Negative double digits this morning. Depending on the reporting site either -12 or -13. We expect several more days of this brutal cold with some snow--maybe. The holidays are finally over though the season hasn't been as excruciating as past seasons have been. Mainly, I think, because we now watch so little TV. We don't see all the ads demanding we go out and spend ourselves into financial ruin. And we don't see the obligatory holiday greetings "from our family to yours" that have become as obnoxious as the equally obligatory "thank you, for your service" addressed to any person with any connection to the military past or present.

This little article reflects some of my experience and thought. Disconnecting from the TV has been a major accomplishment. It used to be the background noise to our lives which went on as soon as we woke in the morning and didn't go off until we went to bed. Now we switch it on for maybe an hour to an hour and a half depending on how irritating the fluff is. We have noticed that much of the broadcasts are fluff; not in any way meaningful news. We do get most of our news on line but from sites with stories we can actually read instead of watch. It is far easier to get the meat of the issue and ignore the attempts to manipulate our emotions when we read actual words. I have begun editing my list of blogs and news sites because some are honestly no longer interesting. I never did get into the smart phone craze. The only way to not be drowned in that deluge of (mostly) emotion and misinformation is to get out of the damned river.

There is an old adage that you generally find what you are looking for and that seems to be the case for cancer. Increase screening and you increase the incidence--but how many should be aggressively treated? Some are so slow growing that the patient dies of something else before and I have read of others that simply disappeared. And along similar lines is this story on the lack of evidence supporting (and the large amount of evidence against) many popular treatments. But once a treatment becomes popular the pressure in overwhelming to keep it as an option.