Dec 07 2008

And this is news exactly how?

Category: society — harmonicminer @ 10:43 pm

Women admit their sympathy for ‘man flu’ victims runs out after five minutes – Telegraph

Women’s sympathy with husbands and boyfriends who complain of having a cold runs out after just five minutes, a survey claims. And almost a fifth of women say they feel no sympathy at all for their partners’ “man flu”.

But men, by contrast, say they are prepared to take time off work to care for their suffering wives or girlfriends, cooking meals and cleaning the home.

A poll found that women were far less likely to sit by their man’s bedside mopping his brow than the traditional stereotype suggests.

More than half (52 per cent) of women polled said that they lose sympathy with their husband or boyfriend within five minutes of his first complaint about feeling under the weather.

Some 18 per cent said that they start from an unsympathetic point of view, according to the survey carried out for carried out for the makers of Lemsip Max Stength.

Sigh.

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Dec 07 2008

If I lived in London, I’d be paranoid too

Category: science — harmonicminer @ 10:56 am

Paranoia May Be More Common Than Thought

I’m trying not to read this headline literally. Since real “thought” is pretty unusual, that would mean there isn’t much paranoia. But I don’t think that’s what they meant. So, to the article:

LONDON, If you think they’re out to get you, you’re not alone. Paranoia, once assumed to afflict only schizophrenics, may be a lot more common than previously thought.

According to British psychologist Daniel Freeman, nearly one in four Londoners regularly have paranoid thoughts. Freeman is a paranoia expert at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College and the author of a book on the subject.

Experts say there is a wide spectrum of paranoia, from the dangerous delusions that drive schizophrenics to violence, to the irrational fears many people have daily.

“We are now starting to discover that madness is human and that we need to look at normal people to understand it,” said Dr. Jim van Os, a professor of psychiatry at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Van Os was not connected to Freeman’s studies.

Like I said, if I lived in London, I’d be paranoid, too.

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