In holiday cutbacks, pets fare better than husbands:
survey on holiday shopping plans released this week by Consumer Reports found that among folks considering trimming their holiday spending this year, women were more likely to cut back on giving to their spouse than to the family pet. Twenty-two percent of women who expected to reduce holiday spending said they'd be spending less on their spouses. That compares with 14 percent planning to trim the fat on Fido's bones. Men, on the other hand, were more even-handed; about…
1 min read
Why airport luggage thieves steal black bags:
bsp; Thieves prefer to steal black luggage because so much of it looks alike. If the thief is caught red-handed by the bag’s owner, he only has to say sorry, it looks just like mine. And he’s out of there. Scot-free. via bobarno.com He's commenting on this news story: http://www.abc15.com/content/news/phoenixmetro/central/story/Police-Couple-st... Hat tip: Bruce Schneier -- You should follow me on Twitter here or subscribe to this blog's feed. If you're a regular reader please support the blog by doing your…
1 min read
Rock Music Quality vs. U.S. Oil Production (Graph):
in over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert
1 min read
The Science of Success:
st of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success.…
1 min read
Hollywood’s Hero Deficit:
erican movies have forgotten how to portray heroism, while a large part of their disappearing audience still wants to see celluloid heroes. I mean real heroes, unqualified heroes, not those who have dominated American cinema over the past 30 years and who can be classified as one of three types: the whistle-blower hero, the victim hero, and the cartoon or superhero. The heroes of most of last year’s flopperoos belonged to one of the first two types, although, according to…
3 minutes
Is there a formula for predicting the height of your future children?
a societal level childhood nutrition and environment have a lot of influence on a population’s height. Taller populations tend to be better fed and less diseased, and some scientists make a direct link (as they do with longevity) between trends in population height and the overall thriving of a society. But from person to person, it is our genes—as expressed in the heights of our immediate ancestors—that matter most. That’s why simple formulas such as this one or this…
1 min read
Do attractive politicians get more votes?:
re evidence suggesting Politics Isn’t About Policy: Beautiful candidates are indeed more likely to be elected, with a one standard deviation increase in beauty associated with a 1 ½– 2 percentage point increase in voteshare. Our results are robust to several specification checks: adding party fixed effects, dropping well-known politicians, using non-Australian beauty raters, omitting candidates of non-Anglo appearance, controlling for age, and analyzing the ‘beauty gap’ between candidates running in the same electorate. The marginal effect of beauty is…
1 min read
Your Odds of Dating a Supermodel:
e first problem with trying to figure your odds of dating a supermodel is trying to define what separates a regular model from a supermodel, and then figuring out how many supermodels are out there. Luckily for us, Stars-Portraits.com has a list of supermodels, so we’ll just use that as our basis. Stars Portraits counts about 320 supermodels, which seems like a reasonable estimate. There are about 116 million males 15 and older in the United States, and about 57…
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