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The families of many athletes – incensed at the sports leagues and hoping to make games safer overall – are increasingly making the brains of players who die prematurely and suspiciously available for study. Some athletes are even making the bequest themselves.
As the National Football League and other pro sports increasingly reckon with the early dementia, mental health issues, suicides and even criminal behavior of former players, the risk of what’s known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is becoming clear.
Science has yet to isolate the Godiva Chocolate or Prada gene, but that doesn’t mean your weakness for pricey swag isn’t woven into your DNA. According to a new study of identical twins, it’s less TV ads or Labor Day sales that make you buy the things you do than the tastes and temperaments that are already part of you at birth.
The best thing about science is that hard, empirical answers are always there if you look hard enough. The best thing about religion is that the very absence of that certainty is what requires – and gives rise to – deep feelings of faith.
More and more NFL players have been willing their bodies to science so that their brains can be studied even if they die of other causes.
Since narcissism is fueled by a greater need to be admired than to be liked, psychologists might use that fact as a therapeutic lever – stressing to patients that being known as a narcissist will actually cause them to lose the respect and social status they crave.
Humans have a fraught relationship with beasts. They are our companions and our chattel, our family members and our laborers, our household pets and our household pests. We love them and cage them, admire them and abuse them. And, of course, we cook and eat them.
No one ever pretended that shopping for anything is a rational experience. If it were, would there be Fluffernutter? Laceless sneakers? Porkpie hats? Would the Chia Pet even exist?
The golden child may be the oldest one, unless it’s the youngest. It may be the toughest one, unless it’s the most sensitive. It’s not even necessary that Mom and Dad have the same favorite – and typically they don’t.
The death of anti-gay hate speech is no doubt being hastened by the head-spinning speed with which gays as a group – to say nothing of gay marriage – are becoming an unremarkable and even quite traditional parts of American life.