Is Your Mood a Result of Where You Live? 364
Ed writes "Apparently, the Centers for Disease Control released a study indicating that geography can have a significant impact on mood. You may not be surprised to learn that Kentucky is more depressing than Hawaii. However, ranking up there with Hawaii are Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin. Frustratingly, they have not yet published the study on the web, so it is left as an exercise for the reader to find the original study and post a link for the rest of us."
Here is a better story. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My mood? (Score:3, Informative)
Florida's the opposite way. There is a law against car stereos [albeit never enforced], but no car inspection and no regulations about mufflers and engine noise from vehicles and motorcycles. Then again, Florida is a shithole.
Not that hard to find the actual paper (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not that hard to find the actual paper (Score:5, Informative)
That's not it. That's an older article without the state breakdowns. I've not found a legal open link to this paper (about publicly funded research...mutter) but the site in which it resides is http://www.ajpm-online.net/ [ajpm-online.net]
The lead researcher is a Mathew M Zack, who is not listed in this older pdf.
On the upside, I did find that the CDC makes the data on which this new paper is based freely available here: http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/HRQOL/ [cdc.gov]
with a prettier but less depression specific version here:
http://www.cdc.gov/hrqol/findings.htm [cdc.gov]
Re:Here is a better story. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, I've pretty much learned to ignore anyone who claims that "happiness comes from within" or that "your problems are internal." I mean, there are some cases where they are, but in most cases they're because of a shitty job, shitty friends, shitty location, or other shittiness.
How living in Portland, OR affects your mode (Score:0, Informative)
The Three R's of Portland
or
Why Portland Sucks
"Latte Town" was coined a few years back and is the most appropriate term for the City of Portland that I have ever heard. A Latte town consists of mostly white, educated baby boomers and young single people. The inhabitants of the town are usually newcomers who have priced out all the original inhabitants. These towns are usually expensive, pretentious, abound in natural fibers and are laid back on the surface. Latte towns like Portland pride themselves on their most cherished concepts of diversity and inclusiveness. Most Portlanders accept this myth as Gospel but upon close examination Portland's dirty little secret is revealed. Portland is an overwhelmingly white, non-ethnic city. It is as vanilla as it gets so it makes one wonder what all the celebrating of diversity is all about. Drive through any neighborhood surrounding the downtown area and the impression that you get is that Portland is nothing more than a series of elitist ghettos compromised of rich white homosexuals, rich white yuppies, rich white hippies, rich white trust funders, and rich white kids from the suburbs pretending to be street people. Where's the diversity? Well it doesn't exist but the average Portlander likes the concept and in their eyes the different shades of rich whites all constituent diversity. In a series of articles I will attempt to breakdown and explain these subtle distinctions between the various factions of lily white, latte people that make Portland what it is.
The Artist-Intellectual
The visitor or newcomer to Portland is bound to be struck by the sheer numbers that belong to this group. They seem to be everywhere and are in fact everywhere. They are the reason that all the coffee shops have tables and chairs. The artist-intellectual fancies himself as a poet, a writer, a musician, a filmmaker, etc. You get the drift. They spend most of their days idling around the coffee establishments that one finds every 10 feet. They are usually equipped with a notebook that they use for their poems, journals or their artwork. No one ever gets to see the contents of these notebooks. More often than not they have a beaten and weathered paper back copy of some book authored by Kafka or William S. Boroughs. They love to discuss their favorite subject, themselves. Given the opportunity they will prattle on for hours about their poems, art work or the film they are making. You never get to actually see any of their work but you do get to hear about it. Their lives are like one never ending semester in grad school. Initially I believed these losers but then got to thinking. What would an aspiring actor, artist, musician, filmmaker being doing in Portland Oregon, a latte town? Why wouldn't they be in NYC or LA? Because they're phonies, that's why. Here's how it works with these clowns. They flunk out of college in New Jersey so their parents send them to Reed College in Portland in hopes that they will get their act together. They drop out of Reed but stay in Portland while still on Daddy's tab or some trust find. One Saturday Josh or Seth drifts down to one of the hundreds of hippie craft markets downtown. Some hippie is selling didgeridoos that he made I between bong reps. Josh buy one and takes it home where he proceeds to get baked after which he blows a few sour notes into the didgeridoo. The next day he's a musician. Not really but that's what he's telling everyone at the coffee house and pretending is good enough for a Portland artist-intellectual, in fact it's everything. In three months he will switch his designation from musician to filmmaker and then onto to something else 3 months later. As long as it sounds cool he will keep this charade up and no one in his circles will call him on it because they are doing the same thing.
The Activist
This group is usually comprised of people that used to be part of the artist-intellectual group in Portland. They have gotten a little older and may have finally, after 12 years, obtained a liberal arts degree from Portlan
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:3, Informative)
Before they were books (and after they were books), they were radio plays. In the second set of fits (now called Secondary Phase) there are some significant differences which never made it into the books, mainly due to missed deadlines on the first book. The above quote is from that version.
The complete series can be imported [amazon.co.uk] wherever you like. Well, complete except for a bit on Magrathea where Marvin hums like Pink Floyd which is cut from all pressings due to rights issues and will probably never be reinstated within the lifetime of anyone alive today. Arthur's awe of being on an alien planet for the first time and the discovery of the remains of the whale are a casualty of this cut. Someone has a couple copies of this scene on-line somewhere at differing qualities recorded from the first airing.
Also there are some differences in the UK edition of one of the books as well. There's more adult language in the UK edition (Arthur is called an "arsehole" instead of "knee-biter") and the bit about Belgium is not there (the Rory is for The Most Gratuitous Use of the Word "Fuck" in a Serious Screenplay in the UK edition). I haven't tried buying the books from Amazon UK for delivery to the US. I do know they won't ship toys (unless they're attached to a DVD box set) and most electronics.
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:1, Informative)
This really isn't an either-or proposition. Take a look at the research into happiness.
Re:Sounds about right (Score:2, Informative)
They do 80+ and change lanes without signaling
Sounds just like Atlanta. If you're not doing at least 15 over, your life is in danger. I don't think cars even come with turn signals down here. 80+ on 285 or the connector is common.
Note to the yankees in Atlanta: If it snows (which does happen occasionally), just stay home. I know that you know how to drive in feet of snow, but nobody else here can even handle half an inch. You'll just get hit. And watch out when it rains, too--a single drop, and everything goest to hell.
Go down to Savannah, and they aren't nearly as aggressive--but they often drive very slow, and don't know how to deal with traffic, either. Get a line of five or six cars, and everyone suddenly forgets how to drive.
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:3, Informative)
Uh, no, asking a stranger for a blow job out of the blue isn't something a normal person would do. That shit only works in pornos.
Re:Hm, I dunno. (Score:3, Informative)
Not to mention that it's about a bazillion times harder to learn a language without hearing it spoken by and/or conversing with a native speaker at least every now and then. For a big chunk of the U.S., that means your only real option is the Mexican flavor of Spanish.