Non-Story of the £µ¢λin' Year

From Yahoo! News. Which should sometimes be called olds.
I enjoy YN 'cos they mix in, under the "TV News" heading, titbits from that venerable organ, the Weekly World News. And I'd luuuuurve to work for the WWN. No kidding. If you work for the WWN, please e-mail me. I have strange ideas and I'd just love to actually get paid to write them down.

I have a story to fit the headline: Alien Country Singer Gives Jesus' Lucky Bigfoot Charm to Pint-sized Cancer Victim Midget Porn Star.

Call me.

But I digress. In this case, Yahoo! News links to "HealthDay", whose front page declaims that moderate alcohol is good for the heart (knew that, since 1997 or so. And I save up my one drink per day for fifteen to twenty days at a time) and that depressed boys are likely to smoke (depression and smoking, and indeed many other mood-altering addictive drugs, have been linked for decades).

But what really pushed my "DUH" button was this:
Note: I have selected quotes from the article. The whole thing is linked at the top of this post. Declare your biases. Thank you.

FRIDAY, May 26 (HealthDay News) -- Poorer Americans also tend to be more stressed out, a new study shows.

. . . Lower socioeconomic status was associated with higher levels of [all three] stress hormones, the researchers report in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. This association was independent of race, age, sex or level of overweight or obesity.

In addition, being poorer was also associated with higher rates of smoking, not eating breakfast regularly, and having a less diverse social network. These behavior and social factors seem to strengthen the link between socioeconomic status and hormone levels. Smoking alone accounted for about 63 percent of that association, the study said.

Okay--you've heard the experts. Now here's my analysis:

Link between poverty and smoking? Christ! No surprise there. Have you seen what they're charging for smokes nowadays?

Link between poverty and not eating breakfast. I suspect they could correlate poverty with not eating lots of meals, generally.

Less diverse social network. Yeah, the poor people always seem to miss out on the big networking occasions. I mean, it's not like people chat to strangers at bingo halls or the welfare office. And they never seem to show up for the Beaux-Arts Ball.

And is it possible that being poor in *'s america, land of "faith-based" social services but not social security, looking down the pipe at the godawful mess the hacks are making of pensions, and being unable to afford health care for your increasing stress level are perhaps seriously upping the stress levels of poor Americans?

The conclusion is left as an exercise for the Avid Fan.