According to a new report, children in Sweden are becoming increasingly concerned by their parents' internet habits. "This summer she has been sitting up all day and all night and she forgets what's important to me. And when she's not at the computer she's like a lost soul. She just looks straight ahead and says nothing. I'm not doing so well." Dr Jerald Block from Oregon Health and Science University in Portland is pushing for internet addiction (and its three subtypes: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations and e-mail/text messaging) to be included as a common disorder in the next update of the DSM (DSM-V). "The relationship is with the computer. It becomes a significant other to them. They exhaust emotions that they could experience in the real world on the computer... It's much more acceptable for kids to talk about game use, whereas adults keep it a secret. Rather than having sex, or arguing with their wife or husband, or feeding their children, these adults are playing games..."
posted on Jun 26, 2008 - View this thread

Kiki and Bubu! Austrian art collective monochrom presents the adventures of two sock puppets. Part One: Kiki and Bubu and The Shift. "Bubu wants to know why his dad is busy all the time. And Kiki explains him why... because of the neoliberal shift." Part Two: Kiki and Bubu and The Privilege. "Bubu ran into a bunch of liberals and they gave him a book. They said if he doesn't read it, they're going to beat him up. But Bubu can't read! And so Kiki helps..." [Via BB]
posted on Jun 7, 2008 - View this thread

For The Bible Tells Me So. (documentary, Google Video. Trailer.)
posted on Mar 8, 2008 - View this thread

Kindo - Web 2.0 Genealogy
posted on Feb 10, 2008 - View this thread

The Belgian version of Russian roulette.
posted on Feb 8, 2008 - View this thread

Vietnamese maid finds Taiwanese employer is her long-lost dad
posted on Jan 22, 2008 - View this thread

TheDataWeb - a network of online data libraries on topics including census data, economic data, health data, income and unemployment data, population data, labor data, cancer data, crime and transportation data, family dynamics, vital statistics data
posted on Dec 26, 2007 - View this thread

A good chuckle about surviving the hellidays: Dysfunctional Family Holidays, the music l an interactive karaoke with several songs l What exactly is a dysfunctional family? l What are the roles for the kids?
posted on Dec 25, 2007 - View this thread

It is not Christmas without tamales.
posted on Nov 29, 2007 - View this thread

Sibling rivalry. Meet Edward Mapplethorpe, photographer. Yes, he's related to the other one. They're brothers -- which has actually made things harder for Edward than you might think. In his latest show, just wrapping up at NYC's Foley Gallery, Edward does amazing work using darkroom techniques alone: "The exhibition is composed of unique works solely created in the darkroom without the use of traditional cameras." (This one is my fave from the current show; of his earlier work, I particularly like this one and this one [nsfw].)
posted on Oct 26, 2007 - View this thread

Zahra al-Azzo was murdered by her brother last January in a horrible, but all-too-common Syrian honor killing. Public outcry at her murder is growing.
posted on Sep 25, 2007 - View this thread

The Benders were a family of German immigrants who opened a store and restaurant in the newly formed state of Kansas in the late 19th century. Led by the spiritualist Kate, they also were some of the United States first serial killers.
posted on Sep 25, 2007 - View this thread

Please Columbia Don't Kill My Wife
posted on Sep 3, 2007 - View this thread

OBITUARIES
Dunn, Nicholas Ryan. August 5, 2007.
"Yesterday my son took his own life. He did not intend to. He did something thousands of people have and are doing, using drugs. Drugs they know nothing about. Drugs recommended and provided by friends or strangers that are not chemists that know what's in them or doctors that knew how much his body could take. My son Nick has devastated us … We also all hurt for a three year old little girl named Kylie Marie who will grow up without her father … Those drugs do not discriminate by race, income, the status of you or of your family. These are those who care about you and those who you care about. Consider them, please! The pleasure is not worth the risks! Goodbye Nick, we love you, and will miss you."
posted on Aug 13, 2007 - View this thread

Judd Apatow's Family Values A look inside the comedic mind that brought us "Freaks and Geeks", "Undeclared", and "The 40 Year Old Virgin". Apatow’s childhood hero was Steve Martin. On a summer trip to L.A., Apatow persuaded his grandparents to drive by Martin’s home until Apatow spied his hero in the driveway. Martin wouldn’t give him an autograph, so Apatow wrote him an angry letter saying it was his patronage of Martin’s projects that allowed him to live the high life. A few weeks later, Martin sent Apatow a copy of his book “Cruel Shoes” with an apology: “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was speaking to the Judd Apatow.” Also: Judd and Seth Rogen at play.
posted on May 27, 2007 - View this thread

Paternity Discrepancy. "My little boy was there, he was up at bat, and I started yelling for him, 'Go Matthew [not his real name]! Knock it out of the park!' And another man started screaming for Matthew. Louder than me. I looked over, and I looked at him, and I was like, Who is this guy? And I looked at my son, and I looked at him … and they were identical."
posted on Apr 27, 2007 - View this thread

In Britain: Upper class, Upper middle class, Middle class, Lower middle class, Working class. An American on class.
posted on Mar 30, 2007 - View this thread

The "Revolution" that isn't. The idea that well-educated women are leaving their careers behind and choosing to stay at home is a recurring story- notably in "The Opt Out Revolution", Lisa Belkin's 2003 essay in the New York Times. A closer examination [.pdf, long] challenges the idea that women are returning home as a matter of biological "pull" rather than a workplace "push", and argues that how the media portrays the personal decisions of a few obfuscates the real social needs of most American working families. In 2007, the United States is one of the few countries in the world without paid maternity leave.
posted on Mar 16, 2007 - View this thread

How does your country measure up as a place to raise kids? It turns out that growing up in the UK is a bleaker experience than in any other wealthy country. UNICEF studied all the wealthiest nations (full report PDF here), and the US and UK came in at the bottom on almost all indicators (material wellbeing, health and safety, education, family and peer relationships, behaviours and risks, and the subjective feelings of kids and teens themselves ). Doing best for kids were the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. It turns out that GDP and material wealth alone does not ensure healthier or happier or more well-educated kids--the Czech Republic scored very well despite being one of the poorest nations surveyed.
posted on Feb 15, 2007 - View this thread

While there have been many posts on Mefi of blogs written by those affected by the Iraq War, I have not seen this one posted. No matter your stance on the war, your opinion of American soldiers, or the amount of other Iraq war blogs you've read, all I ask is that you at least read these few entries. I've used too many words already, when the journal does more than enough to speak for itself. A Soldier's Thoughts. (via) [more inside]
posted on Feb 7, 2007 - View this thread

Mr. Smith Goes to Venus — part 1^CC and part 2^CC. Legendary space artist Chesley Bonestell shows us what family vacations^CC should have been like in Coronet Magazine, March 1950. [Click thumbnails for LARGE images.]
posted on Dec 13, 2006 - View this thread

James Kim still missing but wife and kids OK. Searchers found Kati Kim and two children but James, who left his family in the car, is still missing after going out for help two days ago.
posted on Dec 4, 2006 - View this thread

The Sole Survivor — Allen Boyd [Real Player interview] is the sixth and last surviving member of his family: the other five committed suicide. Is suicide genetic?
posted on Aug 30, 2006 - View this thread

Warren Ellis quoting someone else's blog: "What with the Washington State Supreme Court handing down its anti-gay-marriage decision several weeks ago and the ever-hearing more about attacks on reproductive rights down south, I’m feeling that the States is tripping a bit too merrily down the Handmaid’s path. This week, I found a way to strike back".
posted on Aug 29, 2006 - View this thread

Paula Hitler: "He was still my brother."
posted on Aug 25, 2006 - View this thread

Seth MacFarlane's Harvard Speech (as himself, Peter, Stewie and Quagmire).
posted on Jun 10, 2006 - View this thread

From Foreign Policy, Patriarchy's Big Comeback. Maybe you didn't believe it had been away. But Societies that are today the most secular and the most generous with their underfunded welfare states will be the most prone to religious revivals and a rebirth of the patriarchal family. The absolute population of Europe and Japan may fall dramatically, but the remaining population will, by a process similar to survival of the fittest, be adapted to a new environment in which no one can rely on government to replace the family, and in which a patriarchal God commands family members to suppress their individualism and submit to father.
posted on Mar 2, 2006 - View this thread

Ohio Senator: Bar adoptions by the GOP ---In response to Ohio Senator Hood's bill to bar adoption by gays and lesbians, one Senator uses humor to counter hate: ...To further lampoon Hood's bill, Hagan wrote in his mock proposal that ``credible research' shows that adopted children raised in Republican households are more at risk for developing ``emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities.' However, Hagan admitted that he has no scientific evidence to support the above claims. Just as ``Hood had no scientific evidence' to back his assertion that having gay parents was detrimental to children, Hagan said. ...
posted on Feb 24, 2006 - View this thread

Married to the Wrong Sex. A short, poignant article on a gay man's decision to marry heterosexually, because it's what his family and society expect.
posted on Feb 15, 2006 - View this thread

Grief, Gratitude and Baby Lee. She wanted to honor her son, to celebrate his life, however short. That's why she had refused an abortion, even after doctors told her that her little boy would be born without a brain.
posted on Jan 29, 2006 - View this thread

My Grandmother's Funeral - Quiet and melancholy comic - by cartoonist Nick Mullins.
posted on Dec 9, 2005 - View this thread

"The artist would perch himself on a bench in the town square, sketchbook and pencil in hand. In between doodles of his beloved wife and 'Miss Kitty', the pet cat, he'd fill page after page with the other subjects that consumed him: The panhandlers who sat under elm trees hungering for pocket change as lovers strolled to dinner and children played on the grass ... Sometimes, the vagrants he studied would notice the pencil and book and hesitantly approach. He'd share his drawing. They'd talk. Sooner or later, the artist would brave the question: Would you happen to know my son?"
posted on Nov 24, 2005 - View this thread

Thanksgiving Dinner Buzzword Bingo helps make tonight's dinner with family a little more palatable. Print out cards for you and your other cool relative (spouse, sibling) and check off a box every time one of these situations happens. First to get 5 in a row wins. Remember to shout "Bingo!" at the table.
posted on Nov 24, 2005 - View this thread

Forget the Career. My Parents Need Me at Home.
posted on Nov 23, 2005 - View this thread

The Dysfunctional Family Letter Generator.
posted on Nov 7, 2005 - View this thread

Dear Mrs Bergman,
... I want you to know how deeply I wish to translate those ideas into images, just to quiet down the turmoil of my brain... Yours very truly and devoted,
R. Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini writes to Ingrid Bergman.
The Swedish movie star had written a fan letter to the Italian Neorealismo director Roberto Rossellini, expressing her desire to work in one of his films: "If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French, and who in Italian knows only "ti amo", I am ready to come and make a film with you".
This is how he responded -- by writing a part for her in his 1949 film "Stromboli." It was the beginning of one of the most famous love stories of the twentieth century. More inside.
posted on Oct 31, 2005 - View this thread

The family trees of American politicians - There are those with very long blue blood pedigrees, and there are those with very short and unknown pedigrees. There are also some surprises, like a certain Democratic senator and possible '08 Veep pick being somewhat closely related to the current Veep, or that certain ex-mayors have family trees that were apparently a bit inbred back in the old country. Other fun tidbits: Newt Gingrich's father was illegitimate, John Kerry is related to the rabbi who created the Golem of Prague, Pat Buchanan is related to both FDR and Marilyn Manson, Wesley Clark's father was a Kohan, Martin Luther King was born Michael Louis King, and Gary Hart was born Gary Hartpence, which was in turn derived from an ancestor named James Eberhart Pence. (more non-politicians here)
posted on Oct 3, 2005 - View this thread

Throughout his childhood, David Myers was told that his skin color was a disease called melanism. He was lucky, his mother said, because the skin discoloration was all over his body, instead of just splotches of brown like most people had. So despite his dark skin, Myers grew up in white, middle-class neighborhoods in Ohio and New York believing he was white.
posted on Sep 19, 2005 - View this thread

Old Grandma Hardcore. "This blog is the chronicle of my experiences with Grandma, the video-game playing queen of her age-bracket and weight class. She will beat any PS2, XBox, GameCube, etc., console game put in front of her..." A 22-year-old man blogs about his grandmother's video game obsession.
posted on Aug 10, 2005 - View this thread

Don't like the results of legitimate scientific research? Make up your own! Conservatives (including GW) love to quote Paul Cameron of the Family Research Council on the effects of gay parenting. This Boston Globe articles tells what everyone should know about the man and his methodology.
posted on Jul 31, 2005 - View this thread

Hundreds of twins in group photos from a Twin Festival. Twins Days in Twinsburg, Ohio claims to be the world's largest annual gathering of twins. Sarah Small's Photographs Twin Festivals
posted on May 26, 2005 - View this thread

One Egg At A Time, Please, Just One Egg At A Time!

Representative Lonnie Napier has a great idea! IVF requires eggs to be harvested from a woman, combined with a man's sperm outside of the woman's body, then putting several embryos back in hopes of getting one to implant and grow, resulting in a baby. Rep. Napier, being strongly pro-life and opposed to IVF, thinks the way to solve this is to fertilize only one egg at a time. And to violate this new law would be a class D felony in Kentucky, punishable with 1-5 years in prison.

Via And I Wasted All That Birth Control...
posted on May 12, 2005 - View this thread

Alan Macfarlane is a historian cum anthropologist. You can find some of his writings and videos on witchcraft, on the family and on English individualism on the site. There is also a collection of video-interviews with anthropologists such as Frith, Geerz, and Richards. In fact, there is so much to read and hear that you won't miss your television.
posted on Apr 26, 2005 - View this thread

Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition and History (HEARTH). From Cornell University, HEARTH is an internet resource collecting home economics texts from 1850 to 1950, including Meals that cook themselves and cut the costs, by Christine Frederick (1915), and The young woman's guide to excellence, by William A. Alcott (1852), as well as the Journal of Home Economics from 1909 to 1980.
posted on Apr 11, 2005 - View this thread

Life and Death: an extraordinary post from Chris Clarke about his connection to serial killer Stephen Peter Morin. His family chimes in meaningfully in the comments. Morin's execution is often pointed to as proof of the cruelty of lethal injection.
posted on Apr 4, 2005 - View this thread

Missing Friends - Information Wanted - a Database of Advertisements For Irish Immigrants Published in the Boston Pilot.
Boston College has posted more than 31,000 historical entries of Irish Immigrants who were looking to reunite with family and friends between 1831 to 1921 in a searchable database. The ads were published originally in the Boston Pilot.
posted on Mar 17, 2005 - View this thread

Meet The Duggars! ?Michelle and Jim Bob have had 15 children in 16 years all with first names that start with the letter “J”. Recently they had their own 1 hour reality TV show called: 14 Children and Pregnant Again. They belong to the Full Quiver movement which states that you should receive as many children as God blesses you with. The women dress Little House on the Prairie fashion and refer to themselves as Prairie Muffins. The men get to dress normally. This is what the White Supremists think of them and this is what other Christians think of them.
posted on Nov 30, 2004 - View this thread

Bin Laden in Sweden Check out his HIP posse
posted on Nov 28, 2004 - View this thread

The Beecher Family. 'Families that have been influential in American life and culture are often recognizable by their signature names. The Beecher family is an example of one such family whose deep religious convictions and social conscience spanned the nineteenth century and made them prominent historical figures whose impact on religion, education, abolition, reform movements, literature and public life were exceptional. Biographer Milton Rugoff claims that in "two generations the Beechers emerged, along with many other Americans, from a God-centered, theology-ridden world concerned with the fate of man's eternal soul into a man-centered society occupied mainly with life on earth." ... '
posted on Jun 25, 2004 - View this thread

Then, in one of his unexplained flashes of clarity, he told Debbie: "I don't want to have Alzheimer's." On Saturday, John will be 57. Although he is in the end stage of early-onset Alzheimer's, he still enjoys simple pleasures: walking outdoors, eating ice cream, listening to music. His wife, children and church friends — some of whom have relatives with dementia — will gather at the nursing home for a birthday party. They will honor the man John once was, and the spirit that survives. And some will no doubt wonder if they are bearing witness to their own futures. Alzheimer's is a disease that can create nurses and chambermaids out of loved ones. Jim Broomall doesn't blame his mother. It's not her fault. She can't help it. No one with Alzheimer's can and caregivers must remember that, he says. "If you don't, you'll go crazy". Or maybe even die: home care for Alzheimer's patients is a major health risk for the caregiver spouse. That's the choice for the families of the Alzheimer's patients (4.5 million of whom are Americans).
posted on Apr 26, 2004 - View this thread