There’s been a serious uptick in the number of children being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs. What’s strange is that more than half of these prescriptions are being given for attention deficit and other non-psychotic conditions for which these medications have not been proven to work. The annual number of children prescribed anti-psychotic drugs jumped fivefold between […] Continue reading →

Hearsay: A friend of a friend is an OB/GYN in Los Angeles. His upper-crust clientele overwhelmingly requests c-sections on demand so their tight little coochies remain tight. The real deal: vulvar and vaginal nipping and tucking is one of the fastest growing areas of plastic surgery. Women come in with pictures of centerfolds ripped from […] Continue reading →

Clinical psychologist Patricia Dalton writes about the Don’t Blame Me Generation, touching on examples from her practice and high figure profiles in the news like Dick “Pepper Spray” Cheney and Kenny Boy Lay. Parents have two serious responsibilities. The first is to love their children without worshipping them. Such adoration is a big danger in […] Continue reading →

Whoa. I was surprised to see that Annie Proulx, the author of the short story that became Brokeback Mountain, wrote a sour grapes rant about the Academy Awards in the Guardian. At first, it seemed like poor form to be such a poor loser in a public forum. But then I kind of enjoyed it. […] Continue reading →

Need something to cry about? Here’s three literary works that choked me up recently: The Lanyard, a poem by Billy Collins. Especially effective when read in Garrison Keillor’s velvety, earnest, radio voice. Like you’re sitting on his knee, spellbound. Scroll down half the page to get there. She gave me life and milk from her […] Continue reading →

Some good friends of mine bought their first house this week, a mere five blocks away. We checked the sex offender registry to see if any perverts lived near their soon-to-be new address. We found three! Clustered there, right in the sunny stroller path between our house and theirs. Presumably these guys have done their […] Continue reading →

Youth, especially girls, are influenced by their parents’ attitudes about teen sex. A study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine suggests that if Dad is vociferous in his disapproval of teen-on-teen action, Princess is less likely to have the clap six years down the road. This stood out: (Teenagers) are considering the […] Continue reading →

French dad has a habit of slipping mickeys into the water bottles of his children’s tennis opponents. His shenanigans, meant to give his kids the upper hand, end up killing people. Oops! In spite of the fact that their opponents stagger, yawn, and otherwise collapse on court, the children maintain great confidence in their tennis […] Continue reading →

Advances in fertility technology are creating new ethics battles every week, and this one is a doozy. In a nutshell, a British woman is diagnosed with cancer. She and her partner have their gametes mixed in a lab. The resulting embryos are then frozen. The woman undergoes cancer treatment that leaves her infertile. Once the […] Continue reading →

Remember how sex columnist Dan Savage, in light of Rick Santorum’s “man on dog” comment, popularized the term “santorum” to mean something other than “baby-faced, born-again Christian Senator from Pennsylvania”? Thanks to his successful campaign, when you now google the word “santorum,” you get the new and improved definition. Enter South Dakota’s absolute abortion ban, […] Continue reading →