Apologize to her
“Women who are starved of an apology for rude or hurtful behaviour suffer an increase in blood pressure which can raise the risk of a heart attack or stroke, a study found,” The Daily Telegraph reports. “But those who hear a well-timed ‘sorry’ calm down more quickly, with their blood pressure returning to normal 20 per cent faster, the research showed. Conversely, a man’s blood pressure takes 20 per cent longer to recover after an apology – suggesting men become more worked up after hearing an admission of guilt.” Researchers at the University of Massachusetts medical school measured the diastolic blood pressure of 29 men and 59 women. Both groups were asked individually to complete a math test in five minutes. They were interrupted three times during the test and angrily told to hurry up. After the test each person was told, “You’re obviously not good enough.” Two minutes later, researchers apologized for their rudeness to half of the men and women. The women who received an apology calmed down faster, while the men who received one became more agitated.
Rocking the youth vote
“Five feet tall, with dangly purple earrings and funky sneakers she decorated with a marker, Rachel Lester is one of the city’s newest elected representatives,” Kate Linthicum writes for the Los Angeles Times. “At 15, she’s also the youngest. Rachel trounced her competition in this month’s South Robertson Neighbourhoods Council election, pulling in 144 votes. Her opponent, a man with two children and a college degree, mustered only 13.” Her campaign made the most of Facebook and she clinched her victory with the youth vote. “When a few teenagers do something,” she said, “a lot of teenagers do something.”
Shaking the Earth?
“A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes,” Associated Press reports. “… ‘Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes,’ Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Women in the Islamic Republic are required by law to cover from head to toe, but many, especially the young, ignore some of the more strict codes and wear tight coats and scarves pulled back that show much of the hair.”
A kleptopus
When Victor Huang went freediving off New Zealand last week to take some underwater video, he bumped into an octopus who took one look at his camera and made off with it, The Huffington Post reports. “The camera itself is sort of bright blue and metallic and shiny, and I think it just saw something a bit different and unique and wanted to collect it,” Mr. Huang said in an appearance on The Early Show. Aware that the camera would probably have some amazing footage, he pursued the octopus for five minutes before he stuck his hand into its mouth and pried the camera free. An octopus beak can crack open rocks, but for Mr. Huang, the risk was worth it. “I honestly felt completely safe with the octopus,” he said.
Inside the whale
Biologists in Washington State who examined a grey whale that died after getting stranded on a West Seattle beach report it had a large amount of garbage in its stomach, including a pair of sweatpants, a golf ball, more than 20 plastic bags, small towels, duct tape and surgical gloves.
Source: The Huffington Post
New roadside hazard
“The toxic garbage, often in clumps, blends in easily with the more mundane litter along rural roads and highways [in Elkhart, Ind.]: used plastic water bottles, old tubing, dirty gloves, empty packs of medicine,” The New York Times reports. “But it is a nuisance with truly explosive potential, and evidence of something more than simply a disregard for keeping the streets clean. ‘The way to get rid of your meth lab these days is to put it in a plastic bag, then throw it out the car window,’ said William Wargo, the chief investigator for the prosecuting attorney’s office in Elkhart County. … Law enforcement officials in several states say that addicts and dealers have become expert at making methamphetamine on the move, often in their cars, and they discard their garbage and chemical byproducts as they go, in an effort to destroy evidence and evade the police.”
More phones than thrones
India has 545 million working cellphones thanks to its booming emerging economy, a number expected to reach one billion by 2015, the UN University says. That exceeds the number of people who have access to toilet or sanitation facilities – about 366 million of the one-billion-strong population.
Source: Indo-Asian News Service
Thought du jour
“To be a woman is something so strange, so confusing and so complicated that only a woman could put up with it.”
– Soren Kierkegaard
