To say that the Internet has revolutionized modern life is like saying that refrigerators keep things cold. It's so obvious by now that even commenting on it seems dated, something that might have been interesting 10 years ago but is now simply taken as fact.

Of course, with every revolution come a few casualties. And in the age of 24-hour cybersurfing, second lives, and a website for just about every vice known to man, addiction specialists are starting to link compulsive Internet use to depression. And like other forms of depression, this uniquely modern form can be rather hard to diagnose.

Remember when the phrase "always on" entered the vernacular? In the late 1990s, it was a luxury to have quick and reliable Internet access in your home; today, it's practically viewed as a right to have it everywhere you go.

I spend several hours online every day; I have to for my work. But while I'm online, I'm not just working: I check email, play Scrabble, look up random topics, peruse old friends' Facebook photos, and absorb an enormous amount of information without seeming to retain much of it. When I get offline, I feel a wave of well-being wash over me. And what happens within 20 minutes? I find myself back online.

I suspect this describes most people I know, including those who work in offices where they are ostensibly "always at work." But are we depressed because of it? We may be, or maybe we spend so much time online because we're depressed. Like most chicken-or-the-egg questions, this is probably the wrong question to be asking. Better we should ask ourselves if our "second lives" are eclipsing our real lives, and if so, are we worse off for it?

Internet addiction and its psychological effects have been studied for years. Since 1995, the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery has been treating people for the affliction, whether self-diagnosed or determined by a doctor. Studies are conducted on Internet addiction every few years, suggesting that nothing we're seeing now is necessarily new. But with broadband, a limitless cyberspace, and handheld devices that make it all just a finger-tap away, Internet addiction may be getting a lot more serious. And it could well be making a lot of people depressed.

In 2007, MacKenzie Funk wrote an article for Harper's about her experience at a treatment facility for Internet addicts in China. There, patients were brought back to Earth after having all but lost their minds from a near-constant online existence. Many of them had stayed up for days at one of China's Internet cafes, glued to role-playing games and developing avatars through programs like Second Life, itself a subject of study by Internet addiction researchers.

And that was already three years ago. Are we, indeed, faced with an even greater problem today?

One of the good pieces of news during this Great Recession is that people have become far less materialistic. How can we not? The irrational exuberance of the previous decade (or, rather, decades) has led us to an introspective interlude. It is time, this yoga risorgimento seems to be telling us, to get our instinctual drive for acquisition and wealth in sync with our minds and our neglected hearts. Plus, yoga reduces stress. People carrying their yoga mats are ubiquitous presences in urban centers across the U.S. Even Cameron Diaz is doing it in between takes.

The New York Times has a nice piece on the mainstreaming of yoga and -- of all things -- travel:

Now, with yoga becoming so mainstream, properties from chain hotels to bed-and-breakfasts are looking for new ways to incorporate it into their programs to pique guests' interest and reach their wallets.

"Yoga is becoming a must-have amenity," on the order of Internet access, said Chekitan S. Dev, a professor of marketing at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. "Guests want to be able to stress out and go on the Internet and check e-mail, and then take five minutes and do yoga. It's the yin and the yang of travel."

Athletes are turning to the restorative powers of yoga and so -- around the world -- are professionals of all stripes. Age, also, appears to be irrelevant when it comes to who is practicing yoga these days. So grab your mat and let's face it: yoga is the new black.

When Michael Douglas's son, Cameron, was arrested last summer for possession of crystal meth, the celebrity tabloids went nuts, speculating on what might happen to this high-profile player in the so-called "war on drugs."

While on house arrest, Douglas's girlfriend was caught attempting to deliver 20 bags of heroin to her boyfriend in the battery compartment of an electric toothbrush. Talk about tempting fate. Back in August, a few weeks after the arrest, Vanity Fair reported that some sources were predicting a minimum of 10 years for the 31-year old actor.

Last week, a sentence was decided, and that's exactly what he got. Ten years for selling "several pounds" of crystal meth over the past few years to buyers who have implicated Douglas to lessen charges against themselves, and also for attempting to use while under house arrest.

Anthony Papa, whose book 15 to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom recounts the author's own experience being jailed for delivering drugs to undercover police officers and his subsequent 12 years of hard time at the Sing Sing Correctional Institution, argues that sending Douglas to prison is going to cause more harm than good. Devoting resources to incarcerating drug offenders, rather than to treatment, he says, only diverts our attention, energy, and funds away from violent crime. As a result, he concludes, our "justice system" ensures no such thing.

Papa believes that no one benefits from Douglas doing 10 years, and that the sentence may even contribute to the drug problem in this country. Papa spoke with a friend of Douglas's, who said that Douglas had been an addict for several years, no doubt clouding his judgment and leading him to deal drugs to support his habit.

While I doubt that Papa would condone dealing meth, his argument points to the root of America's drug problem: merely trimming the rotten leaves of a diseased tree won't stop the tree from sprouting new ones, and potentially spreading its disease to other trees.

Two months ago, I may have agreed only in part with Papa. Crystal meth is a horrendous drug, wreaking havoc on this country like no other in the history of addictive substances. I'd have said that I agree that we need to devote more resources to treatment than imprisonment, but that dealing crystal meth is an especially damnable offense.

Then I read Nick Reding's book Methland, which details the extent to which crystal methamphetamine reflects a series of failings that reach all the way to the federal government, Big Pharma, and immigration policy.

No, Douglas is not innocent, and his offense should not be forgiven. But will sending him to prison do anything to stop more people from falling prey to a drug that more than 300,000 people try for the first time each year?

[Image: NYPost.com]

Rumor has it that the king and queen of celebrity romance are splitting, and the pop-culture blogosphere is all atwitter about their demise as a couple. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have been together for five years, having met while working on Mr. and Mrs. Smith in 2004, and though they never married (Jolie vowed not to take vows until gays were given the same right), the two have become parents to six children.

It's those children -- three biological, three adopted -- that aren't getting much attention from the press, which has instead focused on when the relationship began to sour, previous signs of its failing, and how much money the couple is worth.

In decades past, the effect of such a split on such a large brood -- and even one child -- would have been a hotter topic, as concern over the children's welfare might have eclipsed silly details like Brad Pitt's conspicuous absence at the Golden Globes last Sunday. And this might be a positive sign.

A long-standing concern about splitting couples is that their kids will be damaged as a result of the failed relationship. They'll be unbalanced, distrustful, racked with fears of abandonment, neurotic, prone to acting out. And two-parent households are considered inherently better than those with just a mom or dad to rule the nest.

But new research suggests the opposite is true. If the couple is unhappy, that unhappiness could be transferred to the children in even more damaging ways. And contrary to what many have held as an absolute truth for decades, that two-parent households are the best environment for child-rearing, some experts are claiming that all a kid really needs is stability. Since stability can be found in a single-parent home just as easily (and sometimes more easily) than one with both a mom and a dad, the argument that parents should stay together for their children is losing steam.

Someone close to me is currently going through the same thing as Brangelina, though on a smaller scale. There's no media shining a light on his domestic strife, unfolding in America's heartland, and there is just one child in the picture. But that one-year-old girl is the greatest concern in this divorce, and the baby's father takes great comfort in knowing that his daughter will not necessarily be doomed to dysfunction just because he and the baby's mother have come to realize that they're not right for one another.

I hope that more couples come to recognize when it's time to split, and follow through. Staying together for the kids might sound nice, but if being together means creating a domestic hell for them to grow up in, it may cause more harm than good.

[Image: Celebrities.GearLive.com]

Betty White has been old almost my entire life. It's been 25 years since The Golden Girls premiered on NBC prime time, when I was 10. And while I was never a die-hard fan, I've come to appreciate its undeniable significance.

A sit-com about retired women rooming together in a Florida house, after their marriages had dissolved or their husbands had died, The Golden Girls has become an icon of the 1980s. Not only did it introduce a whole new generation to some of TV's biggest female stars of decades past; it did so in a way that revolutionized the way many people view elderly people -- especially elderly women.

The Girls were spunky, sexual, witty, and utterly independent. They showed that life goes on after marriage, and that friendship really is stronger than romance.

Betty White, whose character, Rose Nylund, made the name of my college -- St. Olaf -- a household joke, isn't as dumb as the Norwegian dingbat she played on the show. And she proved it at the Screen Actors Guild awards ceremony Saturday night. This is good, clean fun -- with just a touch of Rose Nylund-style dirty for good measure: