Germans are not obsessed with faecal matters, just very reluctant to use sexual metaphors in a negative way
Category: culture
Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?
As many as a million young people in Japan are thought to remain holed up in their homes – sometimes for decades at a time. Why?
How To Make Worldwide Brain News (No News And Very Little Brain Required!)
The term “digital dementia” wasn’t widely known until a story originating in South Korea recently broke around the world. According to certain doctors, an alarming percentage of Korean teenagers are suffering from degenerative memory loss attributed to the overuse of smartphones.
Italy’s Centenarian Generation
As more and more Italians reach their 100th birthdays, younger generations are supporting a growing social safety net yet have fewer job opportunities.
Why Is the United States So Sick?
The director of a massive new study says: “It’s almost everything.”
The Dark Side of Liberation
“What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American G.I. in World War II France,” a book by the historian Mary Louise Roberts, documents rape and other misconduct among the greatest generation.
Overtested Americans: When cancer isn’t cancer at all
Basically, cancer is scary, but some kinds may be more boogeyman-in-the-closet scary than serial killer scary.
Why Life in America Can Literally Drive You Insane
In “ The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?” ( New York Review of Books, 2011), Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, discusses over-diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, pathologizing of normal behaviors, Big Pharma corruption of psychiatry, and the adverse effects of psychiatric medications. While diagnostic expansionism and Big Pharma certainly deserve a large share of the blame for this epidemic, there is another reason.
The Banality of Systemic Evil
In recent months there has been a visible struggle in the media to come to grips with the leaking, whistle-blowing and hacktivism that has vexed the United States military and the private and government intelligence communities. This response has run the gamut. It has involved attempts to condemn, support, demonize, psychoanalyze and in some cases canonize figures like Aaron Swartz, Jeremy Hammond, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.