The push for performance has never been higher. Students today are faced with a grueling course load, extra-curriculars, and standardized tests. In the wake of this competitive atmosphere, the United States has seen a spike in both ADHD diagnoses and increased demand for prescription medicine. But who’s to blame? The fast-paced, technophilic culture that young people are subjected to, or the parents who are quick to medicate a child who is under-performing at school?
In The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medication, Money, and Today’s Push for Performance, Stephen P. Hinshaw and Richard M. Scheffler offer new insight into the origins, science, and troubling trends behind this ever-increasing disorder. Take our quiz to find out how much you know about ADHD, and learn more about some of the new research published in the book.
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Stephen P. Hinshaw and Richard M. Scheffler are the authors of The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medication, Money, and Today’s Push for Performance. Stephen P. Hinshaw, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Vice-Chair for Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also editor of Psychological Bulletin. Richard M. Scheffler, PhD, is Distinguished Professor of Health Economics and Public Policy in the School of Public Health and the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Image credit: Young teacher explaining the world to preschoolers via iStockphoto.
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It has been sixty years since the bikini came to world attention.
In the summer of 1945 the Second World War was brought to an end with the two explosions of nuclear weapons over Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The following summer the US military decided it would be a good idea to do a few more experiments with these kind of bombs to see just what happened when you did set one off.
So far there had only been three such explosions. The first took place in New Mexico and was just to show that the thing would actually work—the next two were—as one might put it—used in anger.
The place chosen for the testing was a group of small islands well away from most everything except the Pacific Ocean.
If you look at a map and find Australia and then trace north you’ll come to a fairly major island called Papua New Guinea. Then shoot off to the north-east for two thousand miles and you’ll come to the Marshal Islands. In the north-western area of the Marshal Islands there are a group of islands surrounding a lagoon.
This is the Bikini Atoll.
The biggest island is only something over a square mile or so.
Before the bombs were set off there were actually residents on the islands, but they were thoughtfully removed before two explosions shook their world, one from the air, the other from underwater.
I say that these people were thoughtfully removed, but in fact there is a movement these days to try and bring world attention to the descendants of people like these, who were forcibly removed from their island homes. Check out the book Island of Shame by David Vine.
With respect to the bomb tests, as might be expected, they caught world attention and just happened to be coincident with the emergence in France of a new style of swimsuit formed in two pieces.
But it wasn’t until the following summer, in 1947 that two French guys took advantage of the fad and introduced their skimpier style swimsuit and named it a bikini on the theory that it was going to attract as much attention as last summer’s explosions.
It took another winter before the English speaking world picked up the word—in print at least—The Oxford English Dictionary first citation is in Newsweek in June 1948 in a piece that actually suggests a countertrend against the skimpy bikini.
From what I see around the old swimming hole, the countertrend hasn’t made much progress.
There is an interesting side note here in that there exists a kind of one piece bathing suit called a monokini, as if the leading B I of bikini meant bi as in “two” for the two pieces of the bikini.
Five days a week Charles Hodgson produces
Podictionary – the podcast for word lovers, Thursday episodes here at OUPblog. He’s also the author of several books including his latest
History of Wine Words - An Intoxicating Dictionary of Etymology from the Vineyard, Glass, and Bottle.
Here's my Transformers submission for the next issue of Cereal Geek magazine!
