BLOGGING AS THERAPY

Many therapists recommend that their patients keep diaries, but blogging might be even better for mental health, a study suggests.Researchers in Israel recruited 160 nonblogging teenagers who had scored low on a test of social and emotional well-being. Participants were asked to blog about their problems for 10 weeks (under a pseudonym); to blog about anything they wished; or to keep a diary in an unshared computer file. There was also a control group. (click below to read more)

I SUPPOSE I FORGOT MY TIE, BUT I WORE MY RED SHIRT

TODAY IN HISTORY

MARCH 26

1979:Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, the result of negotiations brokered by President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, Md., in September 1978. The treaty establishes mutual recognition between the two nations, demilitarizing the Sinai Peninsula and ending three decades of conflict.

1920: Twenty-three year old writer F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, is published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, launching the future author of the classic The Great Gatsby to literary fame.

1999: Infamous right-to-die advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian is convicted by a Michigan jury of second-degree murder and delivery of a controlled substance, after a 60 Minutes episode showed him giving a lethal injection to a terminally ill patient.

TALKING WITH YOUR HANDS, REALLY

The deaf and people who have lost their voices may someday have a new way to speak, thanks to the Digital Ventriloquist Actor, or DiVA.

Developed at the University of British Columbia, the speech-production system makes use of high-tech gloves equipped with sensors and tracked in three-dimensional space. The person operating it creates vowel sounds by opening the right hand (different gestures determine the pitch and tonality) and "soft" consonants like r's and z's by closing that hand. Hard consonants are partly created by tapping the left-hand fingers.

It takes about 100 hours of training to learn to speak intelligibly using DiVA, say its creators, who showed it off at the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The technology has intrigued avant-garde musicians, who are drawn to its not-quite-human sound.

Related articles

• 'Duet of 1′ possible with hand-controlled voice synthesizer (scienceblog.com)

PROVIDING CLEAN WATER

Doing Good: Providing Clean Water from Rotary International on Vimeo.

SMILE

Juggler, driving to his next performance, was stopped by the police. "What are those knives doing in your car?" asked the officer.

"I juggle them in my act."

"Oh yeah?" says the cop. "Let's see you do it." So the juggler starts tossing and juggling the knives.

A guy driving by sees this and says, "Wow, am I glad I quit drinking. Look at the test they're making you do now!"

AND I QUOTE

"It is not length of Life, but depth of life."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

MENSA Q & A

 What is the current name of the country that used to be known as Ceylon?

(click below for the answer)

TODAY IN HISTORY

MARCH 25

 1668:First horse race in America (Salisbury Plain, Long Island, New York)

1975:King Faisal of Saudi Arabia is assassinated by his nephew, Prince Faisal bin Musaid, in Riyadh. Although the prince would be officially declared insane, he was convicted of regicide and beheaded in June 1975.

1634: Leonard Calvert, the younger brother of the second Lord Baltimore, leads a group of English settlers to found St. Mary's on the eastern coast of the newly chartered Maryland colony. March 25 is now celebrated as Maryland Day in that state.

1939: Billboard magazine publishes its first chart of top-selling country music, although the listing is originally titled "Hillbilly Records."

PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

According to a municipal street sign in front of Lakewood Elementary School in White Lake, Mich. (filmed in February by Detroit's WJBK-TV), the speed limit drops to 25 mph on "school days only," but just from "6:49-7:15 a.m., 7:52-8:22 a.m., 8:37-9:07 a.m., 2:03-2:33 p.m., 3:04-3:34 p.m. (and) 3:59-4:29 p.m." [WJBK-TV, 2-15-2012]