Men spend a year of their lives staring at women

This may be one of the most inaccurate studies ever, but I don't care because I learned nothing else today.

The average man will spend 43 minutes a day staring at 10 different women. That makes it a total of 11 months and 11 days in the course of his lifetime. The average woman spends 20 minutes a day staring at 6 men, making it almost 6 months during her lifetime.

The people who conducted the poll were, interestingly enough, the good people at Kodak Lens Vision Centres. The study consisted of 3,000 individuals in Britain. The supermarket was the best place for men to ogle at women, and the pub/bar was the best place for women to do the same to men.

Albert Alexander

On February 12, 1941, a 43 year-old policeman named Albert Alexander of England became the first human to receive penicillin.

One day in December 1940, a rose thorn scratched his cheek. The scratch grew into a sore and then an infection, which metastasized to the rest of his face and scalp. Alexander was hospitalized, during which his face and head were covered with abscesses. The abscesses were so extreme that his left eye had to be surgically removed.

Two months later he became the guinea pig for the powerful new drug penicillin. Up until that time, penicillin had only been tested on mice, so the doctors feared that too big a dose might instantly kill the patient. Alexander received 200 mg intravenously. Within a day he gained back his appetite, his temperature dropped, and his skin began to heal. But with such short quantity of penicillin on hand, the doctors diligently extracted small amounts of the precious substance from his urine and reinjected it back into his bloodstream. It wasn't enough, however, and Albert Alexander died on March 15.

But his partial response to this new medicine symbolized our vulnerability to bacteria and our ability to defeat them. Penicillin soon became available on a macro level and helped save many lives in the waning years of WWII.

Reduce junk mail

I was listening today to a podcast of Diane Rehm about "greening your life." One of the tips was to stop those damn companies from sending you those damn catalogs and advertisements you don't even bother to look at. That way, less trees would be cut down and less fuel would be burned for the modes of transportation to get to your house and deliver the mail.

I had known for a long time that you can write to the companies and tell them you don't want the junk mail, but they probably won't read your letter anyway. So one of the panelists on the show pointed out that there are websites designed to help you greatly reduce the amount of crap in your mailbox. The three she recommended were Catalog Choice, GreenDimes, and myJunkTree. There are also a whole slew of other websites that do the same thing.

Ichthys

"Ichthys" is the name of the Jesus fish. The story behind the symbol being used in Christianity starts centuries ago when -- zzz....

Boston Brahmin

The Boston Brahmins are a wealthy and elite group of Protestants of Boston society. They are what we would call WASPs.

They are a dying breed, however. Here are two Brahmins conversing:

Alcmaeon of Croton

Alcmaeon of Croton (c. 6th century BC) is considered by many to be the world's first neuroscientist. He concluded from his studies that the brain is the seat of perception and cognition, which contradicted the mainstream view at the time that the heart was the center of intelligence. He also excised an animal's eye and stated that optic nerves conduct light from the eye to the brain.

Multitaskers suck

I finally have proof that multitasking is a waste of time and those who do it are morons. You gotta get shit done one at a time:

The people who multitask the most are the ones who are worst at it. That's the surprising conclusion of researchers at Stanford University, who found multitaskers are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multitasking.

"The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media. We were totally shocked," Clifford Nass, a professor at Stanford's communications department, said in a telephone interview.

Flynn effect

The Flynn effect is a phenomenon in which people of newer generations score higher on IQ tests than people of previous generations. Scores on these tests have risen steadily and dramatically since such tests began being distributed in the early 20th century. The Flynn effect was first described in the 1980s but was popularized by the book The Bell Curve. The authors of that book dismissed the phenomenon as an irrelevant curiosity to buttress their overall argument.

Taking a closer look at the Flynn effect, however, one sees very strong data that cannot be whisked away. In the early 1980s New Zealand political scientist James Flynn, while studying intelligence testing in the U.S. military, discovered that newer recruits scored above average on the same exact test than their contemporaries in a previous generation. Digging further into this, Flynn found that scores on virtually every IQ test -- given to military recruits and students of all ages -- had increased about 3 points per decade since the inception of the test in the U.S. Also, 20 other countries -- including Canada, Israel, and several European nations -- showed similar increases, though not every country had the same three point rise. In Sweden and Denmark it was 10 points per generation; in Israel and Belgium it was 20 points per generation.

The surges tend to be greatest for tests that minimized cultural or educational advantages. Instead, the tests allowed for recognizing abstract patterns or solving other nonverbal problems. One of these kinds of tests is the Raven's Progressive Matrices, which is considered to be one of the least "culturally loaded" IQ tests.

Flynn has effectively shot down every false hypothesis to why the Flynn effect occurs. For example, there is the idea that children in successive generations score higher because they take more tests than earlier generations, thus being able to perform more efficiently. That is not true. IQ tests have progressively become less common but the increasing scores still persist. Anyway, practicing taking the tests generally doesn't do a whole lot of good.

What about improvements in education? That's not a valid reason, either: IQs of American children have been going up even when time spent in school is not. Television and the media also cannot sufficiently answer for the steady rise because scores have been increasing long before television was introduced in the 1950s.

So why the mysterious upward slope in IQ scores from generation to generation? There are a few other proposed explanations, but the full answer will remain a mystery for now.

Openly gay U.S. federal politicians

Gerry Studs was the first openly gay U.S. national politician. He was elected to the House from Massachusetts in 1972 and stepped down in 1997, coming out in 1983.

Tammy Baldwin was the first openly gay person to run for and win a seat in the U.S. House. She was elected in 1998 and still represents the 2nd district of Wisconsin.

Jared Polis is the first openly gay male to run for and win a seat in the U.S. House. He was elected in 2008 and represents the 2nd district of Colorado.

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Trompe l'oeil

Trompe l'oeil is a detailed style of painting that gives an illusion of photographic reality. It's often used in murals.

A Bachelor's Drawer by John Haberle

Mary Baker Eddy

Mary Baker Eddy is the founder of Christian Science. She also founded The Christian Science Monitor.

Doctor, interrupting

Lisa Sanders has a new book out called Every Patient Tells a Story. Here are some interesting stats involving doctors and their patients:

-- Doctors are misdiagnosing their patients' ailments at about 10 to 15% of the time.
-- Doctors let patients talk for an average of 20 seconds before they interrupt. Some let them talk for just 3 seconds before they interrupt with another question. The chance that the patient goes back and finishes that story is almost zero.
-- Up to 50% of the time when a patient leaves the doctor's office, they have symptoms that they didn't get to talk about.
-- Half the time, the doctor and the patient won't agree on what the purpose of the visit was.

Shocking health care poll numbers

Maybe I was too naive to assume that Americans knew basic facts and that not everyone would be easily propagandized by the right. This country needs to pick up a fucking newspaper and read it. Or just go to the newspapers' websites.

I really don't believe half the nation watches Fox News (god, I hope not), but MSNBC and CNN should be embarrassed about the poll's findings. How the hell can Chuck Todd announce this and not feel at least some responsibility? Do your fucking jobs and ridicule those on the right who are spreading the lies. Don't invite some douchebag congressman from the south on your show and pretend there should be an argument.

Baby College

An important social science research project was conducted in Kansas City in the 1980s. It involved two sets of families: one whose parents were on welfare and one whose parents worked professional jobs. The project discovered that the biggest difference between the families' children was language. The kids of the parents who worked professional jobs learned 20 million more words during their first three years of life than the kids whose parents were on welfare. In addition, the middle class children heard 500,000 words of encouragement and 80,000 words of discouragement. The welfare children, on the other hand, heard 80,000 words of encouragement and 200,000 words of discouragement. Most of this was the regular jibber jabber that parents talk to their little ones.

This discrepancy has huge effects, of course. The middle class kids' emotional and cognitive developments tend to be better than those of the welfare ones. Patience and self-control are also more difficult to acquire for those on welfare. And the earlier you come in contact with more and positive words, the better; it becomes increasingly difficult and nearly impossible to be emotionally stable, be a good problem-solver, and demonstrate self-discipline once you pass your kindergarten years without learning enough positive words.

That's where the one and only Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone steps in. He developed a program called Baby College, which takes place over nine consecutive Saturdays, designed to teach lower class families how to properly raise their children. The class is more of a group of parents and instructors feeding off of each other new ideas and tips instead of instructors telling the young parents what to do. They educate them on the psychological needs of the children and how to foster those needs to make it work to the youngsters' advantages. For example, misbehaving, or at least how the adults see it, isn't necessarily a child's way of ignoring the rules. Children won't always sit still, they need to explore their worlds. That's a big step to brain development. Another extremely beneficial thing to do is to read to your kids every night. It doesn't matter if it's the same book day after day, as long as they love it their imaginations are enhanced and they build up their vocab.

This American Life broadcast of Baby College.

Julia Butterfly Hill

Julia Butterfly Hill is an environmental activist who, from December 1997 to December 1999, lived atop a California Redwood tree to prevent loggers from cutting it down. A deal was made with the Pacific Lumber Company and Hill: the company agreed not to cut the tree, known as "Luna," and all trees within three acres. In exchange, $50,000 that Hill and other activists raised from the sit-in was given to the logging company. That was in turn donated to a local university to do research on sustainable forestry.

Big Government

The term "big government" was first used in 1940 by Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie. It was actually a play on the words "big business"; Willkie admitted that government was needed to counteract what he called "corporate tyranny." For the next 30 years Republicans warned about big government but also cautioned about big business. That all changed in the 1970s when the government lost the people's trust on issues such as Watergate and Vietnam. And then came St. Ronnie and the rest is history.

There are 3,300 lobbyists involved in the health care overhaul

That makes it six lobbyists per every lawmaker in Congress. More than 1,500 organizations have health care lobbyists and about three more are signing up each day. They spent $263.4 million during the first half of this year, $22 million more than the same time last year. Drugmakers alone spent $135.4 million, which is 64% more than the next biggest spenders, oil and gas companies.

We will never run out of sugar

Some of the nation's most famous food companies, including Kraft, General Mills, and Hershey, have warned the federal government that we could "virtually run out" of sugar in the near future. The American Sugar Alliance stated that we actually have a surplus. Which one to believe?

American sugar producers make about 8.5 million metric tons per year. In addition, the USDA allows 1.3 million metric tons to be imported from other countries. And, because of NAFTA, Mexico can give us an unlimited amount. Americans use only 10 million tons a year, so the excess sugar is stockpiled in warehouses. If demand suddenly increases, producers would take from these stockpiles. And if demand is still too high, the USDA simply boosts the import quotas. That's why we will never run out of sugar.

The aforementioned companies freaked out about sugar supply because there's a shortage outside the country -- Brazil uses more cane for ethanol and India is experiencing droughts. As a result, prices on the global market for sugar is at a 28 year high. We don't buy from that market, however. We buy from already existing trade agreements.

Benson

Benson was Britain's largest and most famous common carp, weighing in at 64 pounds. It was caught by over 60 anglers from across the world. It died recently at the age of 25 because some irresponsible anglers left uncooked nuts in the vicinity, which are toxic to fish.

Cuba is running out of toilet paper

The state-run company that makes it is running out due to the recent economic crisis and a series of hurricanes. The country might not be able to produce or import toilet paper again until the end of the year.

Byron Looper

Byron Looper is a former Republican politician from Tennessee who legally changed his middle name from "Anthony" to "Low Tax," and who murdered his Democratic opponent, Tommy Burks, in 1998 before the election for the state senate seat. A technicality allowed Looper to stay on the ballot after the murder, but Burks' widow beat him in a landslide following a write-in vote. Looper is now serving a life sentence in a Tennessee state prison.

Flotsam

Flotsam means "the part of the wreckage of a ship and its cargo found floating on the water" or "useless or unimportant items."

Dogs are as smart as 2 year-old kids

A recent study reveals that dogs are as smart as 2 year-old kids. The finding is based on a language development test, showing that the average dog can learn 165 words, including signals and gestures, which is about the same amount a 2 year-old toddler can learn. Dogs in the top 20% can learn 250 words.

The smartest dogs in terms of IQ are border collies, poodles, and German shepherds, in that order. These breeds have been created recently, evolutionarily speaking, and may be smarter because humans have trained them to be that way.

But dogs are as smart as 3 or 4 year-olds in math skills, and act more like human teenagers as far as social skills (who is the coolest dog, who sleeps with who...).

The least of the smartest in terms of IQ are many of the hounds, the bulldog, beagle, and basenji. Again, this is because they are much older breeds and they were trained to hunt. If they were tested on instincts they would probably do better than others.

Based on "school smarts," the top seven smartest dogs are:

1. border collies
2. poodles
3. german shepherds
4. golden retrievers
5. dobermans
6. shetland sheepdogs
7. labrador retrievers

The Family

No, it's not a Mario Puzo novel that has to do with Italian mafias, although this family likens itself to that kind of organizational structure. The Family at 133 C Street in Arlington, VA is a secretive religious society made up mostly of really rich and powerful men: Senators Chuck Grassley, John Ensign, Tom Coburn, Bill Nelson, Jim DeMint; Congressman Bart Stupak; and various people from the oil and aerospace industries are members. You know, your typical Jesus freaks. But these freaks believe that the elite win power through God's will, even if they are brutal dictators like Hitler or Suharto. And they have no problem approving of people like Hitler, Pol Pot, or even bin Laden. They also have ties to these kinds of oppressive regimes.

Make some time and read this March 2003 article from Harper's about the Family. Here's some notable excerpts:

Tiahrt was a short shot glass of a man, two parts flawless hair and one part teeth. He wanted to know the best way “for the Christian to win the race with the Muslim.” The Muslim, he said, has too many babies, while Americans kill too many of theirs.

Doug agreed this could be a problem. But he was more concerned that the focus on labels like “Christian” might get in the way of the congressman's prayers. Religion distracts people from Jesus, Doug said, and allows them to isolate Christ's will from their work in the world.

“People separate it out,” he warned Tiahrt. “'Oh, okay, I got religion, that's private.' As if Jesus doesn't know anything about building highways, or Social Security. We gotta take Jesus out of the religious wrapping.”

“All right, how do we do that?” Tiahrt asked.

“A covenant,” Doug answered. The congressman half-smiled, as if caught between confessing his ignorance and pretending he knew what Doug was talking about. “Like the Mafia,” Doug clarified. “Look at the strength of their bonds.” He made a fist and held it before Tiahrt's face. Tiahrt nodded, squinting. “See, for them it's honor,” Doug said. “For us, it's Jesus.”

Coe listed other men who had changed the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their “brothers”: “Look at Hitler,” he said. “Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden.” The Family, of course, possessed a weapon those leaders lacked: the “total Jesus” of a brotherhood in Christ.

“That's what you get with a covenant,” said Coe. “Jesus plus nothing.”

Thomas, a syndicated columnist, had recently stopped by Ivanwald for a mixer with young congressional staffers. He had regaled his audience with stories about tweaking his liberal colleagues, in particular about when he had addressed a conference of nonbelievers by asking if anyone knew where to buy a good “negro.” Jeff C. thought it was hilarious but also profound. What Thomas had meant, he told me, was that absent the teachings of Jesus there was no reason for the strong not to enslave the weak.

In a document entitled “Our Common Agreement as a Core Group,” members of the Family are instructed to form a “core group,” or a “cell,” which is defined as “a publicly invisible but privately identifiable group of companions.” A document called “Thoughts on a Core Group” explains that “Communists use cells as their basic structure. The mafia operates like this, and the basic unit of the Marine Corps is the four man squad. Hitler, Lenin, and many others understood the power of a small core of people.”

The Family was founded in April 1935 by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant who made his living as a traveling preacher. One night, while lying in bed fretting about socialists, Wobblies, and a Swedish Communist who, he was sure, planned to bring Seattle under the control of Moscow, Vereide received a visitation: a voice, and a light in the dark, bright and blinding. The next day he met a friend, a wealthy businessman and former major, and the two men agreed upon a spiritual plan. They enlisted nineteen business executives in a weekly breakfast meeting and together they prayed, convinced that Jesus alone could redeem Seattle and crush the radical unions. They wanted to give Jesus a vessel, and so they asked God to raise up a leader. One of their number, a city councilman named Arthur Langlie, stood and said, “I am ready to let God use me.” Langlie was made first mayor and later governor, backed in both campaigns by money and muscle from his prayer-breakfast friends, whose number had rapidly multiplied.

He traveled also with a mandate from General John Hildring, assistant secretary of state, to oversee the creation of a list of good Germans of “the predictable type” (many of whom, Vereide believed, were being held for having “the faintest connection” with the Nazi regime), who could be released from prison “to be used, according to their ability in the tremendous task of reconstruction.” Vereide met with Jewish survivors and listened to their stories, but he nevertheless considered ex-Nazis well suited for the demands of “strong” government, so long as they were willing to worship Christ as they had Hitler.

Jeff Sharlet, the author of the article, wrote a book about them called The Family.

Operation Pedro Pan

Operation Pedro Pan was carried out by the U.S. government, the Catholic Church in Miami, and some Cubans to get as many Cubans to come to our shore. Between 1960-2, over 14,000 Cuban children who opposed the revolutionary government were sent to Miami by their parents. They were then placed with friends, relatives, and group homes across 35 states. The most famous Pedro Pan is Mel Martinez, the now resigning U.S. senator of Florida.

Depressed people have a more realistic view of themselves

Robert Feldman was on the local NPR station's flagship program, Think with Krys Boyd (great show -- and no, I don't donate), promoting his new book The Liar in Your Life: The Way to Truthful Relationships. He gave me this tidbit:

Boyd: I was really interested to read, Bob, that people who are clinically depressed have the most accurate self-perception of anybody.

Feldman: They do. They often have a very extraordinarily realistic view of themselves, so they see their faults and their strengths, which they actually tend to minimize a little bit, in a very clear-cut way.

Boyd: So does self-deception have a sort of preventive factor against depression?

Feldman: Oh, I don't think it would actually prevent it; I don't think it's a causal relationship. I do think that for most of us who aren't depressed, the goal is to see ourselves in a positive light as worthy individuals who are competent, who are attractive, who are above average. And so we spend a fair amount of cognitive effort thinking of ourselves... in a positive light. And so we're constantly filtering material around us to try and make it seem consistent with that view of ourselves.

Boyd: Yeah, our public radio listeners will appreciate this: you call it the Lake Wobegon effect. That "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

Feldman: Everybody's above average and that's what you find over and over -- that most of us think we're above average. We're better drivers than other people, and we're slightly smarter than other people, and we do things better than most other people. So there's a real bias in the terms of the way we view ourselves.

Interesting, because I never knew that people thought they were better than most others in terms of everything. Interesting also because I don't necessarily view myself as superior to others, except when it comes to knowledge. That's why I have this blog: to dissect the intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews while sipping a glass of Chianti at a dinner banquet. Actually, I don't even do that -- I don't like showing people how smart I may be. I always try to minimize my accomplishments and strengths, as the author stated, and avert attention and praise if it's given to me.

So does that mean I'm clinically depressed? I know I'm not, but I am pretty introverted. (I'm an INTJ, by the way, the owners of the 15 other MBTI types.) And since people love to remind us introverts that too much introversion can lead to depression, then I guess there's a link. I don't know.

This theory is also called depressive realism.

Clip starts at 33:23.

Black Like Me

Black Like Me is a book by John Howard Griffin published in 1961.

Griffin was a white man from Mansfield, TX who darkened his skin under the supervision of a doctor in order to chronicle his experiences as a "black" man in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. He encountered many of the same acts of discrimination experienced by black people at the time (like giving up his bus seat to white people), and wrote of the "hate stare" he received from whites. During Griffin's six weeks of traveling in Greyhound buses, he came to believe that disadvantaged people commit crimes in order to ease their pain. In turn, those who afflict the pain hate the disadvantaged even more.

After the book was released, Griffin was vilified, threatened with death, and hung in effigy in his hometown. But the book catapulted him to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement, and gained him international respect as an human rights activist.

In 1964 a film version of the book was produced.

Ed Balls

Ed Balls is the Children's Secretary of Britain. He will spend £400 million ($668 million) installing and monitoring surveillance cameras in the homes of private citizens in an attempt to make sure kids are doing their homework, eating the right food, and not watching porn (that last one I made up but it's included in the "good behavior" category). This program is aimed at dysfunctional families -- the idea is that if a child has a more stable home life, he won't get caught up in drugs or crime when he grows up. As if that hasn't been proven.

And this is all with the liberal government. The conservatives want even more spying. The Shadow Home Secretary said:

This is all much too little, much too late.

This Government has been in power for more than a decade during which time anti-social behaviour, family breakdown and problems like alcohol abuse and truancy have just got worse and worse.

Amazingly, this has already been going on for 2,000 family homes. Maybe somebody needs to hand these people a copy of 1984.

Insert your own joke here about Ed Balls catching a kid on camera watching porn.

Why do cats cover their poop?

In the wild, only secondary cats bury their waste to protect their trail from predators. The dominant feline will actually display his or her feces prominently. This sends a strong message of dominance. In the world of house cats, you are the dominant animal and the house cat chooses not to offend you. They will carefully bury their feces to eliminate interfering with what they perceive as the natural order.

Read more interesting facts about cats.

The Sprinkler

"The Sprinkler" is the name of that dumb dance move people used to do back then.

Skip to 4:09.

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Fermi 1

Fermi 1 is the nation's first commercial breeder reactor, located around the Detroit area. In October 1966 it suffered a partial fuel meltdown, but no dangerous amount of radiation had been released and no one was injured. The plant continued to operate until September 1972 and is set to close October 2012.

The incident led to a book by John G. Fuller and a song by Gil Scott Heron, both entitled We Almost Lost Detroit.