It's a really, really big "if."
The subject of patient engagement tools, especially patient portals, took up permanent residence in my head last January when my mother, a few months away from achieving octogenarian status, experienced a health event that would change both of our lives. When she came home from the hospital, suddenly she was no longer under 24-7 observation … Read more
I live in Wichita, Kansas. Kansas is a place of extreme temperatures– it can get bitterly cold in the winter, and deathly hot in the summer. Today, for example, the high is supposed to be about 106. On Thursday, a baby died here in the heat. Another hot car death. She was 10 months old, and … Read more
So last month I wrote about the difference between the feelings of guilt and shame, and what they address. I noted that they’re not synonymous, actually work quite differently, and that one is far more productive than the other– that, actually, one may be necessary (albeit sometimes incorrectly applied) while the other is almost always … Read more
So the first Feminist Frequency Tropes vs. Women video has been posted, and I was very excited to see it. I was not disappointed. If you haven’t seen it yet, have a watch: What we have here is a thorough, polished bit of media analysis with obvious effort and expense put toward editing, research, design, … Read more
In which Pat Robertson advises someone who frequently buys second-hand clothing that she should “rebuke any spirits that happen to have attached themselves to those clothes” lest there be any demons who might have become connected to them via the prayers of a witch, as he heard had happened once in the Philippines: Okay, first let’s … Read more
Reading about film critic Rex Reed criticizing actress Melissa McCarthy’s appearance using such sophisticated and erudite terms as “tractor-sized” and “female hippo” has me reflecting on moral psychology. You know, as I’m prone to do. Specifically it has me going back to what I know about the way shame and guilt function for both the … Read more
Whenever I’ve been involved in a discussion of the evolution of morality, the English language trips things up a bit. Due to the fact that “morality” could mean “being good” or “the capacity and tendency to distinguish right from wrong,” it’s always important to note which, specifically, you’re talking about. Generally speaking, it would seem … Read more
Jennifer Shewmaker, a psychology professor at Abilene Christian University, has a blog post blaming the Steubenville rape case in part on objectification of women. You should go read it, but first read about the Steubenville matter if you haven’t already. I have some theories about what would possess teenagers to create videos of themselves mocking a … Read more
Terror management theory sounds like a government doctrine on how to combat suicide bombers. It is actually, however, the name for a discipline of psychology devoted to the study of how people deal with being…well, terrified. How they cope, mentally, with the knowledge that they are mortal– that they will eventually die, with reminders of this occurring … Read more
Several years ago, I bounded out of a faculty building on a university campus and, in a thoughtful and optimistic mood, joined a couple of lecturers in the pub across the street. After we’d settled on benches in the garden out back, I mentioned that in the course of my studies, I seemed to be … Read more