benefits were especially significant in working men.

   Now, the study didn't include women, but I'm ready to assume the results apply to us as well. So let's move in the daybeds and couches and make a nap room the latest innovation for good employers!

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   I am always intrigued by the notion that there is no free lunch -- that everything in life, whether it be medical treatments or an evolutionary advance in genetics, has a trade-off. That theme resounds in a recent finding on schizophrenia. Scientists find a link between that brain disease and a genetic variation that, when it works well, helps our thinking be more efficient and sophisticated. In other words, that which makes us brilliant also can make us mad. An enhanced pathway between brain regions can run amok.

   Sort of like what happens when you talk on a cell phone and eat a doughnut while trying to thread your way through fast-moving traffic.

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   More news is coming out on vitamin D, with the latest claiming that higher levels of the vitamin in your blood can halve the risks for breast and colorectal cancer. The findings are intriguing, especially in light of the fact that sunshine can manufacture the vitamin in our bodies. But the fear of skin cancer has led us to block the impact of the sun's rays. 

   Don't let that convince you to skip skin protection, though. Most recommendations are that Anglo skin can absorb the needed amount of vitamin-producing rays within 10 or 15 minutes, especially in this part of the country. Darker skin needs a little more exposure. As in everything, moderation is key.

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   There was a mind-boggling report in Sunday's Tennessean. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee put out a report saying that state's (legal) prescription drug use was the highest in the nation, with 17.3 prescriptions for every man, woman and child.

   Now think about that. I can't even imagine one person taking 17 prescription drugs. The fact that that's supposedly an average, counting healthy little babies and robust 20-somethings, means that there are people with a whole lot more prescriptions than that. And we shouldn't be surprised to hear that Tennessee also ranks high for prescription drug poisonings, antibiotic resistance -- and, gee, its health is 47th in the nation. Well, OK, sick people are the ones who get prescriptions, so that makes some sense.

    Still... I just got back from a conference about the high costs of health care, and what we can do about it, so this story makes me wonder if medical treatment has gotten way out of control. Or the society that makes unhealthy lifestyles such a norm that we're all ruining our bodies.

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     A whole lot of what's wrong with health care (a misnomer, in reality) is summed up in an article in today's New York Times. The South Beach Diet doctor, Arthur Agatston, brags in it about how few of his patients have heart attacks. He works with them so closely on prevention, he says, that they stay well.

    But his practice is losing money. Fortunately, for his sake, he's got plenty of book royalties rolling in to keep him off the streets. The simple fact is, though, that medical dollars go into doing things for sick people, such as giving them drugs, running tests, doing surgery, taking pictures of their innards. Not a whole lot of money goes to well-supervised programs that help them lose weight, improve their diets, stop smoking and reduce stress.

   There is an argument for that, though. Ideally, people should be able to do those things themselves. We can't operate on ourselves, so need help paying for someone else to do that. Too bad we don't do a better job at prevention on our own. 

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   Smoking bans in three Chicago suburbs will have to wait for the Super Bowl. With Chicago's Bears headed to that Big Game, bar owners protested that they'd lose the patronage of fans who would come in to watch the game ... and not want to risk missing a crucial play when they step outside for a smoke.

   Governing bodies backed off the ban until the pigskin champion was determined.   

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   This may be a new version of "the emperor has no clothes," with marketing trumping reality. Or maybe it's just a minority view without enough evidence to sway others.  In any case, an intriguing claim is being made in The Lancet by a Harvard researcher that about three-quarters of people on statin drugs really don't need them. 

   This review of previous studies claims that the drugs, which have their own risks of side effects, don't extend life of any but a certain class of high-risk, male patients. It's a view that is rebutted by others convinced the evidence is solid for the wide use of the drugs.

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   More than half of 21 multivitamin supplements that were tested by an independent company found some sort of problem, including high levels of lead or Vitamin A, according to a new report.

   This is a disturbing reminder that the vitamins and supplements on our store shelves aren't regulated to make sure they are pure, contain the ingredients at the strength they claim, and have been proven to have the benefits that are claimed. I'm in the midst of reading an interesting book by Dan Hurley that outlines how the supplement industry was able to evade FDA oversight -- and, incidentally, the role that then-Congressman Bill Richardson played in removing that regulatory authority.

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   Catching up a little bit, I came across an article on new playgrounds that would have adult "play directors" helping guide kids on fantasy play.  Since when do kids need an adult to teach them how to play?

   I can't figure out if this is a bad sign of modern life killing kids' imaginations so much that they really DO need help, or if it's a sign of adults being unwilling to admit that they may not be necessary for everything in their child's life.

    When I was growing up, parents told us to go out and play to get us out of their hair. In school, the nuns retreated to their lunchroom during the noon hour and sent us out on the playground on our own. And we played, whether it was jumprope or jacks games, or something as equipment-free as tag, or flights of imagination where we acted out "pretend" situations. Somehow, we always managed to occupy our time, and our imagination, and have fun. No adult intervention needed.

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You know, I turned on the Ohio State-Florida game the other night. OSU, where I got my master's degree, was leading 7-0 -- until a couple of minutes after I turned on the game. I'm a jinx. Teams I support never win if I watch.

That's an example of "magical thinking," which is wonderfully described today in a New York Times article. It explains how our brain very much wants to find meaning in things, especially things that are hard to explain. Two things may happen by coincidence, but those neurons fire and the way our brain is wired causes us to think that there's a cause-effect relationship.

So, we think of  a friend and shortly hear from him. We see "signs" that lead us along a certain path. We have rituals and good-luck charms that we are certain help us.

Carried to an extreme, it's known by another name: obsessive-compulsive disorder.

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   Watching TV excerpts and examining newspaper photos from Gov. Bill Richardson's State of the State speech yesterday, something about him struck me. He looked different. And it wasn't just the weight loss. He seemed to glow. His complexion appeared downright dewy.

   Could he have been... cosmetically-enhanced? Spokesman Gilbert Gallegos gave a flat NO to my questions of whether the Gov might have undergone dermabrasion, a chemical peel, or any other professionally-administered complexion enhancement.

    But, yes, the Cowpoke-in-Chief did take advantage of the services of a professional make-up artist, Gallegos said. And doesn't healthy living -- that improved diet, exercise, weight reduction -- give one a healthy glow?

   Contemplating performances on a national stage probably could add a bit of a twinkle, too.

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   It's official: Ozzie and Harriet are dead. According to a census analysis in the New York Times, this country has more unmarried women than married women.

   Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they have no men in their lives. They may be living with men without benefit of marriage. They may be living alone but dating. And the majority of them will be married, or will have been married, at some point in their lives.

   I wonder when our political scene will catch up with this fact of life.

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