Science

Have you ever observed that time seems to be going by faster as you get older? There’s a reason that one summer seems to stretch out forever when you’re a kid, but zips by before you know it when you’re 30. That reason is perspective, as a gorgeous interactive visualization, by Austrian designer Maximilian Kiener, demonstrates. When you’re one year old, a year is literally forever to you — it’s all the time that you’ve ever known. But as you grow older, one year is a smaller and smaller fraction of your total life. It’s like watching something shrink in your rear view mirror.

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” ~Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Bright light therapy has a proven track record of success in the treatment of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), commonly referred to as the winter blues. A new study from the University of British Columbia shows that this simple and safe therapy is effective for non-seasonal major depression. In fact, researchers showed light therapy was much more effective than fluoxetine (Prozac).