television is going to rot your brain

[krickets]

So apparently binge watching more than 1 hour of TV a day will kill you? If the reports are to be believed, the reason scientists are actually blaming TV on early deaths, is that when you're watching TV apparently something inside your brain goes screwy and your metabolic rate is lowered more while sitting and watching TV than during any other sitting activities, including doing nothing at all. What about reading? What about listening to audiobooks, podcasts, or music? I'm going to have to look into this further. What if I'm watching TV while brushing my teeth (or packing my lunch) on my smart phone? What if I'm using Netflix to listen to the audio of episodes of The West Wing on my commute every morning? (Hypothetically speaking!) I'm going to have to look into this.

If any good can come of this, it might help to make commercials illegal, because the extra 17 minutes per hour of live television is literally going to kill us! (One commercial break at a time.)