Thursday, August 16, 2007

Ninety-nine U.S. soldiers killed themselves last year, the highest rate of suicide in the Army in 26 years.  What's even more interesting is this:
The Army also has been working to stem the stigma associated with getting therapy for mental problems, after officials found that troops are avoiding counseling out of fear it could harm their careers.
It would be interesting to know the specifics of how the army is trying to reduce the stigma; if its efforts are limited to the spouting of propaganda it's unlikely to work.

Monday, August 13, 2007

What did she do with her time?

The world's oldest woman died recently at the age of 114 and the thing i wonder about the most is what she did with her time the last decade or so of her life.  Did she read? Gossip with the other residents of the nursing home?  Meditate? Watch television? It's rather unlikely that she went skateboarding.

Last week i spent in West Virginia on retreat and most of the time involved me sitting around with my feet propped up, reading a book about Druids. I had hoped to spend a fair amount of the time hiking around, exploring the land, but various issues made that infeasible though it was possible to take a short walk past the cow pastures toward the end of the week. So lately i've been thinking a fair amount about time and my relationship to it. I'm nowhere near reaching any conclusions, except perhaps that i seem to waste a great deal of it playing games on the computer. I plan to do less of that, but i'm not sure that that is going to make me more efficient at getting other things done; sometimes it seems like the most appropriate thing to do is to do nothing, really.