1 Happy St

Dr. Kristina Durante of The University of Texas at Austin and colleagues found that young women felt more attractive when they had high levels of an estrogen known as estradiol, and they acted on those feelings.

"Women with higher estradiol reported a greater likelihood of flirting, kissing and having a serious affair with someone other than their primary partner and were marginally more likely to date another man," Durante's team wrote in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.

Interesting. An updated list of blind date must-asks for guys:

1. Are there any women in your office that you hate?
2. Are there any women in your office that hate you?
3. How's your relationship with your dad?
4. Do you get along better with guys or girls?
5. What's your estradiol level?

2005 called. It wants its story back.

Via here:

More than half of teenagers mention risky behaviors such as sex and drugs on their MySpace accounts, U.S. researchers said on Monday. [Researchers] said many young people who use social networking sites such as News Corp's MySpace do not realize how public they are and may be opening themselves to risks, but the sites may also offer a new way to identify and help troubled teens. "We found the majority of teenagers who have a MySpace account are displaying risky behaviors in a public way that is accessible to a general audience," said Dr. Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children's Research Institute, whose studies appear in the journal Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. In one of two studies, Christakis and Dr. Megan Moreno of the University of Wisconsin analyzed 500 randomly chosen MySpace profiles of 18-year-olds in 2007. Overall, 54 percent of the publicly available accounts they checked contained information about high-risk behaviors: 41 percent mentioned substance abuse, 24 percent sexual behavior and 14 percent violence.

Sex, drugs, and violence on MySpace? Now I've heard it all. I think it's time for me to say it one more time. Guys, CANCER STILL EXISTS! CURE SOMETHING PLEASE! THANK YOU!

ED: Dr. Christakis was the name of my childhood pediatrician. Could it be?

This is a fascinating article. Apparently scientists have discovered why our mind plays tricks on us when we look at optical illusions.

The reason, as my tiny mind understands it, is that our eyes see things one tenth of a second before our brain processes it. To compensate for the lag, our brain predicts what we're going to see before we do.

Optical illusions are caused when our brain predicts what it is we are looking at based on our, expectations, preconceived notions or personal biases.

I just love this kind of stuff, but now my head hurts from thinking about it.

According to this study, college students who play drinking games at parties tend to drink more alcohol than college students who don't play drinking games at parties.

Translation: students who like to do keg stands and play beer pong and quarters tend to drink more alcohol than kids who don't like to do keg stands and play beer pong and quarters. Do college kids still play quarters? Wait, do they still do keg stands? I sure hope so. Keg stands were awesome. I remember one time I did a keg stand for like 20 seconds and then I couldn't hold myself up anymore so then I fell and hit my face on the keg. Or I think that happened. Maybe that wasn't even me. Well it happened to somebody at this party that I went to a long time ago. Or maybe it was a party I had heard about. It probably wasn't even 20 seconds. And they didn't fall. Where was I?

Oh. Another translation: kids who drink the most at the party get more drunk. More drunker. More drunkerreer. Thirsrter.

I think the people who conducted this study were drunk. Drunkerer. I'm drunk.

Yet another example of a study where I could have told them what the results would be before they wasted millions of dollars conducting it.

Apparently, young adolescent girls who hang out predominantly with young adolescent boys tend to drink more alcohol than young adolescent girls who hang out predominantly with other young adolescent girls.

Nice work Professor. And here, have this beer. No you won't get in trouble. Everyone's doing it.

According to this article, insomnia runs in the family. So I can blame my mom and dad for the fact that I'm posting this at 4:10 am.

I have another study that I would like to call shenanigans on. Admittedly, the conclusion that the study reached is probably accurate, but I prefer to look at it from a different angle.

According to the study, kids who watch too much television at a young age will be at a greater risk of developing attention problems as they get older. My goodness, it's really cold in here. Well I watched a lot of television when I was a kid, and I think I'm fine. Sure I probably have attention issues, but who doesn't? I think my car is out of gas. I better get some at lunch so that I won't have to on my way home.

Focus Brian.

Watching too much television isn't a bad thing. If anything, it's a way to bring kids together. Remember when you were a kid and you'd have conversations with some friends of yours about a show on Nickelodeon or something, then there would always be that one kid who felt left out because they didn't have cable? Isn't childhood isolation much worse than simple attention issues as an adolescent or adult? I'd say so. Wouldn't you much rather be able to join in during classroom discussions about "Double Dare" or "Hey Dude" or "You Can't Do That On Television" than being able to focus your brain for more than 30 minutes? Of course.

So let's put these studies to bed. Don't go outside and don't join any clubs. Put down the books and turn on the tube. It's what you want. It's what we all want. I hope I remembered to turn off the coffee pot this morning.

Wait, what was I saying? Oh yeah. Don't do drugs.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute performed a study where they asked students from 50 different colleges and universities across the country a series of multiple choice questions relating to U.S. History. According to the results, we don't know beans when it comes to our own history; on average, college seniors got about 30 correct out of 60 questions.

As you can imagine, educators and chairpeople and historians and parents and clergymen and politicians and bus drivers and the like are up in arms about the results, saying things like "we are failing our students" and "we need to focus more on educating our young people in regards to our own history" and "this bus wreaks of puke". At first glance, I couldn't agree more. 30 out of 60? That's horrible. But then I got a look at some of the questions.

Examples:

1. The power of judicial review was established in:
A. The Constitution.
B. Marbury v. Madison.
C. McCulloch v. Maryland.
D. The Bill of Rights.
E. A presidential executive order.

2. The struggle between President Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans was mainly over:
A. United States alliances with European nations.
B. The nature and control of Reconstruction.
C. The purchase of Alaska.
D. Whether to have a tariff.
E. Whether slavery should be allowed in the Federal Territories.

Apparently the folks behind the questions forgot about answer F - who gives a shit?

Maybe the educators and chairpeople and historians and parents and clergymen and politicians and bus drivers should leave these kids alone and let them continue to do important things like drink beer and tear down goalposts after their football team wins a big game. I bet if you asked those same students who won the blue ribbon for best beer at the 1893 World's Fair, more than half would know it was Pabst.

Hey, that's U.S. History, right? And important history indeed.

[Editors note: to take the quiz yourself, click here]

Study: Multiple Stab Wounds May Be Harmful To Monkeys

Studies like this one bother me. Particularly bothersome are the comments from "the experts" that are usually associated with them.

The study shows that food wrapped in McDonald's packaging tastes better than identical food that is not wrapped in McDonald's packaging, at least according to the preschoolers who were part of the experiment. Well I call shenanigans. The food doesn't taste better. The wrapping is cooler.

From the article: Study author Dr. Tom Robinson said the kids’ perception of taste was "physically altered by the branding." The Stanford University researcher said it was remarkable how children so young were already so influenced by advertising.

Nonsense. Their perception of taste wasn't physically altered. Kids like the idea of going to McDonald's. To them, McDonald's represents going out to eat. They like Ronald. They like the playland. They like Hamburgler. Is he still around? I don't think so. Not the point. The point is that this is completely reasonable. I'd be more shocked if the study found something different.

Adults do the same thing. Have you ever liked a car simply because it was a Mercedes or a Cadillac or a BMW? Have you ever thought that maybe if the exact same car said Kia on it rather than Mercedes or Cadillac or BMW, you would feel less enthused about it? Of course you would. Kia sucks. Also not the point (and no offense to any owners of Kia). The point again is that this is completely reasonable.

Now these experts are shocked at the results? Personally, I'm shocked that they're shocked. And shocked that they even took the time to study something like this.

Go cure something.

Now comes word that lowering your cholesterol levels too much can increase your cancer risk.

Phew, it's a good thing I haven't gone and done that.

You know what I say? Eat what you want; you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. Tonight I plan on eating a fantastically big chocolate cake all by myself. And you know why? Because there's an outside chance that one of these days, maybe a couple years down the road from now, there will be a study released that says eating ridulous amounts of chocolate cake is good for you. And then I'll sit back and be thankful that on July 24th, 2007, I stuffed my face with it.

Hopefully the scientists are already crackin' on that "Dairy Queen Heath Bar Blizzards with Chocolate Ice Cream are good for your heart" study.

A United States intelligence report issued Thursday warns of an increased threat from al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Iraq.

Yeah, they needed a report for that.

The report went on to say that there is no credible information to indicate an attack is imminent, nor do they know that if an attack were to occur what kind of attack it would be. Just that hey, the threat is there.

Welcome to 2001.

Reports like these make me question why we even bother. I understand that there is certain intelligence that should not be released to the public. And I'm sure there are details that are known by our intelligence agencies that probably were not put into this non-classified report. But what's the point of releasing something like this to the media when it's essentially the same thing we've been reading in every report for the last 6 years?

I say that until something changes (like the Russians are pointing nukes at us again, or Cuba is teaming up with N. Korea, or the IRA is back in business), the White House should keep their "intelligence" reports to themselves.

[Thankfully, the editors of this blog only allow Brian one rant per month, so he should be done with crap like this until at least August. Also, he stole the title of this entry from one of Norm MacDonald's Weekend Update segments. Then again, if you're a regular reader of this blog, there's a good chance that you already knew that.]

According to this story, humans are using too much of the Sun. It will be reported today in a study published by European scientists, that humans use up almost a quarter of the sun's energy captured by plants, the most of any species. The researchers said the findings showed humans were using "a remarkable share" of the earth's plant productivity "to meet the needs and wants of one species".

What amazes me is that they needed a study to find this out! Are these the same scientists that recently reported that humans are responsible for a sizable majority of the world's automobile production? Were they expecting that other species were going to be responsible for the earth's plant productivity? Are there farms being run by orangutans somewhere that I've never heard about?

And I'm sorry, we're talking about the SUN right? Are we worried that we're wasting the Sun? Is there a Sun shortage? I don't understand what the point of this story is other than to blame humans for something else. There seems to be a large movement of people that are just ANTI-people. They want to blame people for everything wrong on Earth and as far as they're concerned, there's not a problem in the world, be it earthquakes or tsunamis or volcanoes or tornadoes or hurricanes or Ryan Seacrest, that can't be fixed with granola.

This has been the "We're All Doomed!" for Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007.

(oh and Happy Fourth of July Eve!)

I think it's obvious that this study is a load of crap.

I wasn't sure how to post this because of the ...um... sensitive nature of the story. But one paragraph in particular caught my attention (emphasis mine).

Doctors in New York have removed a woman’s gallbladder with instruments passed through her vagina, a technique they hope will cause less pain and scarring than the usual operation, and allow a quicker recovery. The technique can eliminate the need to cut through abdominal muscles, a major source of pain after surgery.

The operation was experimental, part of a study that is being done to find out whether people will fare better if abdominal surgery is performed through natural openings in the body rather than cuts in the belly. The surgery still requires cutting, through the wall of the vagina, stomach or colon, but doctors say it should hurt less because those tissues are far less sensitive than the abdominal muscles.

Interest in this idea heightened after doctors from India made a video in 2004 showing an appendix being taken out through a patient’s mouth. The patient had abdominal scars that would have made conventional surgery difficult.

The New York patient, 66, had her gallbladder removed on March 21 and is recovering well, said her surgeon, Dr. Marc Bessler, the director of laparoscopic surgery at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Bessler said he thought it was the first time the operation had been performed in the United States, and he plans to show a video of the operation at a gastroenterology meeting in Las Vegas on Sunday.

“Going through a natural orifice, the mouth or rectum or vagina, to get into the abdomen and do an operation, is being excitedly worked on by a whole lot of people,” Dr. Bessler said, adding that companies were beginning to make special surgical tools for the operations and that doctors had formed an organization called Noscar (www.Noscar.org), which stands for Natural Orifice Surgery Consortium for Assessment and Research. ...more.

Oh, I'm quite sure that LOTS of people are excidedly working on that, and I especially like that he's taking a video of his findings to a meeting in Las Vegas. Big shock there!

I'm sure his colleagues are letting Dr. Bessler know of lots of other websites where he can find those "tools" as well.

I recently read a magazine article about current volcanic activity at Mount St. Helens in Washington and how geologists are fascinated with resulting new lava domes from magma that has pushed its way to the surface. Pretty nerdy stuff I know. The article of course referenced the eruption of 1980 in which 57 people died and the destruction caused nearly $1 billion in damages. What I found interesting about the article though was a throw-in comment that stated something along the lines of if Mount St. Helens were to erupt today with the same force that it did 27 years ago, the death toll and damages would be considerably higher today than it was back then. At first I thought 'well that makes sense, things are more expensive nowadays'. But then I got to thinking a little bit more. What the hell is out there that could be destroyed? Did people really rebuild their homes on that sonofabitch?

I stayed home from work yesterday, so I was able to catch up on some Oprah. Not that this was something that I wanted to catch up on. But if you’ve ever stayed home from work, I think you’ll agree with me that unless there’s a good movie on (which there wasn’t), Oprah is the only thing you’ll find from 9 til 10.

Anyway, the topic of the day was dieting. She had Dr. Oz on the panel, who is the author of a new book called “YOU: On a Diet”. His plan is pretty simple: cut out foods with trans fat and walk at least 10,000 steps a day. He even had a lady on the show with him that had tried his new plan for 4 weeks and she lost 25 lbs, as well as went from a size 12 to a size 8. I’m not sure what that means, but the audience cheered. In fact, the audience cheered for just about everything this good Doctor said. But what was he really telling us?

The message from his book is essentially that we have to start eating right and exercising. Do we really need a doctor telling us this on Oprah? Doesn’t every person in the world know that the secret to losing weight is eating right and exercising? We know this Good Doctor! We’re not looking for the fool-proof and obvious plan. We’re looking for the quick fix and potentially dangerous plan like stomach stapling. Or maybe even something really off the wall like the all-chocolate diet. Is there a plan like that? Give me something I can use.