It's once again time to gather together all the bits I've been collecting over the past couple of days and put them into a catch-all post of hopefully interesting or helpful hints.

Starting with Dr. Joyce Brothers on older parents. She's in favor, and adds that: "Age has always been relative, but this is especially true today, when people often look and feel half their age, thanks to better health. If you look much older than other parents, that's not going to trouble your children -- they'll be much more concerned about the quality of love and care they receive."

And perhaps parenting older is good for the health? It might at least buffer "me me me" fits of self-absorbtion and turn focus toward more important matters than looks or fashion.

This story on middle-aged anorexics is what prompted the above thought.

"One day, (a woman) wakes up and the kids are gone and she has a sense that nobody really needs her. She looks in the mirror and she says, 'My body is shot,'" said Tappen. "This woman says, 'You know, that's it. I'm going on a diet.'"

Not to make light of a very serious problem, but the attention to thin that permeates Western culture needs a good hard shake.

Just as do the women in Mauritania who put exactly the same emphasis on being fat.

In a recent New York Times article, Sharon LaFraniere reports on five-year-old Mauritanian girls forced to drink up to five gallons of creamy camel's milk daily; nine-year-olds made to ingest their own vomit (produced after force feeding); and teenagers "gavaged," a take-off on the French practice in which a funnel is inserted into a goose's mouth and grain poured down in order to fatten up the fowl for foie gras.

Which is worse? Mothers in the US who stretch our the time between breastfeeings to keep babies thin and hiring personal trainers for five-year-olds, or Mauritanian mothers doing everything they can, including using weight-gaining steroids, to insure their daughters grow up to have ginormous butts?

You pick.

Same, but different, 50- and 60- something moms who shop with, and dress like, their daughters.

In my own case, my daughter, now almost 38, tends to dress much more conservatively than I do ... always has ... but even I've given up much of the look I love because it no longer loves me. Sigh ...

Here's some news for breast cancer suvivors ... a study that found no benefits from a mega-veggie-and-fruit diet over the usual US recommended five-fruits-and-veg-per-day.

The research started with a $5 million grant from late Wal-Mart heir John Walton and got an additional $30 million in support from the National Cancer Institute, and was to look at the connection between diet and the disease after earlier studies showed mixed results on the impact of ultra-healthy diets.

Over seven years, the results contradicted a previous study showing that low-fat diets could prevent a return of the type of breast cancer not linked to hormones.

And just for fun, this story about spite that compares the human tendency to that of chimps.

Seems chimps may have more of a sense of fairness than we do. Why am I not surprised?