Brand X Pictures
Reward teachers early
"With budgets for education tightening … it pays to get the best performance out of teachers," says The Boston Globe. "Economists may have found a way to do just that. They conducted an experiment at a poor, minority school district near Chicago where they randomly assigned some teachers to receive end-of-year bonuses based on student improvement, while other teachers received upfront bonuses that could be revoked at the end of the year if student improvement was below average. In other words, the only difference was the timing of the bonus. There were 'large and statistically significant gains' on math test scores when bonuses were paid upfront, but not when bonuses were paid at the end of the year. Thus, the prospect of having to give back money they had already received was more motivating for teachers than the prospect of getting money."
Mixology at the golf club
"A new scandal is brewing at a Long Island country club where an ex-bartender claimed he was ordered to refill top-shelf liquor bottles with the cheaper stuff," reports United Press International. "The claim was the latest to roil the Tam O'Shanter Country Club in Brookville, N.Y., where other employees recently said members were sometimes accompanied on the course by prostitute and bikini-clad strippers. … The New York Post said the alleged shell game irked the membership more than the tales about the ladies of the links. 'Hookers and strippers don't really surprise me, but I'm furious to hear they've been serving me cheap booze,' one incensed member told the newspaper."
Whales are big mixologists
"It's hard not to be moved by the magnificent sight of whales as they hoist their massive frames from the sea and then fall back into the waves with a mighty splash," says Our Amazing Planet. "But all that splashing is just a fraction of a whale's journey, which is good for more than just show. Underneath the waves, nutrients such as nitrogen and iron are moved and mixed around the ocean by the beasts as they surface from hunting in the deep. Contrary to previous belief, whales and other marine animals may play a major role in the worldwide transport of nutrients … A 2006 study by Florida State University researcher William Dewar calculated that animals and other organisms are responsible for one-third of the mixing of the ocean, without which the sea would stagnate and likely turn into a virtually lifeless soup within a few thousand years."
Fifty shades of traffic lights
"A blow-up sex doll is being used as a new form of traffic-calming measure in China," says Orange Co. UK. "Annoyed that local police were not catching speeding motorists outside her home in Ningbo, Lin Chen took matters into her own hands. The 67-year-old bought a blow-up sex doll and dressed [it] in sexy red underwear to make motorists slow down to get a better look. 'There are a set of traffic lights near my house and the cars just shoot through them as fast as they can. It's very dangerous,' explained Ms. Chen. 'The police aren't interested so I bought the doll and tied it to the tree. I thought that drivers would slow down if I could give them something worth looking at,' she added." Police admit that accident figures have dropped since the homeowner made the dummy.
Catching up on insomnia
"Can't sleep? You're not alone," says Psych Central. "New research shows that the levels of sleep-related problems in the developing world are approaching those seen in developed nations, linked to an increase of depression and anxiety. According to an analysis of sleep problems in African and Asian countries by researchers at the Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick, [UK], an estimated 150 million adults are suffering from sleep-related problems across the developing world. Researchers said the 16.6 per cent of the population report insomnia and other severe sleep disturbances in the countries surveyed, which is quite close to the 20 per cent found in Canada and the U.S."
Tools made us human?
"Our relationship with tools dates back millions of years," writes William Davidow at Spectrum.ieee.org, "and anthropologists still debate whether it was the intelligence of human-apes that enabled them to create tools or the creation of tools that enabled them to become intelligent. In any case, everyone agrees that after those first tools had been created, our ancestors' intelligence coevolved with the tools. In the process our forebears' jaws became weaker, their digestive systems slighter, and their brains heavier. … And those brains, augmented by tools, more than make up for any diminishment in guts and muscle. Indeed, it's been a great evolutionary tradeoff: There are seven billion people but only a few hundred thousand chimpanzees."
Thought du jour
"The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man, to idols of flesh and blood."
George Bernard Shaw
(1865-1950), Irish playwright