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Curious Times No. 214
October 16, 2003THERE ARE WAY TOO MANY RESEARCH GRANTS OUT THERE
The good folks from the Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com) have released the winners of this year’s Ig Noble Awards, which are handed out each year to scientific studies of things which are probably best left unstudied. Among the many "winners" lie these gems: the award in physics goes to the authors of a report titled "An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces"; in medicine, a report titled "Navigation-Related Structural Change In the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers," (which argued that the brains of London’s cab drivers grow larger due to the complexity driving that city’s road network); in biology, the discovery of the first documented case of "homosexual necrophilia" in the Mallard duck species, by a scientist who came upon a dead duck being raped by another male duck, and who was kind enough to post pictures at www.nmr.nl/deins815.htm. More brilliant scientific advances included a researcher who answered such pressing questions as "What percentage of young people wear baseball caps with the peak facing to the rear rather than to the front?" and "What percentage of shoppers exceed the number of items permitted in a supermarket's express checkout lane?" And finally, my personal favorite, a study which had chickens pecking at the pictures of various people and which concluded that chickens prefer beautiful humans. But then, doesn’t everybody?HOSPITALS CAN KILL YOU
A follow up study to a 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine which found that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die from medical errors in hospitals each year has simply confirmed that preventable medical errors are a huge sources of death and illness in hospital patients. The latest study is from the Agency for Healthcare Research, which analyzed data on 18 complications caused by medical errors. Their findings showed that at least 32,000 hospital deaths are caused each year in America, as well as over $9 billion in extra costs associated with extended hospital stays. One of the most common mistakes you can expect in a hospital is having medical objects left inside your body after surgery. (MSNBC)THE DARK AGES CONTINUE
Sex and the Holy City, a BBC documentary about the sexual opinions held by those who rule the Vatican, has revealed that Catholic Church leaders are telling their followers that condoms cannot stop the AIDS virus because of tiny holes in condoms through which the HIV virus can easily pass. This blatant lie is only the latest weapon of the church to stop proper contraceptives in developing countries, most of which already have outrageous levels of HIV infected citizens. The World Health Organization has spoken out to condemn the Vatican’s views, saying that their scientific research shows that "intact condoms... are essentially impermeable to particles the size of STD pathogens including the smallest sexually transmitted virus..." In response, the Vatican’s Cardinal Alfonso Turjillo said simply "they are wrong about that..." The church continues to condemn condom use as it "breaks the link between sex and procreation," and "promotes promiscuity." (The Guardian)BE HAPPY YOU’RE NOT RICH
New Scientist has published the results of a worldwide survey into the levels of personal happiness and satisfaction and confirmed the old cliche that money can’t buy happiness. In fact, researchers who worked on the "World Values Survey" concluded that the desire for material goods is actually a "happiness suppressant." True happiness and satisfaction with life varied from country to country, and depended on what each society held to be most important. For example, personal success and self-expression was seen as most important in the U.S., whereas the Japanese valued fulfilling the expectations of family and society more highly. Overall, the study found that Nigerians were the happiest people on our planet, followed by the people of Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico. The least happy people are Romanians, who share their misery with folks from Russian and Armenia. (New Scientist)MORE DEPRESSING STATISTICS
Okay, so money can’t buy happiness, but it probably beats living in squalor in one of the world’s worst slums. The United Nations recently released a report titled Slums: Global Report On Human Settlements 2003, which claims the number of people living in slums has reached almost one billion, and projects that number to double in the next 30 years. The report estimates that 924 million people currently live in slums, making up 31.6% of the world's urban population. Without radical changes, the report warns that by 2050 the number will be about 3.5 billion slumdwellers, more than half of the projected six billion urban population. (BBC)DON’T MOVE OR I’LL SQUAWK
The parrot of a retired police officer in Kiev, Ukraine, foiled the plans of three thieves last week by yelling "Stop! I’ll shoot" when they broke into his apartment. When the man returned to his home, he found the thieves laying face down on the floor with their hands behind their heads. Later they told police that when they entered the flat, they heard a voice scream "Stop! I’ll shoot! On the ground!" (Ananova)LIKE TAKING CANDY FROM A BABY
It took only a few days to find a way to beat the latest piece of anti-piracy software designed to stop music fans from copying music from CDs onto their computers. Princeton graduated student John Halderman posted some helpful advice on his website last week stating that holding down the "shift" key while putting a CD in your computer would disable the encryption software on the CD. He also mentioned that computers running Linux and older Macs cannot read the software and so could copy the CDs freely. (Yahoo News)
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