Indice dei contenuti per September 2018 in Reader's Digest

AS A LONGTIME HEALTH EDITOR, I like to think I’m smart about medical science. Yet what do I do when I have a scratchy throat? I pop open a packet of over-the-counter “immune support” tablets, drop them in a glass of water, and listen, half laughing at myself, for the telltale FIZZZZ sound. No clinical studies support the effectiveness of this concoction. None of its ingredients, possibly excepting zinc, are proven to prevent colds or their symptoms. I treat my insomnia in much the same way. When I wake at 3 a.m., I pop ibuprofen to help me resume my snooze—despite the fact that at least one double-blind study found that it promotes sleep no better than fake pills. Sticking to my rituals is not as dumb as I sometimes…

JAYCE CROWDER began noticing when he was in kindergarten that he looked different from his classmates. They had two hands. He had one. It started when one boy teased him, says his mother, Cortney Lewis. Jayce’s bubbly enthusiasm soured to sullenness. He’d return to their Des Moines, Iowa, home with questions: Why am I different? Why me? Why? “He actually told us he was mad at God for making him that way,” his mother says. “That was a huge dagger to the heart.” Lewis admits she didn’t know what to do at that point. How could she provide answers to her son’s questions when she had never found those answers herself? A few weeks later, Lewis came home from her job as an orthodontic assistant and turned on the TV…

No, the inn was not. Initially, in October 2015, the trial court sided with the inn and dismissed the case, but then the state’s court of appeals disagreed. It found that the RUA did not apply, because playing on a beach is not “of the same kind, class, character, or nature” as the activities listed in the act, such as fishing and hiking. So the inn took the case to the state’s supreme court. “Everyone knows that going to the beach on Lake Michigan in the summertime is an example of outdoor recreational use,” said the inn’s attorney, John Worsfold. Further, the family didn’t pay to use the land. If they had, says Worsfold, “negligence would have applied.” The supreme court agreed: “With any recreation on or in vast, vacant…

▪ ALUMINUM FOIL Aluminum is very easily recycled. When you drop a can into your recycling bin today, it can be back in your pantry as part of a new can in 60 days, reports the Aluminum Association. Unfortunately, we throw away enough foil each year to build a fleet of aircraft. Many cities recycle foil right alongside cans. Just wash it, crumple it into a ball, and drop it into your bin. Better yet, use it for your next leftovers. ▪ ATHLETIC SHOES Donate your run-down kicks to a homeless shelter, to a school program, or to oneworldrunning.com, which will pass them along to needy athletes around the world. If yours are really wrecked, get them to Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe program, which will turn them into running tracks, turf fields,…

“This story has been corrected to show that John Brown, not James Brown, led the raid on Harpers Ferry.” Associated Press “A television review on Friday about a new Amazon series, Goliath, included an inaccurate discussion of the show’s plot structure. The critic mistakenly watched the first two episodes out of order.” New York Times “A story in Friday’s Journal Sentinel on Jerry Kramer being nominated for the Pro Football Hall of Fame incorrectly named Ringo Starr as a center for the Packers instead of Jim Ringo.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Anything funny happen to you at work lately? It could be worth $$$. For details, see page 3 or go to rd.com/submit.…

WANDERING MIND People whose minds wander the most score highest on basic IQ tests, according to a study in Neuropsychologia. Like the proverbial absent minded professor, someone who is spacey but smart has the brain capacity to stop paying attention, then go right back to a conversation without missing a beat, says study coauthor Eric Schumacher, PhD. POTTY MOUTH A study in Language Sciences found that the more taboo words the participants could think of, the larger their overall vocabulary. SLEEPY EYES Do you think that night owls are just undisciplined? A 2011 review found that students who went to bed late instead of turning in early did the best on intelligence tests measuring reasoning, math and language skills, and more. (If they didn’t earn the highest grades, that’s probably…

COUNTING DIGITS TWENTY TIMES. The digit 5 appears 10 times as a last digit (5, 15, 25 … 95) and 10 times as a first digit (50, 51, 52 … 59). MATCH PLAY LOST TIME Sophie will be 35 MINUTES LATE. Caroline will arrive at 1:45 p.m., 15 MINUTES AHEAD OF TIME. METEOR SHOWERS BRING SPRING FLOWERS COSMOFILIUM JUPIBRISTO. The first half of the top term tells the color of the flower’s center; the last half is the petal color. The first half of the bottom term tells the shape of the flower’s center; the last half is the shape of the petals. QUICK CROSSWORD THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT Zina, Weldon, Delia, Leisha, Benito, Charlotte. BUBBLE MATH CROSSHAIRS FAMILY RELATIONS SISTER OR FIRST COUSIN. WORD SUDOKU MORE OR…

• Irritable bowel syndrome: Study subjects who took two placebo pills daily reported greater improvement in symptoms after just 11 days than did those who simply continued their usual treatment (such as fiber or antispasmodics). In other research, 44 percent of patients given sham acupuncture for irritable bowel syndrome experienced relief. That jumped to 62 percent when the practitioner was supportive and sympathetic. • Chronic lower-back pain: Patients who took clearly labeled placebo pills twice a day reported greater pain reduction and reduced disability compared with those who just continued their usual treatment (which often included nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or other painkillers). • Migraine: Those taking a placebo (whether it was labeled as such or as medication) got just as much pain relief as those taking medication. • Fatigue caused…

CHANGE THE COLOR OF YOUR NOISE White noise (such as the hiss of a radio tuned to an unused frequency) can help you sleep more soundly, but what scientists call pink noise could help you remember more. According to a small study from Northwestern University, the lower-frequency sounds of pink noise, such as the rush of a waterfall or steady rain, improved older adults’ deep, slow-wave sleep, the stage considered important for consolidating memories. When study participants listened to pink noise while they slept and then took a memory test the next morning, they scored three times higher than participants who didn’t sleep with that kind of background sound. Don’t live near a waterfall? Download an app such as the aptly named Pink Noise. DRIFT OFF WITH A WHIFF You…

I think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game of Monopoly. STEVEN WRIGHT “Lucy, in the sky, with diamonds.” —John Lennon, the world’s worst Clue player @HOME_HALFWAY I’m great at Trivial Pursuit. But what good is that going to do you in life? It has the word trivial in the name. CHRISTIAN FINNEGAN “Two can play at that game.” —guy who’s confused about solitaire @LEONEARLGREY I was playing chess with my friend, and he said, “Let’s make this interesting.” So we stopped playing chess. MATT KIRSHEN Hi, ambulance? I think I’ve swallowed three Scrabble tiles. Just an FYI. @JAZZYTRUMPETER…

40 Home Repairs Anyone Can Do! You suggest turning off the water to the house when leaving on vacation. We always turn off the water heater too. It saves energy and is a safety issue. Our neighbor’s overheated and exploded during his absence. Happily, with the water shut off he didn’t have major flooding and no one was hurt, but he had thousands of dollars in damage to his home. LINDA HAMMER, Fort Jones, California Editor-in-chief Bruce Kelley’s column about using a pricey handyman reminded me of a quote attributed to Red Adair, a famous oil well fire-fighter. He said, “If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur.” DAN HARRIS, Houston, Texas Rise and Shine All Day I would love to add something to…

IN STORM-RAVAGED Santa Clarita, California, last March, Margarito Martinez approached Road Runner Road carefully. A swollen creek had flooded it. Martinez, driving a Toyota SUV, figured he’d be OK. Big mistake. Halfway across, the rushing waters grabbed hold of his vehicle, sweeping it off the road and washing it down a rocky streambed. It finally stopped a good 80 feet away, when the water somehow lifted the SUV and wedged it in the ground at a 45-degree angle. Bruised, shaken, and trapped inside with the muddy water rising quickly, Martinez was certain he was going to die. On the road right behind Martinez were a party-rental delivery worker and his niece. They watched the horror unfold, and when Martinez’s SUV came to rest in the middle of the gushing creek,…

IT WAS A BLEAK, rainy day, and I had no desire to drive up the winding mountain road to my daughter Carolyn’s house. But she had insisted that I come see something at the top of the mountain. So here I was, reluctantly making the two-hour journey through fog that hung like veils. By the time I saw how thick it was near the summit, I’d gone too far to turn back. Nothing could be worth this, I thought as I inched along the perilous highway. “I’ll stay for lunch, but I’m heading back down as soon as the fog lifts,” I announced when I arrived. “But I need you to drive me to the garage to pick up my car,” Carolyn said. “Could we at least do that?” “How…

LUCKY COIN My husband lost his wedding ring while working in the yard. We looked everywhere for it but decided it was no use to continue searching by hand, so I bought a metal detector. When the machine didn’t seem to be working, I tossed a nickel into the grass. My husband moved toward it with the detector, but nothing happened. I bent down to pick up the nickel and saw his ring about a foot away. I couldn’t believe my luck. I’ll never forget that moment—and I’m going to keep that nickel forever. JOANN NELSON, Tacoma, Washington TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM Jack, my eight-year-old nephew, was chosen as Student of the Week at his school. As part of the honor, a guest was invited to read a book…

Friday night was Swanson Fried Chicken TV Dinner Night, no exceptions. If Grandma wanted to go out for dinner, he would bring a TV dinner along and make the restaurant heat it up. @TTSO_JAMES (JAMES KORSMO) We were cleaning out his fridge, and he found a jar of tartar sauce with an expiration date of 1974 (this was in the late ’90s). He scraped off all the mold/congealed stuff from the top and announced, “Still good!” It’s still in his fridge. @KA_TREP (KIM) My grandpa covertly followed my mother to the grocery store, walked behind her until she put pickles in the cart, and screamed, “We’ve got pickles at home!” @BANANAPEELE (ANNA PEELE) My grandpa hated Budweiser, but he started buying it exclusively when my dad and his siblings were…

USE YOUR DIAPHRAGM Your diaphragm is the muscle that controls breathing, and because it is located right above your abdomen, you can strengthen them together. Lie on your back with your knees bent, keeping one hand on your stomach and the other on your chest. Inhale deeply, slowly pulling the air into your abdomen. (The hand on your belly should rise higher than the hand on your chest as you inhale.) Exhale through your mouth. Try to wait seven seconds before inhaling again. IMAGINE YOU ARE ROWING A BOAT This exercise strengthens the upper back muscles and opens your chest cavity, allowing for full lung volume. Sit on the floor with your legs in front of you, knees slightly bent. Loop a resistance band (available at most sporting-goods stores) around…

Researchers haven't found any correlation between brain size and intelligence. IQ can change throughout your life. Some experts claim there’s no such thing as IQ at all. THE BASICS • YOUR BRAIN IS FAT In fact, your brain is the fattiest organ in your body, consisting of a minimum of 60 percent fat. That’s why a good balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids is vital for brain and overall body health. “Fat stabilizes the cell walls in the brain and carries, absorbs, and stores fat-soluble vitamins in your bloodstream,” explains Brandon Brock, DCM, a chiropractic neurologist and the medical director of Innovative Health and Wellness in Dallas. “It also reduces inflammation and helps the immune system function properly.” • WE CAN GET SMARTER AS WE GET OLDER Rawan Tarawneh,…

1…100 COUNTING DIGITS (Easy) How many times does the digit 5 occur in the numbers from 1 to 100? MATCH PLAY (Difficult) The grid contains matches of different sizes, any of which may be completely unburned, partially burned, or completely burned. Matches burn from the head (the red end) to the tail without skipping segments. The numbers outside the grid indicate the number of burned segments in the corresponding row or column. Can you shade in the burned segments to “match” the numbers? LOST TIME (Medium) Sophie and Caroline made arrangements to meet at a café at 2 p.m. Sophie thinks her watch is 25 minutes fast, although it is actually 10 minutes slow. Caroline thinks her watch is 10 minutes slow, while it is actually 5 minutes fast. What will…

TO GET THE UPPER HAND in any scenario, the U.S. military has often relied on the most outlandish innovations the mind can conjure. Stealth technology, bionic limbs, and a little thing called the Internet all started with the military—specifically, as brainchildren of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the 60-year-old fount of new technology in soldiering. RD reviewed the next wave of advances, looking for those destined to spread. 1 POWER WALKERS Spend time speaking with foot soldiers, and you’ll eventually hear about lugging an overstuffed backpack for miles in terrible weather through rough terrain. But the age-old problem of overburdened troops is deadly serious: An army on the move can be dangerously slowed and weakened by strain injuries or just by soldiers struggling under their loads. So the…

A POODLE AND A COLLIE are walking down the street when the poodle suddenly confides to his friend. “My life is a mess,” he says. “My owner is mean, my girlfriend is having an affair with a German shepherd, and I’m as nervous as a hamster.” “Why don’t you go see a psychiatrist,” suggests the collie. “I can’t,” says the poodle. “I’m not allowed on the couch.” Source: gundogmag.com THERE’S A GUY IN TOWN who walks around talking to himself using only figurative language. We call him the Village Idiom. Submitted by ALBERT SLOAN, Morris, Illinois AUTOCORRECT can go straight to he’ll. Submitted by CONSTANCE NORMANDEAU, Colebrook, Connecticut THREE TERRIBLE JOKES you won’t forget no matter how hard you try (and you will try) … Ed: I bought the world’s…

• Paul McCartney “Yesterday” • Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: During a drug-induced nightmare, the writer screamed so loudly that his wife, Fanny Stevenson, woke him up. Startled, he said, “Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.” Fanny later burned her husband’s first draft—she thought it was nonsense. He feverishly rewrote the 30,000-word tale over a three-day period. The book sold so well that it lifted the Stevensons out of debt. • Dmitri Mendeleev Periodic table of elements: “Only in one place did a correction later seem necessary,” Mendeleev wrote in his diary of the table of elements he saw in his dream. • Elias Howe Sewing machine needle: Frustrated by his attempts to develop a machine that…

IT WAS A CRISP Sunday afternoon in Missoula, Montana, and Mike Callaghan stood in the blustery sunshine doing the thing he loved best: coaching his 11-year-old son Brogan’s football team. Brogan Callaghan was the Panthers’ 2015 season quarterback, but he was the kind of football prodigy who also played defense—linebacker, in fact, a position his father had once played with the Montana State University Bobcats over in Bozeman. The game against the Chargers was in the second quarter. Brogan had just thrown a touchdown to tie the score at 14 and then quickly switched over to defense. As the opposing team’s offense lined up, Mike noticed their running back go into motion early. “Sweep!” Mike yelled from the sidelines, but Brogan was already on it, slipping right around a big…

1. parochial (puh-'roh-kee-uhl) adj.—A: rigorous. B: elementary. C: run by a church. 2. conscientious (kon-shee-'enshuhs) adj.—A: extremely careful. B: alert. C: well educated. 3. pore (pohr) v.—A: quote at length. B: study intently. C: write by hand. 4. carrel ('kehr-uhl) n.—A: library nook. B: songbook. C: punctuation mark. 5. curriculum (kuh-'rih-kyuh-luhm) n.—A: lecture hall. B: highest grade. C: set of courses. 6. pedantic (pih-'dan-tik) adj.—A: misbehaving. B: making a show of knowledge. C: highly poetic. 7. glean (gleen) v.—A: divide equally. B: erase. C: gather. 8. rudiments ('roo-duh-ments) n.—A: wrong answers. B: small classes. C: beginner’s skills. 9. syntax ('sin-tax) n.—A: dictionary. B: sentence structure. C: math equation. 10. semantic (sih-'man-tik) adj.—A: related to meaning in language. B: collegiate. C: in essay form. 11. pedagogy ('peh-duh-goh-jee) n.—A: art of teaching.…

Your collection of dads’ favorite corny comments made me remember what my father, Gerard Fischetti, often said at the dinner table. Before taking seconds, he would politely ask whether everyone had had their share. Then he would point to his hand, grin, and say, “See this scar?” (My sisters and I never could see his alleged scar.) “I got it in the Army when I reached for a second pork chop.” SUSAN MARIE DAVNIERO, Lindenhurst, New York My name is Amy, and every morning when my dad got me up for school, he would say “Ready, Aim? Fire!” Yes, apparently for him, this never got old. AMY FLANIGAN, Cleveland, Ohio NO WRONG ANSWERS! WHAT IS THE TRUE MEANING OF LIFE? We all want our time on Earth to have a…

I’M A VERY BUSY WOMAN looking for an assistant to help me with certain important tasks. This is not your average assistant job. What I’m looking for is someone to take care of some of my more personal business so that I may focus on my true passion: grocery shopping. Please apply if and only if you are willing and able to accomplish the following tasks: ▪ WORK I would love to have a nine-to-five job. However, I find sitting in an office all day unbearable. An ideal assistant would secure a high-paying office job and excel in that setting, even going so far as to eagerly accept every invitation to after-work drinks. ▪ ATTEND DOCTORS’ APPOINTMENTS I’m looking for someone to not only set up but also attend all…

ONE AUGUST DAY during a summer camping trip, Katherine Pearson and her family stopped at the Inn at Watervale on Lake Michigan to hang out at the resort’s private beach. The beach is typically reserved for paying guests, but the inn’s owner, Dori Turner, had worked with Pearson on a conservation project and had given her an open invitation to use it for free. Pearson and her husband relaxed on beach towels and read while their daughter, Sophie, played in the sand nearby with her friend Bailey Ann Marie Noble, who’d come along for the weekend. The two ten-year-olds had been playing for about an hour when, all of a sudden, Pearson heard one of the girls scream. “I looked to my left, and Bailey was rolling around in the…

AN UTTERLY CONFUSED woman called our local fire station about getting a haircut. “I’m sorry, you have the wrong number,” I said. “Is this the salon near the fire station?” she asked. “No, this is the fire station.” “Oh! Are you cutting hair in there now?” KAREN STRAND, Lacey, Washington “YESTERDAY WAS my 18th birthday!” a customer said after walking into our convenience store. He then asked for some e-cigarette products and handed me his ID to prove he was indeed of age. I scanned the ID, but it came back expired. Now thoroughly deflated, he asked, “Does that mean I’m not 18?” DAVID HANSEN, Des Moines, Iowa A CUSTOMER walked into the post office wanting to mail a package. “Two-day shipping will cost $12.95 to get it there by…

1 You use way more than 10 percent of your brain. When it comes to commonly repeated misconceptions, the idea that you use only 10 percent of your brain is right up there. In fact, says Dr. Tarawneh, “while brain regions are not necessarily all active at the same time, all brain regions are used to some extent over the day, depending on what we are doing.” 2 You’ve got more than five senses. Beyond the big five (vision, hearing, smell, touch, and taste), there are several other ways we perceive the world, neurologists say. One is equilibrioception, or balance, which is regulated by the vestibular system in the inner ear. Another is proprioception, the sense of where our bodies are in space, which keeps us from bumping into things.…

Doing a crossword or a Sudoku every day to keep your mind sharp may seem like a recent concept. In fact, people have been challenging their brains with puzzles as far back as 3,600 years ago, when the ancient Egyptians developed math problems on papyrus and wooden tablets. Here are some other fun facts about brain games in history: ▪ The first crossword puzzle was printed in the New York World on December 21, 1913, but not everyone was a fan. In 1924, the New York Times described crosswords as a “sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern.” (The Times didn’t publish its first crossword until 1942.) ▪ Sudoku means “single number” in Japanese (because you use each…

“HERE THEY ARE,” John Kelley said, taking a paper bag off his desk and pulling out a big amber pill bottle. Inside were the pills we’d designed: a magical concoction put together to treat my chronic writer’s block and the panic attacks and insomnia that have always come along with it. Open-label placebos are like a magician explaining the illusion even as he performs the trick. I’ve known Kelley since we were undergrads together. Now he’s a psychology professor at Endicott College in Massachusetts and the deputy director of PiPS, Harvard’s Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter. It’s the first program in the world devoted to the interdisciplinary study of the placebo effect. The term placebo refers to a dummy pill passed off as a genuine pharmaceutical or, more…

THE SNOW CAME earlier than they’d expected, but Jeremy Osheim wasn’t worried. He’d driven this route a thousand times, and he knew exactly what to do. Take it easy. Watch the road. You’ll get there when you get there, and when you do, it’s gonna be awesome. It was January 2016, and Jeremy and his girlfriend, Molei Wright, were leaving Denver for a weekend of fun with friends on the slopes in Breckenridge, Colorado. They were two like-minded Colorado natives: ambitious, gregarious, and thoughtful, both lovers of books, plays, music, the outdoors. Jeremy, then 29, was a PR specialist who moonlighted as a mixed martial arts fighter; Molei (pronounced “Molly”), then 28, was the first in her family to graduate from college and worked selling mutual funds to financial advisers.…

Hawking was perhaps the most famous scientist in the world when he died earlier this year at age 76. His 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, sold ten million copies and made him an unlikely superstar even to people who sweated through high school science. But humor was always a big part of Hawking’s effort to bring physics to the masses. In his 2010 book, The Grand Design, for instance, he recounts how, in 1277, the Catholic Church declared scientific laws such as gravity to be heretical, since they seemed to diminish God’s omnipotence. “Interestingly,” the text adds puckishly, “Pope John [XXI] was killed by the effects of the law of gravity a few months later when the roof of his palace fell in on him.” Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking’s…

Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it can provide more comfortable despair.LAURA WASSER, divorce lawyer YOUR WORLD IS ONLY AS SMALL AS YOU MAKE IT.GABRIELLE UNION, actor The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up.MARK TWAIN, author Compromising is OK, but compromising who you are as a human is not.KELLY CLARKSON, singer The more you talk, the less people listen.MITCH LANDRIEU, mayor of New Orleans I’m one of those people who get up on the right side of the bed in the morning. I get up and have a cup of coffee and go to the gym before I can talk myself out of it.DICK VAN DYKE, actor…