Fact O' The Day

[Magz]

my penis is tiny   

Thats why you need to start modding that 700 

[Krandall]

my brain is tiny   

At least it's proportionate to other organs on your body.

[Peelz]

jerks.

[Krandall]

"Frequent texting makes people less able to accept new words."


A University of Calgary researcher conducted a study on the effects of texting on language interpretation. The study provided students with a list of both real and invented words and polled them on their reading and texting habits. The more people texted, the less likely they were to accept these words as genuine (regardless of whether or not they were). The author of the study hypothesized that traditional print media exposes people to a wider variety of words, and thus equips them to interpret meanings for potential new words. Texting, on the other hand, usually only reinforces common words.

[dragonz]

jerks.

There you go, jerking off again.
Didn't momma tell ya that excessive wanking will make your brain & dick shrink???

[Peelz]

Nope. That info woulda been helpful around age 12.... Little late now

[Krandall]

"Women find it important for men they're dating to like their pets."


A University of Houston researcher polled 120 heterosexual couples about their closeness to their pets and their happiness with their relationships. Most of the volunteers (75%) were dog owners, and the researchers found that women were more likely to be happy with their boyfriends if the boyfriends were close to their pets. Men, conversely, didn't place much importance on their girlfriends' interest in their pets. Furthermore, men who said they had an especially close bond with their pets were happier with their relationships, regardless of how their girlfriends felt about the animal.

[Peelz]

"Women find it important for men they're dating to like their pets."


A University of Houston researcher polled 120 heterosexual couples about their closeness to their pets and their happiness with their relationships. Most of the volunteers (75%) were dog owners, and the researchers found that women were more likely to be happy with their boyfriends if the boyfriends were close to their pets. Men, conversely, didn't place much importance on their girlfriends' interest in their pets. Furthermore, men who said they had an especially close bond with their pets were happier with their relationships, regardless of how their girlfriends felt about the animal.

ya thats a big fat no 

[Krandall]

I think that's a record for broken records in one day.

[Krandall]

"Using lighter-colored plates can make you eat less."



A study in the journal Health Affairs set out to investigate the effect of apparent portion size on the amount people eat. Researchers found that up to one-third of diners at a Chinese restaurant were willing to eat a lower-calorie meal with half as much rice, even if the meal cost the same as the version with a full serving of rice (and weighing leftovers determined that regardless of which meal people opted for, they all wound up throwing away the same amount). Researcher Brian Wansink argued that the appearance of a full meal is more important to consumers than how much food is actually there, and his previous research has determined that people will serve 18% more pasta onto a red plate than a white one (the stark contrast makes them more aware of the volume of food). But if the pasta is an alfredo dish, the reverse is true.

[Krandall]

"Some of the days in 2009 were shorter than usual."


According to a researcher at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Earth spun slightly faster than its usual during a two-week period in 2009. Days are not perfectly uniform, and are affected by things like ocean currents. This natural influence was particularly pronounced in November 2009, when a slowdown in an Antarctic Ocean current markedly changed Earth's spin. This was one of several quirks in the ocean's behavior that year. 2009 also saw record-high pressures at the bottom of the ocean, as well as record-high surface temperatures for that region.

[Krandall]

"Handedness influences your perceptions of good and bad."


Cognitive scientist Daniel Casasanto has demonstrated what he dubs the "body-specificity hypothesis" -- in short, that our bodily quirks influence how we perceive, and judge, the rest of the world. Casasanto found through a series of experiments that, all other things being equal, people prefer things they encounter on the same side as their dominant hand. When asked to pick between two products, or to judge which of two alien figures seemed more trustworthy, people tended to choose the one that fell on their dominant side. The effect isn't permanent, though. Right-handers who had become handicapped and had to rely on their left hands switched preferences, as did right-handers who were (temporarily and artificially) handicapped in a lab setting.

[Krandall]

"Sugar helps with willpower."


Previous research has implied that sugar fuels your ability to exercise self-control and that exercising self-control depletes your blood glucose levels. However, a new study in Psychological Science paints a more complicated picture. In an experiment participants were asked to complete a self-control task, then to use (and not drink) a solution as though it were mouthwash. Half of the participants' solution was sweetened with sugar while the other half received solution that used an artificial sweetener. The participants who had rinsed with the sugar water performed better on a second self-control task than the other group, even though they ingested no sugar, and would have had no time to metabolize it even if they had. The restoration of their willpower, say researchers, was in the sensation of possible reward -- they hadn't actually restored any energy, but their brains anticipated that possibility enough to make them outperform their counterparts.

[Krandall]

"You can actually see food-related words more clearly when you're hungry."



A French study has demonstrated that hunger and satiety influence how people perceive the world at the most basic level and found that we react to cues before those signals even have time to be processed by the brain. The study, published in Psychological Science, asked participants to arrive for testing after hours of not eating, then sent some of the participants to get lunch, while the others simply left and returned without eating. The participants then watched words flashing on a computer screen for 1/300th of a second, just barely long enough for to perceive them. Hungry participants thought that food-related words appeared brighter and were better able to discern between them and similar-looking non-food words (like "gateau," meaning "cake," and "bateau," meaning "boat").

[Krandall]

"Women physically require more sleep than men."



Several unrelated studies have demonstrated that sleep deprivation has lasting adverse effects on women that are not seen in men. One study at the University of Warwick Medical School examined the sleep habits of 6,000 participants and found that women who sleep less than five hours a night are twice as likely to have high blood pressure, while men's blood pressure remains unchanged. Another study, this one at Duke University, studied the habits of 210 male and female participants in detail, and found that even when accounting for potential risk factors, women with poor sleep habits were more at risk for heart disease and diabetes, while men's risks were the same regardless of their sleep patterns.