'Tis the season to be sadly

Are people more likely to get depressed in the cold, dark depths of Winter?

Conventional wisdom says yes, especially when it comes to residents of darker northern climes.

A group of Taiwan researchers data-mined several years of search queries to see if there was a link between season, location and depression.

Here's a description of their research from an abstract of their paper:

Seasonal depression has generated considerable clinical interest in recent years. Despite a common belief that people in higher latitudes are more vulnerable to low mood during the winter, it has never been demonstrated that human's moods are subject to seasonal change on a global scale. The aim of this study was to investigate large-scale seasonal patterns of depression using Internet search query data as a signature and proxy of human affect. 

And what did they find?  It's true!

Our study was based on a publicly available search engine database, Google Insights for Search, which provides time series data of weekly search trends from January 1, 2004 to June 30, 2009. We applied an empirical mode decomposition method to isolate seasonal components of health-related search trends of depression in 54 geographic areas worldwide. We identified a seasonal trend of depression that was opposite between the northern and southern hemispheres; this trend was significantly correlated with seasonal oscillations of temperature (USA: r = −0.872, p<0.001; Australia: r = −0.656, p<0.001). Based on analyses of search trends over 54 geological locations worldwide, we found that the degree of correlation between searching for depression and temperature was latitude-dependent (northern hemisphere: r = −0.686; p<0.001; southern hemisphere: r = 0.871; p<0.0001).

Conclusions/Significance

Our findings indicate that Internet searches for depression from people in higher latitudes are more vulnerable to seasonal change, whereas this phenomenon is obscured in tropical areas. This phenomenon exists universally across countries, regardless of language. This study provides novel, Internet-based evidence for the epidemiology of seasonal depression.

Good use of data mining to find news.

And there's more here: Journalism in the age of data 

Beverly Hills School Board Fights Plans for Subway Under BHHS

[Originally published 10/27/2010] -- With the Metropolitan Transportation Authority set to move closer to choosing a route for the Westside Subway Extension on Thursday, the Beverly Hills Unified School District Board voted Tuesday night to request $100,000 from the City Council to fight any MTA decision that calls for tunneling underneath Beverly Hills High School.

"We need to hire lobbyists, attorneys and PR people," said Board of Education President Steven Fenton. He suggested a joint task force with two City Council members, the city manager, two BHUSD board members and Superintendent Richard Douglas.

"This keeps me up at night," Board Vice President Lisa Korbatov said. A subway under BHHS "is a juicy target for terror and a seismic event waiting to happen."

Click here to read more of my story at beverlyhills.patch.com

Nevadan Sharron Angle's media blackout campaign hits LATimes.com

LATimes.com screenshot @ 5:29 p.m. today

Click on the photo for a bigger version

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Halloween Horror Swarm at Beverly Hills Park

Eerily-clad denizens of the Beverly Hills Active Adult Club swarmed Roxbury Park Saturday afternoon -- and were video'd talking, laughing and cavorting to "big band music" from the last century.
A good time was had by all.
"Great outfits, great dancers," Senior Recreation Supervisor Jane Winston-Doman said. "We look forward to doing this every year."

Read the whole story @ PatchBeverlyHills!

Prince explains his royal secrets

Published in The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Weekend, March 27, 1981

By Dennis Wilen


Sometimes even the most arcane mysteries have a simple explanation. The story behind the music of Prince is a good example. First of all, his name is not a monstrous conceit. Unlike Count Basie, the Duke of Earl and Screaming Lord Sutch, Prince is actually his given name. "It's really on his birth certificate," swears his publicist. "Only his last name is a secret."

OK. Then why, on his three albums, does Prince insist on writing the songs, playing virtually all the instruments singing 99 percent of the vocals and producing most of the tracks?

Prince himself revealed the truth in a recent interview. "It's simple," he said. "When I did the first record, I didn't have a band, so I had to do it myself out of necessity.

...To be continued as I type it all in by hand . . .

Root root root for the home team -- not!

Dear CBS News:

Traditions (or aspirations) of journalistic objectivity have long been held in abeyance for local sports scribes, who are expected to root root root for the home team.

Localites are similarly mesmerized by spectacle into thinking of the teams' fortunes as their own ("we got killed last night") even though they have neither management nor ownership stakes in the local profit-making sports entertainment troupe. They become "fanatics," often shortened to "fans."

OK, it's all a game and WTF is the fun if you can't choose sides? If you don't win it's a shame!

Which leads me to a network business reporter I heard on the local CBS News AM station, who, in reporting today's stock market losses (said by mindreaders to have occurred in response to the Goldman Sachs accusations), told his interlocutor back at the studio that "we were down over 100 points today blah blah blah."

WTF you mean "we?" Are you a Wall Street stooge?

You mean they. Them. Those *&^%$# people. The ones many folks think stole our 401Ks and IRAs and pensions and nest eggs and homes and jobs. You're WITH THEM? You and them are US?

Fuck you, asshole, I don't want another lying cheerleader. This isn't a game. If you don't win you could die.

You're not us. WE are not with you. Give us some objective reporting.

Thanks,

Dennis Wilen

P.S.: I turned the station off when the local anchor asked the San Diego reporter on the phone why a serial killer defendant decided to plead guilty. "I guess," started our long distance correspondent . . . "

CLICK. You guess? You (*&^%$ GUESS? On what was once The Tiffany Network? On the same radio frequencies as Edward R. Murrow? Fuck you!

O.K. I confess. I was a CBS Radio employee and always thought the network was a class act.

As a matter of fact, as part of Standards and Practices, I was assigned a particular network responsibility at WCAU-FM in Philadelphia (then known as Disco98) that required I go to Manhattan and train for a day or two and file reports back to HQ. I was mostly Production Director (I produced/dubbed/scheduled the commercials and other taped assets) but at the same time was the NY-designated "Manager of Continuity Acceptance."

This meant I was tasked with getting commercials on the air and at the same time SCREENING THEM for bullshit, adherence to CBS standards and the National Association of Broadcasters Code. Typically this meant sending back stuff with fake teletype news sounds or bogus alerts, fake going out of business sales, etc. or too much SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY with cheap reverb. The rule was you couldn't repeat the phone number or address more than three times.

Other commercials required special scrutiny.

If a spot came in for hair plugs, or weaves or hair replacements (Disco98's "Fascinatin' Rhythm" attracted both this kind of male listener and advertiser for whatever reason), I would send it back to the agency if it said the shit was undetectable. I made them add 'virtually' or some weasel word. Same with bogus scientific claims. This was a constant war I couldn't win, the local ad salesman pestering the boss and me, the powerless conflicted advocate of network policy and NAB codes.

Ah, CBS. They had gorgeous thick stationery in their Selectrics, and the official ink color was dark gray.

Not black ink on white, mind you. Dark gray. Classy

I shudder at what I hear on the air now.

Another relic: My Good God LP on Atlantic, 1972

This is the back cover, and there I am in the credits as producer.

I don't remember why I thanked Michael Cuscuna -- did he help hook me up at Atlantic?