Some popular posts on my new blog

Below are some of the popular posts on my new blog:

long TV viewing cause shorter attention.
the secrete of good wines.
what are your lifes regrets ?
viagra promote feelings of love.
height is almost genetic.
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translates numbers into images.
population map of the future.
No sleep enough is deadly.
steroids is the explanation for home runs surge
commuter-marriages increases in us.
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feminity of poverty
why kids love McDonald's worlds' most expensive coffee
gene and gender differences
top 10 reasons why humans have sex
some Iraq war statistics
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why fingernails grow faster than toenails
solve all rubiks cubes in 26 moves
higher risk suicide linked breast implants
link between cell phone usage and car accidents
worlds tallest buildings
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obesity is contagious.
few kids walk or bike to school.
men are as talkative as women.
how to procrastinate.
how long it takes for plastic bag to decompose ?
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our urban deforestation.
tattoo regret and removal.
marriage makes family rich.
high gasoline price humor.
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Mouse vs. Supercomputer
How We Learn
Internet porn consumption statistics
The world is walking faster
Women outnumber men in colleges
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Five reasons why you should marry me.
Which human body part increases to 10 times its size when stimulated?
Positive and negative national influence.
Barack obamas popularity in Myspace.

Valentine's Day by the numbers

According to a recent US consumer survey, 63% planned to celebrate Valentine's Day this year, most between the ages of 25 and 34. On average, "men will spend $154 on their Valentines, nearly double the $85 the average female will spend on her sweetheart".

Based on Hallmark' s number, Valentine's Day is the 2nd biggest card-giving holiday of the year after Christmas.

Beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder

Ever heard of 'beer-goggling' effect ? - the regrettable effect that alcohol drink, ambient light and smokiness have on our ability to judge attractiveness. 'Beer-goggling' make the aesthetically-challenged more attractive; in fact, a poll showed that 68% of people had regretted giving their phone number to someone to whom they realized was not attractive the morning after. A research project headed by Nathan Efron, Professor of Clinical Optometry(Univ. of Manchester), tried to reduce the "beer goggles effect" down to a interesting equation. Other than the amount of alcohol, room's light level & smokiness, drinker's own eyesight and distance between two people are also factors.

Are men better chess players than women ?

Currently, there is only 1 woman among the top 100 chess players; and only 8 women among 900 grandmasters. Are men better at playing chess? In a recent study, researchers concluded that the underrepresentation of women in the highest levels of chess can be explained by the low proportion of girls who enter chess at the lowest levels. The researchers looked at the ratings of over 250,000 players over 13 years and found that while men have higher ratings than women on average, in areas where women account for at least 50% of new young players, the initial ratings of boys and girls are not significantly different. Check and mate!

Adult Literacy Statistics

Globally, literacy has risen considerably over recent decades, and developing countries are catching up with developed countries quickly.

According to Unesco Institute For Statistics, below are adult literacy(age 15 and over) statistics in 2005:

EUROPE - 99%;

OCEANIA - 94%;

AMERICAS - 94%;

ASIA - 78%;

AFRICA - 65%;

World Average - 82%.

Projected adult literacy in 2015 is -

EUROPE - 99%;
OCEANIA - 95%;
AMERICAS - 95%;
ASIA - 82%;
AFRICA - 73%;
World Average - 85%.

Quick thinking is better thinking

We all expect people to make more accurate decisions when given the time to look properly. But it turned out that in many cases, people performed better when given almost no time to think.

In a recent study, participants were asked to identify an oddly rotated symbol on a screen of more than 650 identical symbols. When subjects were given 0.5 second, participants picked the correct answer 95% of the time. With 1.0 second to contemplate an answer, this accuracy dropped to about 80%.

Researcher attributes this result to the difference in the abilities of the subconscious and conscious minds to recognize the rotated symbol as different from the original. Often, our instincts and higher-level functions are in conflict and in this case our instincts (subconscious) are often silenced by our reasoning conscious mind.

Anyone who have read the book Blink will found above numbers very assuring.

Numbers of Sins

1) I have never placed a sports bet (in US) before; according to an article on WSJ (Jan 5th, 2007), this makes me a member of social minority. The amount of money Americans wager on sports has grown to rival the gross domestic product of New Zealand. In 2007, 118 million people will wager an estimated $96 billion on different sports events.

2) According to a new report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 45% of teenagers surveyed had consumed alcohol within the previous month, and 64% of that group admitted to more than 5 drinks in a row (so called binge-drink). Girls ages 12-14 were more apt to binge-drink than their peers, although boys outdrank girls in other age groups.

Washing hands can save lives

The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 90,000 Americans die every year from infections they contract while hospitalized. So some hospitals asking Doctors and nurses to follow few simple and cheap procedures - as basic as hand-washing - to reduce the spread of infection in hospitals.

The current New England Journal of Medicine reports on a study conducted in Michigan hospitals to see if increased vigilance on hand hygiene would cut down on the incidence of catheter infections. And it worked, big-time. A year and a half after the hand-washing procedure changes were made, the rates of catheter-related bloodstream infections dropped by 66%, according to the study.

What were they (Doctors and nurses ) thinking?

What will happen in the next hour ?

Calculated from the US government Census data, on average, in any given hour on any given day, the following changes are likely occurring in US:

• There are 203 marriages and 109 divorces.
• 4,900 Americans move, and 7,100 change jobs.
• There are 160 DUI arrests, 5 traffic fatalities, and over 2,000 auto insurance claims paid.

Source: Quality Planning Corp.

How narcissistic are celebrities ?

We all have guessed that celebrities are more narcissistic than average people, but how narcissistic are they ? Tough question to answer though, since celebrities are typically shielded by public-relations people and managers who rejects requests for things like peronality questionnaires.

Recently, Drew Pinsky, the University of Southern California psychiatry professor, also an insider to many celebrities, found that on average, celebrities are about 17% higher than the general public — with females ranking significantly higher than males. Interestingly, celebrities with the most skill (musicians) were the least narcissistic; those with no skill (reality-show stars) were off the narcissism charts. Drew Pinsky also found people with narcissistic tendencies seem to be attracted to the entertainment industry rather than the industry creating narcissists.

Numbers of the day

1)the average American gets 2 - 4 colds a year;
2)today the average American woman weighs 163 lbs;
(eliminate 1 soda a day, and you can drop 13 lbs in a year)
4) up to 27% of people include pets in their wills.

Source: RD, Jan, 2007.

She looks just like her father

According to a study presented at the 2005 Human Behavior & Evolution Society conference, subconsciously, women claim that their babies look like Dad in order to reassure the father that the kid really is his. The researchers corralled 69 families with 83 children and asked the parents to rate how much their kids looked like themselves versus the other parent. 100% of the mothers of newborns said the babies looked more like their partner, but only 83% of fathers agreed. Unrelated judges said the kid looked most like dad a mere 40% of the time. It's easy to see how women might benefit evolutionarily from convincing their partners that they should invest in rearing the child. But must the men continue to trust these deceptive vixens?

Funny statistics - how do we invest ?

source link

How many of us are addictive gamblers ?

According to research cited by the National Council on Problem Gambling, 2 million adults (1% of the population) meet the diagnostic criteria for pathological gambling. Another 4-8 million adults (2-4% of the population) can be considered problem gamblers who are experiencing direct problems as a consequence of gambling.

Source link

Can we communicate with the dead ?

Americans have always seemed fascinated by the idea of communicating with spirits in another world. Who else can make movies like Ghost? According to a recent study by the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, 20% of Americans believe that the living can communicate with the dead. In an online survey of 10,000 Beliefnet members, 77% said they'd felt the presence of a spirit, angel or dead soul.
Both the survey results and the TV statistics indicate that women are more likely to believe it's possible to interact with the spirit world. 46% of women surveyed believed that "the souls of the dead protect the living as spirit guides," compared with 27% of men. Women were also more likely than men to believe that "the dead can hear our prayers or intercede with God on our behalf."

Heard from radio today

Only 3% of U.S. population say they trust Congress;

Only 20% of U.S. male under 30 years old are married;

Source: NPR (9/15/2006)

Who need a vacation ?

Although average American gets a little less than 4 weeks of paid time off, including public holidays, compared with 7.9 weeks for Italians and 6.6 weeks for Britons, two surveys find 40% of Americans have no summer vacation plans, the highest in about three decades. The reasons? Some people have no paid vacations, others simple can't live without working.

The median hourly wage for American workers

"The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2% since 2003," reports the New York Times. "As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s."

See also this post.

How long do we commute to work ?

The average daily commute to work (one way) is 25.1 minutes in 2005, according to data released this week by the Census Bureau. The nation’s longest commute, at 39.6 minutes, is in the Vineland, N.J., metropolitan area, about 40 miles south of Philadelphia. The New York area had the second-longest commute (34.2 minutes), and the Washington area was third (33.4 minutes).

Are marriage and science compatible for women?

Marriage has been shown to have an adverse impact on the careers of female scientists. Data from the National Science Foundation show Doctoral women scientists and engineers are far less likely than men to be married: 66% of women doctoral scientists and engineers are married, compared with 83% of men. Doctoral women are 2 times as likely as men never to have married or to be divorced.

Among those married, however, women are more likely to confront problems accommodating a two-career marriage--one reason being that they are twice as likely as men to have a spouse who works full-time. Add children to the mix, and the problem is compounded.