I Cannot Help But Laugh ...
1/21/2005
... at this article posted at betterhumans.com. "Smarts May Protect against Suicide."
At first, I thought I was reading something syndicated by The Onion, a well-known parody newspaper/web site that is a constant source of toiletside entertainment. But no, it's a real study. Researchers actually invested mucho dinero to fund this study (in Sweden, mind you).
Smarts may protect against suicide, suggests a study linking intellect to a lower risk of suicide in young men.
Can anyone say 'Duh?'
But now that I think about it, the results of the study are somewhat surprising. When I was in high school, the 'intelligent' kids were the undersexed and over-mathed kids, or the thespian drama queen prog beauties that always got straight A's (you know who you are). They tended to be more suicide-prone than the oversexed jocks and cheerleaders, or at least they wrote more poems about it (and listened to Morrissey and The Cure all the bloody time, which could make anyone suicidal). But it seems the times have changed, probably because it's so 'cool' to be a geek now (do geeks get all the girls these days?).
So gone are the days when we can pity the nerd. After all, she gets all the breaks these days.
posted by Edward Svengali @ Friday, January 21, 2005,
