Blogs

Barack Obama is a serious and committed pragmatist, in the best sense of that word, and I understand his inaugural commitment to "restore science to its rightful place" in exactly those terms. What's important about science is not its certainty about ways to act, but rather its willingness to aggressively acknowledge uncertainty, and so to hold to the fire any presumptions about how to act that derive from any source other than clearly defined and commonly accepted observations to date.

Steven Pinker's "My Genome, My Self" is a valuable reminder that

• Virtually all behavior is influenced by genes
• Virtually no behavior in determined by genes

as well as a useful summary of the kinds of observations that lead to those conclusions, and wise advice for those who may (or may not) want to know more about their own genes. As Pinker points out, who one is is influenced by genes, but influenced as well by personal experiences, and by chance, so genes are relevant to the question of who one is but not the answer to that question.

Manipulating Coincidence: An Author's Trade

Julia Lewis
12/19/2008

Depression has been on the rise in the United States, with as many as 10% of people suffering at any given time. One in ten people will suffer a depressive episode at least once in their lifetime. It is becoming increasingly common in adolescents, and physicians are more eager than ever to prescribe antidepressants to anyone who shows even mild signs of depression. Prozac Nation chronicles a decade’s worth of suffering of Elizabeth Wurtzel, a young woman in the throes of an atypical depression.

Between the top two most common mental illnesses in the US are anxiety and mood disorders, which includes depression. Often a depressed person will suffer from anxiety, but more often still an anxious person suffers from depression. However, anxiety and depression, while intricately entwined, are not one and the same. This paper aims to explore each and the relationship between the two mental disorders.