Texting at funerals

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Carolyn Thomas

Dr. Sherry Turkle is worried. The MIT prof (and author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other) told an interviewer from The Verge recently that one of her main concerns is how to get families to talk to each other at the dinner table – instead of texting. What also concerns her is that young people may think of communication as being a Like button.

“People are texting at funerals! (Only during the boring bits, they protest). But things worth doing (like grassroots political campaigning) often require boring bits. For good stuff to happen, people need to talk to each other.” Continue reading →

Absolute risk, relative risk – and red meat

Posted on June 2, 2012 by Carolyn Thomas

“Red Meat Consumption Increases Risk of Early Death” Scientific American

“The Deadly Dangers of Eating Red Meat” TIME magazine

“All Red Meat is Risky, a Study Finds” Los Angeles Times

I preface what follows next by this full disclosure: I’m not a scientist, although, because I spent 20 years of my life with one, I’ve endured countless scintillating conversations about things like zinc and copper sediment in the Fraser River estuary. Does that count at all?

As a heart attack survivor, I rarely if ever eat red meat anymore – with the very occasional exception of bacon, of course (referred to by some as the “gateway drug” that lures vegetarians like me back to the dark meat-eating side). Continue reading →

The Quantified Self meets The Urban Datasexual

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Carolyn Thomas

Lately, I’ve been writing about the Quantified Self movement on my other site, Heart Sisters. Usually this mention is merely in passing as I’m exploring what separates the average plugged-in person and the Quantified Selfers’ “worried well” tracking of everything they think, or do, or think about doing.

Committed (or self-absorbed) Quantified Selfers regularly use their computers, smartphones, electronic gadgets or simply pen and paper to record work, sleep, exercise, diet, mood, sweat, caffeine, memories, social habits, sexual activity and pretty well anything else that’s trackable in life. Continue reading →