For a few hours yesterday, this was the top story on MSNBC.com: "Is Male Menopause Real?" A sidebar article to Newsweek's comprehensive cover package on menopause, this was the one that went through the roof (it's still number-one at Newsweek.com). We can't say exactly what that means (only women are reading about menopause, but women and men are reading about male menopause, perhaps?), but we found it interesting. In any case, the menopause package is a really thorough and comprehensive look at the subject, excerpted from the new book by senior editor Barbara Kantrowitz and correspondent Pat Wingert called Is It Hot In Here? Or Is It Me? (by the way, science still doesn't know what causes hot flashes). Top editor Jon Meacham writes of the backstory to the cover package in his editor's letter and, to his credit, totally restrains himself from bringing it all back to the unclean tent (Genesis 31:35). Though, really, the whole Old Testament springs from the post-menopausal loins of Sarah, upon whom the Lord visited miracle-baby Isaac (with hubby Abraham); and come to think of it, arguably the current divide between Muslim nations and the West is the result of menopause since post-menopausal but pre-Isaac Sarah sent her handmaiden Hagar in to "lie down" with Abraham (Genesis 16) and later bore Ishmael, forefather to the prophet Muhammad. That, by the way, is an extremely abridged history, but the point is, menopause is important.
In other news, if it's a hot flash you want to chill try reading the cover story on Newsweek's European edition, "The Next Plague." With birds dropping dead out of the sky in Texas, it may not be a nuclear fireball that kills us, after all!
