In 2016 America, fitness status was strongly correlated with presidential voting preferences. Citizens of counties with high rates of Type 2 diabetes and obesity tended to vote for Donald Trump, regardless of their race or education level. Citizens of counties with low rates of Type 2 diabetes and obesity tended not to vote for Donald […]
Health/Medicine
I could tell you the fentanyl statistics – that in one year 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, 28% more than the year before, and that 80% of those deaths were linked to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid – but I would rather tell you what I have learned from my teenage son. He is currently […]
My daughter had her braces removed a couple of weeks ago. This was a big occasion for her and to mark it I told her she could have whatever heretofore verboten food she wanted. She asked for gum—her first in about two years. I handed her the pack when she came out of the orthodontist’s […]
In 2019, some science writer friends and I took a trip to Whidbey Island, just north of Seattle. I spent the drive there bargaining with my chronic illness, calculating how much I’d be able to do, and how much I’d have to miss. My need to survive grated against my need to actually live, as it […]
I was bitten the other night. I would have taken a picture of the turgid, blood-filled bug that stuck its rostrum inside of me for a liberal helping of hemoglobin, but my girlfriend smashed it with a rock and spattered the thing while I cheered her on. It was hard to resist the killing. Normally, I try and treat other […]
Manhattan rattles my ears. Subway lines shake the fine bones inside my head. Cars honking on the street change the way my brain physically functions. When I stayed in the city a week ago I noticed the same as I always do: noise. I live in a quiet place off the grid in Western Colorado […]
Maybe it says something that one of my first crushes was on Slim Goodbody, a character who appeared on public television walking around with his insides out. He wore a bodysuit painted with images of tissues and organs and sang songs about respiration. There was something about all this that was irresistible—I mean, I thought […]
The other day I hovered over the computer as the clock counted down. Was I on the right page? Refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. Was I logged in? At 7:00 p.m., the screen changed, and I zipped around with my cursor, checking the open slots, trying to check the right box. It wasn’t a vaccine […]