Yes, high fashion has been hit hard by the recession, coupled with its own self-immolating marketing practices -- like teasing impulse buyers with seasonal collections six months before the clothes hit the stores. But the survival of fashion itself is not in question. All school yards, all workplaces and many bedrooms have their trend-setters and enforcers. Read More

In the October 2009 issue of SHAPE magazine (see p. 70), a dieter tells readers how Dr. Judith Beck (and The Beck Diet Solution) is helping her develop strategies to target her emotional eating, boost her confidence, resist unhealthy temptations, and continue to lose weight. In the article, the dieter mentions a favorite strategy that's been helpful to her and which Dr. Read More

The naming of a new park after noted eugenicist William Shockley has drawn international attention to the small town of Auburn, California. This is unfortunate for Auburn, but a useful reminder for the rest of us, about an issue that has never entirely gone away but is all too often forgotten. Read More

Getting old is a bitch. But the upside of our downward intestinal fortitude is that it has required us to become more mindful eaters. So when I ran across the work of Susan Albers, I was intrigued. Here's her take on the practice of mindful eating. Read More

In our Age of Entitlement, one of the biggest strains on marriage is the presumptive right to have your partner make you happy. This unfortunate presumption persists even though empirical evidence shows that happy people make happy marriages. Read More

It's the end of the day. You're tired. You've worked hard. The children have finally gone to bed. You're looking forward to some peace and quiet by yourself. All of a sudden you hear the cries of your normally loving youngster: "I can't sleep!" Read More

As we gear up for a potential new round of H1N1, aka swine flu, it is worth noting some of the other health complications of human-pig encounters.   Read More

Most of you have probably already heard of the 80/20 rule. You know: The rule that states eighty percent of your results come from 20 percent of your efforts. The flip suggestion is that 80 percent of the effort doesn’t proportionately impact your company’s bottom-line. Read More

  Are some adolescents at greater risk for serious alcohol problems? And, if so, how can they be identified and protected? Read More

Once the roller coaster car gets to a certain spot in the track, a threshold is met, there is no turning back, and it starts the downward loop - a relapse.    Read More

We have just lived through a rather eventful couple of weeks in the evolution of how we deal with reform and with race in the United States, and mass media have played a noticeable role in that history.First came the note in my 8-year-old son Jason's school backpack. The President was scheduled to address American schoolchildren via television. Read More

The Oprah Winfrey Show aired a 2-part interview with Whitney Houston on Monday, September 14th and Tuesday, September 15th. This revealing interview covered topics that the public has been waiting to hear about-from her relationship with Bobby Brown, to her daughter, to her career hiatus, to drugs. Read More

I've always scratched my head over conspiracy theories. It's hard enough to get a group of reasonably intelligent people to run their own fantasy football league. It would require true organizational geniuses to carry out truly big conspiracies like the alleged conspiracy to kill JFK without somebody finding out about it. Read More

I have a new (highly specific and quite idiosyncratic) happiness-project resolution, “Use Twitter to send out a daily quotation from Virginia Woolf’s brilliant novel, The Waves. Read More

Is David Gregory too stupid to understand that he distorted Carter's words, or does he just not care? Read More

Courtney Cox revealed how she really feels about her body last week on The Tonight Show. She is making appearances on talk shows for the release of her new show, Cougar Town. In Cox's interview with O'Brien, she discussed a scene from Cougar Town that many people, particularly women, can identify with. Viewers will see Cox scantily clothed and evaluating herself in the mirror. Her character judges herself harshly and picks apart her body. She laments about the parts she feels haven't aged well. Who hasn't done this same thing? Unfortunately, approximately 80% of American women are dissatisfied with their appearance (Smolak, 1996).  Read More

I made the final touches, and put down the makeup brush.  From over my shoulder, someone handed the bride a mirror.   Gulping down a knot of anxiety as she examined my handiwork, I found myself thinking:  After a lifetime of feeling like an outsider in the "girl" world, how did I wind up here? Since the day when I was seven or eight years old, and my mother found me curle Read More

At times it’s hard to decide who has the more difficult job in the doctor-patient relationship: patients, who reasonably expect kind words and a caring attitude, as well as top-notch medical expertise, or physicians, who spend all day trying to be at the top of their game, but often end up feeling that they fall short. Read More

What are some last lines you'd bet have NEVER been uttered on a deathbed? Here are my suggestions, and I'd like to hear yours:1. I'm really, really sorry I had all that passionate sex when I was young and beautiful.2. 
Why didn't I ever learn how to floss properly?3. I wish there had been many more opportunities to watch Pimp My Ride.4. If only I'd carefully read every issue of SHAPE Magazine....5. Why, oh why, didn't I organize my closet according to color and texture of garment? Read More

The appeal of "Cash for Clunkers" as an economic stimulus came from psychological bias--so what did it really cost? Read More

Several days ago I commented on some "alternative" treatments for autism that may be attractive to concerned parents but have not been supported by systematic research evidence. Looking at a list of these treatments prepared by Tristram Smith ("Empirically supported and unsupported treatments for Autism Spectrum Disorders", Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 2008, Vol.6(10, pp. Read More

If you've read the comments on this blog, you probably noticed that there are 1,001 ways to be introverted.We can talk about introversion all we want, but the fact is, researchers haven't definitively pinned the word down. Read More

Dropping our only son off at college, I struggled for the perfect piece of essential advice, the ideal nudge that would somehow set his lone trajectory from this moment forward in exactly the right direction. I failed. Read More

The people in Margaret's life did not acknowledge her role in Anna's care the way they surely would have if she had been caring for a partner. Margaret noted that her "colleagues made few alterations in the demands they placed." At Anna's memorial service, "the president of our college pointedly addressed his formal condolences to Anna's biological kin."  Read More

The Internet is all a Twitter (literally) with the recent celebrity outbursts. Is this Celebrity Tourette's syndrome of a sign of the times? Are we a society of rampant narcissists and Twitter-length cognitive processors? Has the new social media environment so empowered us to speak our opinion that we think we can do it at any time with no content censor? People haven't changed, but the ability of information to travel and mutate has. It's time to understand what this means for society and for parents. Read More

In the last posting, we began to look at Weighing In, a technique for cutting through the financial fog that envelops so many overshoppers.  Weighing In involves the disciplined recording of purchases—and something more. You also categorize each purchase, choosing from a master list. Read More

My wife and I belong to a book club. We gather with a small group of friends every month or so for a bit of cabernet and culture. We recently discussed The Hound of the Baskervilles. Read More

Is Female-on-Male Violence on the rise? Or is it just a matter of each gender's perception of what violence and abuse really are? Read More

Does the desirability of a man influence how many M & Ms women eat in a casual conversation? Read More

Sticking with ambigamy for a change here (since after all, it's what this blog is supposed to be about) and following up on the past few week's articles, I'm thinking about the art of breaking up.  It's a very practical art because life is precious and short. Read More