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Monday, March 3, 2014

Well, I Could Have Told You That

It seems that some news outlets, no less established than CNN and the BBC, have taken it upon themselves to report that being angry puts you at greater risk for a heart attack or a stroke. This is because someone at Harvard took it upon himself to research the effect of anger on your risk of having a heart attack or a stroke, something that you'd think we've pretty well internalized by now, though since the research was on pinning down some numbers- think a five-fold risk increase of a heart attack and a three-fold increase of a stroke over the two hours following an outburst- I won't really gig the researcher too much due to that.

Really, though. Honestly. There was an episode of King of the Hill about this, back in 2002. King of the Hill was not exactly a show known for depicting, or attracting, the highest common denominator as an audience. This is something everyone just ought to know.

So let's see what else we have in the news...

*Hamid Karzai is... angry with the US government.
*Alan Pardew, manager of Newcastle United, is ordered to take an anger management class.
*Another study noting how angrily ranting online doesn't actually manage your anger.
*Everybody's angry at Vladimir Putin for reasons you really shouldn't have to be told.
*Everybody else is angry at British betting firm Paddy Power over an ad promoting their offering betting on the outcome of the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius of South Africa.
*A group of cyclists in Cape Town reached through the window of some delivery driver and just started beating the crap out of him and hitting him with pepper spray.

...okay, maybe this is a good time to talk about anger causing heart attacks. Breathe, people. Deep breathing. Count to ten or something.

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