We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The intensity of the female drive for sexual pleasure and release of sexual tension ("libido" is a puritanical medical euphemism) varies more across individuals, relationship, time of month, and age, than does the average male drive for sexual activity.
Still, the stereotype of males being always ready to go, and females always having headaches, is inaccurate. All females get horny too and it comes mostly from biology. There is no doubt that males have more sexual fantasies during a day, and it doesn't take much to prompt one. Seeing one charming girl is usually enough. What people seem reluctant to discuss is how strong the female need can be "to get laid" (to use the medical term) sometimes, regardless of context. I say it can be every bit as strong as that of men. Unlike First Wave Feminism, current feminism seems to minimize or deny the motives for female guile, seductiveness, etc., and the ordinary female physical need to be properly taken care of on a regular basis.
In today's era of openness and relatively casual and recreational sex, it is far more likely to hear females talk about their plain need for a sexual experience regardless of context (relationship, romance, etc). Frustrated women masturbate plenty, and the market for vibrators is big business. I have heard plenty of young women tell me that they went out Thursday night with the simple goal of getting some sexual fun. In men it might be termed predatory, and nobody uses the term "nymphomaniac" anymore. "Whore"? Sometimes, but I have heard always-horny young guys describe themselves as whores.
Studies often focus on what turns people on because it is impossible to directly measure the strength of a baseline biological drive in people. For example, subjective hunger is easily highlighted by a chocolate cake and reduced by the sight of vomit on a sidewalk. Similarly, sex drive can be exposed or enhanced by seductiveness or by alcohol (we call it "disinhibited" which may or may not be the right term). Guys talk about "beer goggles" but the sex drive is internally-generated, goes through psychological mazes, and can be externally-amplified.
Shy or gentlemanly men often seem unaware or in denial of female biological needs. If they did, they might not be so inclined to view themselves as the only ones in urgent need of a physical connection. True Romance might be more exciting, and love more important, but let's be more open about one aspect of the supposed mystery of what women want. At the most basic levels, we are animals and, even worse, apes. Semi-civilized with many complex life considerations to consider, but still apes. Even as apes, I think we humans get far more mileage from sex than the other creatures do.
This phenomenon seems to be not unusual in patients over age 55. It seems to be an unmentioned risk of surgery. I have seen several cases of long-lasting (? permanent) cognitive setbacks after surgeries, so I am glad that people are exploring the topic.
Is marriage about happiness? Peterson is a realist with the tragic view. "If you think marriage is all about your happiness, you are a princess living in a gingerbread house."
It is well-known that vigorous exercise does not "work up an appetite." On the contrary, it tends to reduce hunger and appetite.
That might not apply to 8 hours on the Appalachian Trail or a day job as a lumberjack, but it is certainly true for me with my 1-hr daily exercises. The more consistently I exercise, the less interest I have in food and the smaller the portions I can handle. This effect is most pronounced with demanding cardio and calisthenic exercise, not with strength exercise or with sports. There is a theory that the effect has something to do with Peptide YY.
Nobody wants to eat anything after a hour of tough cardio exercise and that suppressive effect tends to last 24 hrs. at least.
Maybe it makes some genetic sense. If you need to move yourself vigorously and frequently, the less fat you have on you the better you can avoid becoming part of a Tiger Dinner Party. Hunger is an interesting instinct and only recently has it been studied biochemically. One thing we know for certain is that subjective hunger or attraction to food is not a signal for a need for nourishment for most adults in a food-rich environment.
Overweight people seem to have the strongest subjective hunger, and sedentary people tend to have stronger appetites. Cause or effect?
"Voluntary" death, and the grey zone around it, have always gone on. Generally, it has been between doctor, patient, and family. "Time to let him/her go."
The idea of dying "when God wills it" is mostly obsolete, because the patient often would already have died on God's time. The reason such topics have become an issue is because of the power of medicine to sustain life, however terminal, painful, humiliating, or degrading. Fortunately, today we have things like DNR and hospice, but the old-fashioned way of "Let's make him comfortable" with extra morphine might have been (or still is) more humane.
I found it interesting that almost half of patients who were prescribed physician-assisted death never used it. That means to me that many just want to have some control over their fate, over pain, etc. Makes good sense to me. Nobody wants a lengthy death consisting of weeks of gasping for air, writhing in pain, and pooping in bed.
Much or most of what you know about health, nutrition, and medical practice is already obsolete, but it can take years for new information to be accepted by doctors, hospitals and, God knows, the government.
It's a truism that all knowledge is transient. I sometimes catch myself thinking "I can't believe they used to believe...." before I call myself on it and realize that in fifty years people will be saying that about us.
Dr. Semmelweiss possibly did more for women than any other person in history, or at least in medical history. He is a stand-out in the medical pantheon, but acceptance of his ideas was extremely slow and he was thought a nut and a crank by the medical establishment.
His life was a sad one, and short. I suspect he died of neurosyphilis, known then as General Paresis of the Insane. He might have gotten syphilis from the many prostitutes he tended to, or from prostitutes who tended to him.
... what most “self-esteem” advocates fail to understand is that other-reliant “self-esteem” is a contradiction in terms. Far from building self-esteem, many of the counselors, teachers, and parents of yesteryear obstructed its growth by getting kids hooked on a spiritual I.V. drip of external validation. Instead of self-esteem, this created a dependence on “other-esteem.”
It is no wonder then that today we are faced with the (often exaggerated) phenomenon of young, entitled, high-maintenance validation-junkies in the classroom and the workplace. Their self-esteem has been crippled by being, on the one hand, atrophied by the psychic crutches of arbitrary authoritarian approval, and, on the other hand, repeatedly fractured by the psychic cudgels of arbitrary authoritarian disapproval.
These people are playing with fire. It is political, but probably enabled by ignorance. The countless crazy fantasies of youth can be sort-of interesting to some, but adults are supposed to be the ones with intact reality-testing. Grown-ups with decent reality-testing are the only buffers against the really hard and dangerous realities of life.
The most common postural problem with desk-sitting and desk-reading is Postural Kyphosis (one type of kyphosis, aka "hunchback"). It is due to a lazy, slouched or slumped sitting posture with the head too far forward and upper back too rounded, but in time it continues as a lazy habit while standing and walking: slightly hunched and with shoulders forward.
In medicine, this posture has been nicknamed "Scholar's Hump" and "Dowager's Hump."
It is bad for your back and terrible for appearance - adds years to your appearance. You can try to strengthen postural muscles by sitting tall with your shoulders back. You have to sit on your "sitz bones," aka ischial tuberosities" and not on your behind. You also have to get rid of the habit of neck-leaning, peering forward or downwards.
Another help can be a straight-backed chair, if you use the back of the chair and resist peering forward.
Another corrective could be a lumbar support cushion or pillow. They keep your spine in a natural position and remind you to sit properly.
If your postural kyphosis is bad enough, add some exercises to attempt to strengthen your core to make it easier to correct it. The best are planks, deadlifts, and weighted squats.
Ideally, you should be focusing on engaging your postural muscles all the time, regardless of what activity you’re pursuing. Whether you’re working out at home or at the gym, standing in line at the grocery store, or sitting at your desk working, you should make it a point to keep your abs pulled in, your shoulder blades rolling down the back so that your chest is up and forward, and your spine in one line.
I doubt the answers to their curiosity will be found in a lab, but they persevere. That article takes almost all of the sexiness out of the topic: What do women want?
Humans are bio-psycho-social critters, too complicated for labs.
There are (at least) two kinds of tantrums: irrational volcanic explosions and manipulative tantrums. Spanking does not work for the former, but works for the latter. The problem is that the kids know to mainly have the latter in public places, like in supermarkets. They know what they are doing.
What works best for older kids, like college students with tantrums?
Lust, infatuation, True Love, erotic intoxication, romantic passion - call it what you will. We all know that new passion is exhilarating and agonizing too. Humans will do unwise things to taste that fruit. From a scientific standpoint, this is caused by a little devilish prankster named Cupid who gets a kick out of making people crazy.
It is obviously a normal and frequent occurrence, and it is powerful stuff. How is a bourgeois Christian person to handle it when Cupid's arrow strikes in a way which complicates life? How to break free when you have feelings for the wrong person.
Hermann Rorschach worked on an interesting experiment: provide people with an ambiguous stimulus (an image) and find out whether their take on it reveals anything useful about them.
Well, of course it does. In fact, everybody's take on everything and anything reveals things about who they are. All of life can be viewed as a projective experiment but Dr. Rorschach thought that perhaps a standardized ambiguous stimulus might be clinically useful.
I think his hypothesis was correct, but only in the right hands. The challenge is in the interpretation of the responses to projective tests.
Are projective "tests" useful? I think they can be interesting, but not necessary.
How often do you hear people say "I never lost 8 of the pounds I put on with my first kid" ? Clearly women do not need to be menopausal or post-menopausal to gain weight. Just look around at all the fat American women.
I think it matters in life to stay trim and strong, whether pre- or post-menopausal. You can be more athletic, agile, energetic, sexy, cheerful, and able to avoid many of the physical consequences of being overweight from plantar fasciitis and arthritis to breast cancer.
Plus it makes life more fun and you can wear better clothes. Except for those blessed with the right genes (physical and psychological), most people have to take deliberate responsibility for their level of fitness and, in the modern world of sedentary ease and carb abundance, it can be a challenge if you have an impulsive rather than obsessive-compulsive personality.
Is getting fat partly a socio-cultural phenomenon? Of course, but that's a more complicated subject than I wish to take on on Mother's Day. What about the middle-aged men making themselves pudgy? That's another sad topic too, but I believe that it is part of the duty of a wife to keep her man fit for life even if she "lets herself go". An obvious risk in that, though...
Post-menopausal women do have a greater chance of gaining weight even if they have been fit and shapely beforehand. It should not be used as an excuse, but the changes in sex hormones do alter fat storage and, seemingly, metabolic rate. Why nature designed it that way is a mystery, but nature has little need for post-menopausal females. Society needs them, but Mother Nature does not.
Generally speaking, post-menopausal women need far fewer carbs and less food in general than in youth almost entirely regardless of activity level. Another change is that the physical distribution of fat (from excess carb intake) changes in unhealthy and unattractive ways (unattractive in our culture, anyway).
Around 25% of medicare and medicaid spending has to do with complications related to overweight-connected diabetes. That is huge but likely underestimates overweight costs because arthritis, breast cancer, heart disease, and many other problems are also related to or caused by being overweight. For that, and related interesting medical cost info, A Provocative Health Care Proposal
Some of these operations lasted 18 hours or more, earning Hendren the nickname of Hardly Human -- a term used endearingly by friends, and fearfully by some of the house staff he trained. But his patients never called him that: with gratitude, they called him a healer.
It is no use letting kids do whatever they desire unless you have first educated their desire. The first job of the parent is to educate the child’s desire: to instill a longing for something higher and better than video games, TV, or pornography or social media, whether that something be found in science, in music, in the arts, in nature, or in religion.
Whether kids or adults, "natural desires" are usually fairly stupid and useless, but the "better" things are more challenging. If you ever saw an adult playing a video game, you know what I mean.
...and other topics, but I found the part about his course most interesting. It's easy to see why he is such a popular teacher, but the course does not seem particularly academic. It's more of an inspirational sort of program about how to grow up, face life with strength, and things like that.
Peterson has an interesting and unusual life history for an academic. Myths appeal to him. I think he is a capital C Christian.
It's easy for me to see how it could be helpful to young people. He is a natural teacher or preacher. He is smart as a whip and a fearsome debater.
The intensity of the female drive for sexual pleasure and release of sexual tension ("libido" is a puritanical medical euphemism) varies more across individuals, relationship, time of month, and age, than does the average male drive for sexual activity.
The most common postural problem with desk-sitting and desk-reading is Postural Kyphosis (one type of 
Hermann Rorschach worked on an interesting experiment: provide people with an ambiguous stimulus (an image) and find out whether their take on it reveals anything useful about them.
How often do you hear people say "I never lost 8 of the pounds I put on with my first kid" ? Clearly women do not need to be menopausal or post-menopausal to gain weight. Just look around at all the fat American women.