All about me

I've had my usual pre-election vacation, now I'm taking the much-needed post-election recovery week. See you again on Monday the 12th.

I've never been exactly all torn up about not being one of the Beautiful People. Now I can even feel good about it:

Happy National Cat Day!

Holy cow. This election may be almost over already. I've been hearing about heavy early voting for days now, and today I experienced it. Middle of the week, 11 a.m., and the Election Board office at 1 W. Superior was jampacked. There must have been 50 people in line ahead of me, and they kept streaming in. There were probably 75 there when I left and still more arriving.

I know unions in tough contract negotiations can engage in some pretty brutal tactics, but surely this goes too far:

Hundreds of New York Times staffers are ready to participate in a byline strike in their latest demonstration over contract talks.

We automatically think of George McGovern as an unwavering liberal progressive, but some consider him a libertarian hero, too:

See there, I have an excuse:

Creativity is often part of a mental illness, with writers particularly susceptible, according to a study of more than a million people.

Writers had a higher risk of anxiety and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, unipolar depression, and substance abuse, the Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute found.

Huh. Never thought of "stressing women out" as part of my job description:

A new study has found that a woman’s sensitivity to stress is heightened by reading bad news stories.

The same study also reportedly found that men are not affected the same way by similar press coverage.

Kind of bad news that women get more stressed by bad news, isn't it? Ho hum. Don't care. Time to move on.

Sigh. I could have gone all week without reading this:

The number of Americans reading print newspapers, magazines and books is in rapid decline.

Frankly, I'm surprised even 9 percent cooperate:

For decades survey research has provided trusted data about political attitudes and voting behavior, the economy, health, education, demography and many other topics. But political and media surveys are facing significant challenges as a consequence of societal and technological changes.