10% of People Surveyed Are Trolls

You may have heard the report that 10% of college graduates believe Judge Judy serves on the Supreme Court.
There is no way that is true. 10% probably never heard of her, were joking, thought the question was stupid.
And believe me, I am not overestimating the intelligence of the American public, or holding a college in degree in artificially high esteem. I just think these polls and questions are dumb and not taken seriously.

But the real reason I post this story is because Razor is actually a huge fan of Judge Judy's and wishes she did in fact serve on the Supreme Court.

A New Study Confirms What I've Postulated on This Blog for 8 Years

Men notice a woman's body before they notice her face. That's the completely obvious finding of a study that probably cost a lot more money and time than needed to figure that out.
Social psychologist Sarah Gervais of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln did the study. She got 36 men and tracked their eye movements as they looked at pictures of 10 women. Thing is they manipulated the pictures to three different looks, really curvy, not so curvy, and something in between. The men's eyes stared longer at the larger breasts, slimmer waists and bigger hips.

But here's where this study actually proved somewhat worthwhile: women did it too!

Now I know why I have so many female readers: they like to look at tits and asses too!

Here ya go, horndogs:

No Wonder I'm Broke

A new study finds that sexually active people make more money.

And if you do it more than four times a week, you earn even more, the study shows.

"There is a monotonic relationship between the frequency of sexual activity and wage returns," Nick Drydakis, a senior economics lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University in England wrote in a paper for the International Journal of Manpower.

When people are having sex regularly, they're happier, stronger, eat better and exercise more, researchers have found.

The "Sex and the City" bed-hopping cliché notwithstanding, marriage seems to have a lot to do with it. "Married people, particularly men, earn higher wages than the non-married," Oswald said. "One possible explanation is that such people are sociable, stable people."

Conversely, a sexless marriage appears to be detrimental to a person's earning power. "Married men having no sex receive lower wages by 1.3 percent," Drydakis wrote, calling the amount "statistically significant."

Drydakis did have one caveat, which we'll call the gold-digger variable: In some cases, a better job or higher income could be the reason someone starts having more sex, rather than the other way around.

"Higher wages may increase the value and attractiveness of a person on the dating market; higher wages may also increase purchase of gifts that are thanked for via sex," the paper pointed out.

I've Wasted 75% of the Best Year of My Life

Age 33 is the best year of our lives, a new survey has found.
A British website, Friends Reunited, says that 70% of people over 40 picked that age as their happiest.
Just 6% said they were content during their college years, the site reported.
And only 16% pined for their childhood years.
One in three surveyed found their happiness in having children, while only one in five linked their sense of joy to their job.
“The age of 33 is enough time to have shaken off childhood naivete and the wild scheming of teenaged years without losing the energy and enthusiasm of youth,” psychologist Donna Dawson said.
“By this age innocence has been lost, but our sense of reality is mixed with a strong sense of hope,” she added. “We have yet to develop the cynicism and world-weariness that comes with later years.”

I normally hate these studies, I even have a tag for them "pointless study" but I think this one might be right on. I do feel like this has been a great year. And for the reasons expressed above. I'm old enough where dumb shit doesn't matter anymore and a lot of the worries of youth (about money, career, my place in the world) are over, but I am not so old that I am unable to enjoy it.

But maybe not as much as the chick quoted in the Daily News article:

Christine Possemato, 35, from Springfield N.J., agrees that 33 was a very special and sexy year.

“It's the sex, definitely,” said Possemato, who is single. “You’re hitting your stride. You’re a lot more confident and you can attract younger guys.”

No More BackYarns for Chase

Toddlers who watch too much TV may struggle in school later, with measurably lower scores in math, and they may get bullied more than other children.
And those children who watch more TV at age 2 weigh more by the time they were 10 and they eat more snacks and soft drinks.
Children who spend more time watching TV and less time playing with other kids may lose valuable chances to learn social skills.
The researchers started with more than 2,000 children taking part in a larger study. Their parents reported how much TV the children watched at 2-1/2 and later at 4-1/2 year old.
They checked with the children's teachers and doctors when the subjects were 10.
Every additional weekly hour of television at 29 months corresponded to a 7 percent drop in classroom attention and a 6 percent drop in math skills, the researchers found.
An hour more TV a week as a toddler meant a child was 10 percent more likely to be bullied, exercised 13 percent less, weighed 5 percent more and ate 10 percent more snacks, they found.



As always with these studies I think they discover a false cause-and-effect. It's not the television watching that leads to these things. Whatever is leading to the high rate of television watching is also leading to the weight gain, the bullying, etc. It's parents who aren't as invovled as they should be.

And I know how tempting it is to just plop the kid in front of the TV all day. Chase will not sit still for 10 seconds, but somehow he can watch Cars for 2 hours without moving. At least with The Backyardigans he gets up and runs around the room during "Racing Day."

Does This Mean the Average Age at Marriage is 70?

The average person’s sex life ends by the age of 70, according to a report published today in the British Medical Journal.

Men age 30 have an average of 35 years of sexually active life remaining, compared with 31 years for women, researchers at the University of Chicago’s department of obstetrics and gynecology estimated after reviewing a survey of 3,000 people. A separate survey of older people showed that by 55, men have an average sexual life expectancy of 15 years and women can expect 10 more years, the researchers found.

People in very good or excellent health were almost twice as likely to be interested in sex as people in poorer health, according to the study. Men lost more years of sexual activity as a result of poor health than women, the researchers said. That may motivate men to pursue healthier lifestyles, they said.

“Translation of expectations about the duration and quality of sexually active life may, at the individual level, influence important health behaviors to promote or prolong sexual functioning, such as adherence to medical treatment or maintenance of a healthy lifestyle,” the researchers wrote.

In statistics, projections of how long people will live vary according to age. Life expectancy increases as people reach middle age because they have survived risks that earlier in life reduced their chances of making it to old age.

The team, led by Stacy Tessler Lindau, used data from a 1995-1996 survey of 3,000 men and women between ages 25 and 74 and a 2005-2006 survey of 3,000 men and women between 57 and 85. Men were more likely than women to be sexually active, report a having a good quality sex life and be interested in sex, according to the study.

The gap was largest among 75- to 85-year-olds. About 40 percent of men in that group were sexually active, compared with 17 percent of women, the researchers found.

Helllllllllloooooooooo, Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadeeeeeeeezzzzzzzz

The perfect man is a geek with facial stubble... women's secret turn-ons revealed

Most women claim to be attracted to tall, dark and handsome men, but a new study has revealed that facial stubble and a geeky personality are their biggest secret turn-ons.



Despite complaining that it looks unkempt and feels rough to touch, the unshaven look on a man is actually a turn-on for 41 per cent of women.

A slightly geeky personality came second, proving that women really do like a guy who knows their stuff when it comes to technology.

A hairy chest was voted third, followed by a man who loves to read or cries at a soppy film.

Other secret turn-ons to feature in the top ten include grey hair, glasses and being a passionate supporter of a sports team.

A spokesman for www.onepoll.com, which carried out the research, said: 'Publically, girls will claim they want a muscly guy, who is hair free and manly enough not to show his emotional side.

'But these results prove that they secretly want something different. It seems women really do like a guy who is able to show a softer side, or who is carrying a little bit of extra weight.

'I'm sure it's a relief to men all over the country to find out that women aren't actually looking for that perfect guy.'

Maybe So, But Getting a Cat is Dumb

People with cats are more likely to have college degrees than those with dogs, according to a scientific survey of pet ownership.
Researchers at the University of Bristol say that the superior intelligence of cat owners is unlikely to be caused by their exposure to the famously cunning and selfish pets.
Rather, more educated people tend to work longer hours and choose a pet to fit their lifestyles. Unlike dogs, cats require no walking and can manage with little human company.

Exactly, people get cats because they have no time to take care of a real pet. Also they are emotionally detached people who choose love only on their own terms. Getting a dog is a much bigger time commitment, on requiring sacrifices in exchange for real, unconditional love. Cat owners want someone to vent to about the bitchy girl at work, and then ignore the rest of the day.

The study, published in the Veterinary Record journal, also found that cat owners were more likely to be older and female. You didn't need to interview thousands of British people to find that out.

Blogging is So Yesterday

It turns out blogs are for old people. Young kids don't have the patience for blogs, most of them can barely make it all the way through a 140-character tweet.
A new study has found that young people are losing interest in long-form blogging, as their communication habits have become increasingly brief, and mobile. Tech experts say it doesn't mean blogging is going away. Rather, it's gone the way of the telephone and e-mail -- still useful, just not sexy.
The study, released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that 14 percent of Internet youths, ages 12 to 17, now say they blog, compared with just over a quarter who did so in 2006. And only about half in that age group say they comment on friends' blogs, down from three-quarters who did so four years ago.
Pew found a similar drop in blogging among 18- to 29-year-olds.
Overall, Pew estimates that roughly one in 10 online adults maintain a blog -- a number that has remained consistent since 2005, when blogs became a more mainstream activity. In the U.S., that would mean there are more than 30 million adults who blog.
The Pew study found, for instance, that the percentage of Internet users age 30 and older who maintain a blog increased from 7 percent in 2007 to 11 percent in 2009.
So why are young people less interested in blogging?
The explosion of social networking is one obvious answer. The Pew survey found that nearly three-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds who have access to the Internet use social networking sites, such as Facebook. That compares with 55 percent four years ago.
More young people are also accessing the Internet from their mobile phones, only increasing the need for brevity. The survey found, for instance, that half of 18- to 29-year-olds had done so.

No Underscores Anywhere

Here's another story about protecting yourself online so I once again refer to the Poop's resident paranoid internet user, Mrs. Poop's mom.
She assigned Poppy an e-mail address full of underscores to ward off spam. It also wards off friends who can never remember the damn underscores.
But she deftly uses underscores in her passwords as well, something maybe most of us should try.

According to a new study, too many people have passwords that are way too obvious for hackers to figure out. About 20% of us use one of the 5,000 most common passwords. 5,000 may seem like a lot, but for a computer program running them repeatedly, it doesn't take long to try 5,000 possibilities.

The most popular passwords are 123456, 12345 and 123456789. In 4th place the incredibly idiotic: password.

A Big Ass is the Key to a Healthy Life

The kind of fat found in the hips and buttocks may actually help fight diabetes, a result that surprised Harvard doctors performing the research that produced the finding. Although belly fat is known to raise the risk of diabetes, subcutaneous fat injected into the abdomens of mice actually increased their sensitivity to insulin and even helped them lose weight, Reuters reports.

"We actually found it had a beneficial effect, and it was especially true when you put it inside the abdomen," the study's lead doctor said, referring to the subcutaneous fat. "It's an important result because not only does it say that not all fat is bad, but I think it points to a special aspect of fat where we need to do more research."

Here's a partial list of woman at no risk for diabetes:

Chase's Hero is a Male Chauvinist Pig

Turns out Mrs. Poop and I (and especially Mama Poop) have spent hundreds of dollars turning Chase into a misogynistic, right-wing autocrat.



According to a new study by Professor Shauna Wilton at the University of Alberta, Augustana, female characters are few and far between and the few female trains on the Island of Sodor are marginalized.
Wilton analyzed 23 episodes of “Thomas and Friends” and found only 8 female characters, compared to 41 males.
"The female characters do tend to be a bit sidelined," Wilton says. "The show comes out of a particularly historical time period when society was hierarchical and there was a blind following of authority. I want my daughter to think for herself."
The global Thomas brand of books, video games, movies and a TV series had its beginnings in 1943, when the Rev. Wilbert Awdry in Birmingham, England, started making up stories for his son, Christopher. His 26-book series recreated his boyhood fantasies of talking steam engines outside his home village of Box in Wiltshire.
Wilton concedes Thomas does include some valuable but messages but those messages include a "conservative political ideology that punishes individual initiative, opposes critique and change, and relegates females to supportive roles."
Only Emily, the first female steam engine, is part of the core "steam team," and she didn't arrive in the TV series until the seventh season.
Indeed, descriptions of those characters range from the coaches Annie and Clarabelle, who are old and faithful, to Emily, who is bossy and difficult to work with, to Mavis, an unreliable, feisty young diesel engine that had a lot to learn.
Daisy, the snobbish and highly strung diesel railcar, has been discontinued, and Henrietta, the faceless passenger coach, was nearly turned into a henhouse by the station master. The peripheral Rosie idolizes Thomas and mimics him. And like Rosie, Lady is smaller than the rest of the engines, particularly in comparison to burly Gordon.




I contacted Professor Wilton to ask for the entire study which I received and read. I've broken down her complaints about the show into three categories.

1) The male-female dynamic. Wilton has a point here. The show’s characters are mainly males and the few females in the cast are smaller physically or dependent on the males, as is the case for Annie and Clarabel. But that doesn’t mean something nefarious is going on here. I think it’s ok for kid’s show to have a majority of male characters, or more female characters but if her point is that not only are there fewer females, but they’re also marginalized, I can see that.
2) The show breeds a fear of authority. Wilton claims the show’s reverence for Sir Topham Hatt, the conductor of the railroad, discourages children from challenging authority. Once again she has the right information but draws the wrong conclusion. Sir Topham Hatt runs the railroad on the Island of Sodor, the engines should listen to him and take his word as law. I think, and I’m sure most parents and teachers would agree, respect for authority is an important lesson to teach kids. And if they need to learn to challenge those sacred figures it would probably be pretty easy to pick that up later in life.



3) The class system. Once again, Wilton’s analysis is absolutely right: there is class warfare between Thomas and the other steam engines (“steamies”) and the Diesel engines. But once again this doesn’t teach kids to be racists, it causes conflict which any TV show or story needs, and in the end is usually resolved with everyone working together and realizing each other’s usefulness.

In short Thomas may be a sexist pig who teaches children not to question and authority and to reject anyone different than them, but we already spent too much money on these damn toys to take them away now.

If Women Really Wanted Smart and Funny I'd be on the Cover of Magazines Instead of that Humorless Dolt Brad Pitt

A new study has found that ladies adore men who make them laugh.

According to the research, women think that funny men are smarter and more likely to be honest than more dour counterparts.

Women may have evolved to find intelligence an attractive quality because it suggests that a man will be a good provider for her and her children.

The study included 45 heterosexual women who were asked to read shorts descriptions of themselves compiled by 20 men, 10 of which were scored extremely funny and 10 as only slightly funny.

Then women were asked how intelligent and honest they thought that the men were and how likely they would be to go on to develop a friendship or a long-term relationship with them.

The findings show that men who used the funniest descriptions of themselves were thought to be significantly more intelligent than those who weren't as witty.

Funnier men were also seen as a better catch for a long-term relationship, according to the findings.

Could You Live Without The Poop?

A recent survey conducted by Intel asked people which they would rather give up for 2 weeks, sex or the internet. 46% of women said sex and 30% of men did. Those numbers seem really high but because like all these stupid surveys, this one is incredibly flawed. It failed to take into account that people use the internet for hours everyday. But normal people only have sex once every 2 weeks (at least that's what Mrs. Poop tells me) and for only 2 minutes at a time (at least that's what I tell Mrs. Poop).
But if you asked Poopheads, I'm pretty sure they'd all say they'd rather give up sex than the internet.

Maybe The Bull Just Wants to Fuck the Matador

Women look hotter in red. That's what a study done by Andrew Elliot, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, found.
They showed 150 heterosexul men (no homos or men with red-green color blindness allowed) a picture of a girl in either a red or blue shirt. Or the picture was framed in red, white, gray, green, or blue.



They were asked to rate the picture on a scale of 1 to 7 with 7 being the sexiest. The color red was worth an extra 1.25 points.

"We think that red, due to the association with hearts and Valentine's Day and lingerie and things like that, takes on a sexy meaning," says Elliot. "There's also a possibility -- a rather provocative possibility -- that there's a deeply embedded sort of tendency for heterosexual men to see red as an attraction cue because that's what happens in the wild."

I like this study and appreciate its finding, but all they had to do was ask Chris DeBurgh.

My Blood Pressure is 107/62

A smelly rotten-egg gas in farts controls blood pressure in mice, a new study finds.

The unpleasant aroma of the gas, called hydrogen sulfide, can be a little too familiar, as it is expelled by bacteria living in the human colon and eventually makes its way, well, out.

The new research found that cells lining mice's blood vessels naturally make the gas and this action can help keep the rodents' blood pressure low by relaxing the blood vessels to prevent hypertension (high blood pressure). This gas is "no doubt" produced in cells lining human blood vessels too, the researchers said.

Why I Love Soup So Much

Hardly a day goes by that I don't soup of some kind, even in the heat of summer. And hardly a day goes by that I don't feel socially isolated. Now I've come to learn that these two seemingly disparate trends actually have a causal relationship.

The cold shoulder is more than just a metaphor. A new study found that social isolation can actually make people feel cold.

Researchers wanted to learn just how icy loneliness can get. So two University of Toronto psychologists, Chen-Bo Zhong and Geoffrey Leonardelli, asked some subjects to remember a time when they felt socially excluded, such as being rejected from a club, while others recalled memories of being accepted into a group. Afterward, the researchers asked all the participants to estimate the temperature of the room, telling them this task was unrelated to the previous activity and that the building's maintenance staff simply wanted to know.

While estimates ranged from 54 degrees Fahrenheit to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, in general, those who had been remembering emotionally chilly times also literally felt chillier, even though the room's temperature remained constant during the experiment. People who had recalled feeling ostracized estimated the temperature to be about 71 degrees Fahrenheit, on average. Participants who were remembering the warm, fuzzy feeling of social inclusion felt the room to be a balmy 75 degrees Fahrenheit, on average. The discrepancy is a statistically significant difference, Zhong said.

"We found that the experience of social exclusion literally feels cold," Zhong said. "This may be why people use temperature-related metaphors to describe social inclusion and exclusion."

Craving hot coffee
In a second experiment, Zhong and Leonardelli had participants play a computer-simulated ball-tossing game in which some people were passed the ball more often than others, so some volunteers felt included and others felt excluded. Afterward, the participants had to rate the appeal of various foods and beverages, such as hot coffee, crackers, an ice-cold Coke, an apple and hot soup.

The unpopular players were much more likely to hanker for warm items such as soup and coffee than those who had just felt socially accepted. The findings imply that participants who had been feeling left out were also literally feeling left out in the cold, and wanted the warm foods to heat them up.

"It's striking that people preferred hot coffee and soup more when socially excluded," Leonardelli said. "Our research suggests that warm chicken soup may be a literal coping mechanism for social isolation."

The study is detailed in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science.

The researchers speculate that this link between temperature and social inclusion might arise when people are babies.

"For an infant, being closer to a caretaker brings warmth," Zhong said. "When you're a kid, being held by your mother means warmth, and being distant means coldness."

This connection continues throughout life, since when a person is in a room with 10 other people, the ambient temperature is warmer than when in a room alone.

"When we talk about metaphors, they're not just language; they're literally the way we experience the world," Zhong said.

I'm 6-Foot-2

Taller people are happier on average than shorter people, with each extra inch in height giving as much satisfaction as a four percent increase in income, according to a U.S. study.

Data from a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index study found taller people were more satisfied with their lives, more likely to report positive emotions like enjoyment and happiness, and less likely to report emotions like anger, sadness, and stress.

"On average, men who gave their lives the worst possible rating were more than three-quarters of an inch shorter than the average man," the researchers said.

The differences were found to be slightly less for women.

For some reason there are always studies like this that demonstrate taller people earn more money, seek more education and are just all-around better than short people.

Suckaz!

I Never Eat Soy

Eating a half serving a day of soy-based foods could be enough to significantly lower a man's sperm count, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
"What we found was men that consume the highest amounts of soy foods in this study had a lower sperm concentration compared to those who did not consume soy foods," said Dr. Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, whose study appears in the journal Human Reproduction.
Chavarro's team analyzed the intake of 15 soy-based foods in 99 men who went to a fertility clinic between 2000 and 2006.
They were asked how much and how often in the prior three months they had eaten soy-rich foods including: tofu, tempeh, tofu or soy sausages, bacon, burgers and mince, soy milk, cheese, yogurt and ice cream, and other soy products such drinks, powders and energy bars.
Men in the highest intake category had 41 million sperm per milliliter less than men who ate no soy foods. A normal sperm count ranges from 80 million and 120 million per milliliter, and a sperm count of 20 million per milliliter or below is considered low.
"It suggests soy foods could have some deleterious effect on the reproductive system and especially on sperm production," Chavarro said.

A Little Love Is All You Need

A survey of sex therapists concluded the optimal amount of time for sexual intercourse was 3 to 13 minutes. The findings, to be published in the May issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, strike at the notion that endurance is the key to a great sex life.

The time does not count foreplay, and intercourse that lasts from 1 to 2 minutes is "too short."

Researcher Eric Corty said he hoped to ease the minds of those who believe "more of something good is better, and if you really want to satisfy your partner, you should last forever."

The questions were not gender-specific, said Corty. But he said prior research has shown men and women want foreplay and sexual intercourse to last longer.

Dr. Irwin Goldstein, editor of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, cited a four-week study of 1,500 couples in 2005 that found the median time for sexual intercourse was 7.3 minutes. (Women in the study were armed with stopwatches.)

It's difficult for both older men and young men to make sexual intercourse last much longer, said Marianne Brandon, a clinical psychologist and director of Wellminds Wellbodies in Annapolis, Maryland.

"There are so many myths in our culture of what other people are doing sexually," Brandon said. "Most people's sex lives are not as exciting as other people think they are."