Blogcritics Author: Dirk Hanson

Money and Happiness

Dirk Hanson — Thu, 3 Apr 2008 05:52:13 EDT

Money CAN buy you happiness. But there�s a catch.
Money, or the love of same, is the root of all evil. So sayeth the Bible. But humans have no trouble turning that wisdom on its head and shaking loose the opposite axiom—Greed is Good. All of us have occasionally looked to money as a route toward happiness, notwithstanding the fact that one of the most banal lessons of Hollywood movies is: ...

Lunar Junk: Who's in Charge of Cleaning Up the Moon?

Dirk Hanson — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:58:45 EDT

As more countries prepare their lunar exploration/exploitation vehicles, who will be responsible for the cleanup?
So you thought sending machines to the moon was all about some guy named Neil "One Small Step For Man" Armstrong and the Apollo program back in the Sixties? Think again. Even though President's Bush's "Man-Moon-Mars" pipe dream hasn't exactly ignited the nation's enthusiasm, a lot of equipment is going to be...

A Bad Marriage'll Kill Ya

Dirk Hanson — Tue, 9 Oct 2007 19:02:45 EDT

Heart disease and stressed-out spouses.
Love your spouse, love your heart. That seems to be the message of research conducted by the University College of London, published last week in the Archives of Internal Medicine. In a study of 9,000 mostly married civil servants working in London, Roberto De Vogli and his colleagues found that people reporting the highest level of conflict with...

"Sharp" Numbers Sell Houses

Dirk Hanson — Wed, 3 Oct 2007 05:22:46 EDT

Too many zeros can spoil the asking price.
You’re selling your house. You set the asking price at a nice round figure--$420,000, let’s say. But if you had chosen to list the house for $420,399—almost $400 more--your chances of finding a buyer just might improve. This finding, and others like it, derives from studies undertaken by marketing professor Manoj Thomas and...

Hard Rain Falling: The Tropical Deluge

Dirk Hanson — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 06:10:06 EDT

Global warming causes heavier rainstorms.
Tropical storms account for two out of every three raindrops that fall on planet earth. Like melting ice caps at the North Pole, the amount of precipitation that falls near the equator is a telling early sign of global warming.Scientists with the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a joint venture between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight...

Brave New Journalism

Dirk Hanson — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:28:37 EDT

Optimizing the blogosphere for two cents a word.
Lately I have been thinking about the death of - or deconstruction of, depending on your point of view - the news business, so-called. Journalism, in a word. What I was trained for in college. Gone the way of the buffalo in the form in which I learned it, from the people who taught and practiced it in that fashion. A gone dead train, that one. For...

Should Middle-Aged Men Stop Drinking?

Dirk Hanson — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 14:50:02 EDT

Even �good� cholesterol won�t help heavy drinkers
Should men stop drinking alcohol when they reach a certain age? Heavy drinking and age just don’t seem to mix very well, despite the alleged beneficial health effects of taking just a single drink per day.Now comes news that, for men in their 50s, even high levels of the protective HDL type of cholesterol will not shield them from the ravages...

The Pain Relief Scandal

Dirk Hanson — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 05:55:55 EDT

Patients in Pain Due to "Opium Phobia"
“Opium has been recently made from white poppies, cultivated for the purpose, in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.... comparatively large quantities are regularly sent East from California and Arizona, where its cultivation is becoming an important branch of industry, ten acres of poppies being said to yield, in Arizona, twelve hundred...

Reading Gets the Lead Out

Dirk Hanson — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 06:11:26 EDT

The written word may protect the brain from lead exposure
People who spend a lot of time reading are two and a half times less likely to exhibit cognitive deficits from exposure to high levels of lead, according to a study published in the July 31 issue of Neurology. It is simple, but astonishing: Scientists at Baltimore’s Center for Occupational and Environmental Neurology claim that the act of...

Help Wanted: The Galaxy Zoo Needs You

Dirk Hanson — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 13:15:50 EDT

Universities put out the call for amateur astronomers.
For ardent sky watchers, it is a dream come true. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, funded by the National Science Foundation and other organizations, is the largest, costliest astronomical survey ever launched. It is still underway, and the project has already generated digital images of more than one million galaxies—that’s the good news....