Rhaynamusprime's blog

Evan Bayh will retire from Senate

The Indiana Democrat is announcing on Monday that he won’t seek reelection – giving the GOP a good shot at his seat.  Bayh, a moderate who often infuriated the progressives by insisting on compromises with Republicans, won a seat in 1998.  He almost ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, but backed out of the race to later endorse Hillary Clinton.  Republicans had been eyeing him since November 2009 – but a poll recently found him edging two potential challengers for the race, including Sen. Dan Coats, the GOP’s bet for the race. 

                              

With that said, it invalidates the notion that he’s quitting to avoid an impending loss.  Why is he quitting? It appears that he could no longer stomach the partisan bickering in Washington anymore.  A couple weeks ago, the US Senate voted down a bipartisan commission to face a bigger threat to the United States: an exploding debt and deficit. 

 

With the deadline of filing for November’s election on Friday, Democrats are wont to announce soon the name of the candidate who will replace Bayh later.  This also implies a higher likelihood of the Republicans grabbing a seat in a swing districts.

Being bored could be bad for your health

Study shows link between boredom, early death.

“Bored to death?”  Maybe there really is such a thing.

In a commentary waiting to be published in the International Journal of Epidemiology in April, experts say there’s causal relationship between being bored and dying early.  

Annie Britton and Martin Shipley of the University College of London warned that boredom alone may not be the killer – it could be the risky behavior like smoking, drinking, taking drugs, or having a psychological problem that may cause the body to release bad hormones that stress the heart.  

Questionnaires distributed between 1985 and 1988, participated by more than 7,500 London civil servants aged 35-65.  The participants asked if they had felt boredom at work in the previous month.  Britton and Shipley then tracked down how many had died from the respondents and found that those who confirmed extreme boredom were two and a half times as likely to die of heart-related problems than those who did not report boredom.  

But when the authors made a statistical adjustment to other potential factors, like employment grade and physical activity, they saw significant reduction in effect.  

While the results are only preliminary, other experts agree there could be a direct link between boredom and dying early.