Happiness and longevity

It is always interesting when conventional wisdom is challenged. A new study provides a classic example of the danger of inferring causation from correlation. There have been studies that show that people who are unhappy have higher mortality rates and thus shorter life spans. It has become conventional to think that being unhappy is bad for you. But a new large ten-year study says that rather than unhappiness leading to increased mortality, it is poor health that leads people to be unhappy and that is the reason for the correlation.
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Down with Elmo!

I am a big fan of the children’s TV show Sesame Street. I don’t watch it anymore but I used to watch it every day with my children when they were young and I got very fond of the characters on the show, particularly the Muppets, because the program was clever and funny. My children are all grown up now but I still watch some of the clips online where they parody popular culture
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The eve of destruction?

Donald Trump’s increasingly outrageous statements that seem aimed at deliberately alienating, Mexicans, Hispanics, women, the disabled, Jews, Muslims, Asians, and god knows who else (it is hard to keep score), is now leading Republicans to increasingly distance themselves from him. The chorus of Republican condemnations of Trump is steadily increasing in volume. Mike Fernandez, a wealthy Miami patron of the Republican party and Jeb Bush supporter, has said that he would vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump and is running ads against him. Tom Ridge, former governor of Pennsylvania and secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, has said that there is not a chance that he will support Trump if he is the party’s nominee.
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Jon Stewart back on The Daily Show

He returns to plug one of the issues that he is passionate about and that is to obtain appropriate health care for those 9/11 emergency first responders who got sick breathing in all the dust from the collapsed building as they went about trying to rescue people. He is trying to shame senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and other legislators into doing the right thing.
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This is definitely good news for Donald Trump

Almost the entire political establishment, including almost all his Republican rivals for the nomination and even war criminal Dick Cheney, has attacked Donald Trump’s most recent statement that no Muslims should be allowed to enter the US for the foreseeable future, with Jeb Bush going so far as to call it “unhinged”. Trump, predictably, has brushed off the criticisms.
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The curious opposition to inclusivity

There are so many offensive things that people say and do that are reported in the news that I often do not bother to comment on them because to respond to each and every one would become pretty much a full time job. For example, this time of year brings out those who feel that anything other than overtly Christian messages and symbols are an affront and the attempts to make the holidays more inclusive are a sign of discrimination against Christians. This faux war on the nonexistent war on Christmas has reached such a meta-level that it threatens to create a black hole of phoniness.
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