I discovered something while reading this Sunday’s paper. Someone wrote “Dear Abby,” talking about a disorder called misophonia. Those suffering from this may experience anger, the fight or flight response, and other troubles in reaction to certain sounds that most people don’t notice. They may avoid social interaction to spare themselves the anguish of hearing the noises that affect them adversely. Trigger sounds include, but aren’t limited to, other people’s chewing, whistl

When you can’t seem to get warm in the winter, some people wonder how global warming can be real. Speaking as a former earth science teacher, what they don’t know is global warming causes erratic weather and more storms of increasing intensity. Last year in the United States, we had multiple powerful storms hit parts of our country. Only a little more than a week ago, Hawaii experienced what could be the lowest elevation snow ever recorded along with an unusually violent stor

I happened, by chance, to catch the radio show Hidden Brain hosted by Shankar Vedantam on National Public Radio over the weekend. His guest for the program was Doctor Iain McGilchrist. Dr. McGilchrist, a psychiatrist and researcher, talked about what the two hemispheres of our brains are all about. Our left hemispheres are detail oriented. Things are only black and white and literal. Anger and irritability seem to reside mostly over here. The left controls the right side of o

Consider this. Two people are holding hands and strolling through a park on a warm, sunny afternoon. Birds are singing cheerfully perched on the branches of the trees. A gentle breeze nudges fluffy, fair-weather clouds of cotton candy lazily along in a clear blue sky. The air smells fresh and sweet. When you read that, do you get the impression it’s pleasant and lighthearted? Two people are holding hands and rushing through a park in the afternoon. Bent over, they struggle to