22. oktober 2007

Don't try to not think about it Try to stop thinking about green unicorns. Well, until now you probably didn't give that any thought at all. Chocolate works much the same way. Trying to cut out all thoughts of your favourite, fattening food may actually make you eat more, claims research. Women who tried to stop thinking about chocolate ate 50% more than those who were encouraged to talk about their cravings. This "rebound" effect could also apply to smokers, say the Hertfordshire University authors in Appetite journal. Pretty self-evident, really. 10:31:11 PM    comment []  trackback []

A majority of Afghans want foreign troops to stay Afghans support NATO: A strong majority of Afghans approve of the presence of NATO-led troops in their country, including from Canada, and want the foreign soldiers to remain to fight the Taliban and support reconstruction efforts. In a poll of Afghans conducted by Environics Research on behalf of The Globe and Mail, the CBC and La Presse, respondents expressed optimism about the future, strong support for the government of President Hamid Karzai and appreciation for the work being done by NATO countries in improving security. In Kandahar, where the Taliban is stronger and violence more pervasive, support for the foreign troops was weaker, but respondents still want the soldiers to stay. According to the survey, conducted between Sept. 17 and 24 with a sample of 1,578 men and women, 60 per cent said the presence of foreigners in the country was a good thing. Only 16 per cent said it was a bad thing, while 22 per cent said it was equally good and bad. Again, reality vs media fiction. Link via Hablog. 7:36:21 PM    comment []  trackback []

Study: Feminists are the best lovers The stereotype of self-declared feminist women may have been shot down: Pop­u­lar stereo­types of fem­i­nists as un­at­trac­tive and sex­u­ally un­ap­peal­ing are wrong—in fact fem­i­nism may im­prove ro­man­tic rela­t­ion­ships, a new stu­dy sug­gests. The find­ings, by Lau­rie Rud­man and Ju­lie Phe­lan of Rut­gers Un­ivers­ity in Pis­cat­away, N.J., ap­pear this week in the re­search jour­nal Sex Roles. Rud­man and Phe­lan sur­veyed 242 Amer­i­can col­lege stu­dents and 289 old­er adults. They ex­am­ined peo­ple’s per­cep­tion of their own fem­i­nism and its link to rela­t­ion­ship health, meas­ured by a com­bina­t­ion of over­all rela­t­ion­ship qual­ity, agree­ment about gen­der equa­l­ity, rela­t­ion­ship sta­bil­ity and sex­u­al sat­is­fac­tion. Fem­i­nism was linked to health­i­er heterosex­u­al rela­t­ion­ships for wom­en, they found, while men with fem­i­nist part­ners re­ported more sta­ble rela­t­ion­ships and great­er sex­u­al sat­is­fac­tion. Just don't tell them they are sexy when they're angry! I first found this story on the Norwegian science news site Forskning.no. It has been surprisingly under-reported elsewhere. PS: More details. I wonder if the researchers made a difference between women who are self-defined feminists (which may well be most younger women) and those defined as a feminist by others. Asking the 'right' question often give you the answer you seek. 7:25:47 PM    comment []  trackback []

- Difference between media and reality on Iraq 'a chasm' Michael Yon: All describe the bizarro-world contrast between what most Americans seem to think is happening in Iraq versus what is really happening in Iraq. Knowing this disconnect exists and experiencing it directly are two separate matters. It’s like the difference between holding the remote control during the telecast of a volcanic eruption on some distant island (and then flipping the channel), versus running for survival from a wretch of molten lava that just engulfed your car. I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth. The MSM has been remarkably quiet about Iraq lately, which is a good indication things are going quite well. That is always bad news for journalists. 7:18:36 PM    comment []  trackback []

NASA: Aviation data too scary for publication NASA conducted a safety survey of airline pilots, but is refusing to make the data public. NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly. Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers. The Associated Press learned about the NASA results from one person familiar with the survey who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss them. A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits. I'm sure the disclosure that the facts are too scary to tell the public is really going to work wonders for consumer confidence in airtravel security! There are a few leaks, apparently. Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many bird strikes, near mid-air collisions and runway incursions as other government monitoring systems show, according to a person familiar with the results who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. The survey also revealed higher-than-expected numbers of pilots who experienced "in-close approach changes" — potentially dangerous, last-minute instructions to alter landing plans. Where's the whistleblowers when you need them? 5:35:38 PM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2007 Jan Haugland. Last update: 02.11.2007; 20:18:36.