Posts Tagged ‘civil discourse’
January 1, 2024 — We see a trend in New Year’s resolutions. People seem to be moving from grandiose to doable. The emphasis in much of what we read is on real impact instead of great ambitions. So in that spirit, we have one for you that everyone can keep: don’t be a jerk. Not even when it might […]
April 9, 2023 — Hello darkness, my old friend. Welcome to the sound of silence. Social networks, conceived to connect and inform us, have evolved in a way to polarize and misinform us. Loud voices dominate public narratives on a wide range of subjects and leave us little room for the development of well-informed and nuanced views. Certainly we […]
February 1, 2023 — “I would tell them to look beyond the weight and accept me.” These words of a 17-year-boy point to twisted ideas about body weight that surface in the relationships among parents and teens. The words come from a mixed-methods study just published in Body Image by Samantha Lawrence and colleagues. Why is this such an […]
May 19, 2020 — Common ground is awfully hard to find right now. But here’s an easy one. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a D or an R or anything else. Fat shaming is never cool. It just happened last night when Speaker Nancy Pelosi made an off-handed remark about President Donald Trump being “morbidly obese.” Please, people. This […]
February 19, 2019 — UPDATE: Within days of our posting below, Medscape posted the following retraction notice. While we welcome thought-provoking and even controversial points of view in our commentaries and in comments from our readers, we do not endorse weight bias, nor bias towards any group. After careful review, the editors at Medscape have decided to retract this […]
June 9, 2018 — In their recent book, Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael Rich tell us that we’re suffering from truth decay. Public discourse now brings more disagreement about facts and their interpretation. They say the line separating facts from personal beliefs and opinions has become blurry. And thus, we have increasing difficulty with civil discourse and policymaking. Certainly, we […]