Are animals shrinking?
"Melting ice, outbreaks of disease, more intense storms and more forest fires are just some of the effects scientists say will accompany human-caused climate change," LiveScience reports. "Scientists are now exploring another, perhaps more surprising, potential effect: shrinking animals. A new study has examined how warmer temperatures can result in smaller individuals within a species. This relationship between size and temperature change only holds for cold-blooded animals. … To warm-blooded creatures like humans, this might not sound like a big deal. But we make up only a tiny percentage of Earth's animals, and we rely upon cold-blooded creatures for food, to pollinate crops and for many other crucial, but perhaps not obvious, reasons. So, climate-influenced changes could have cascading effects."
Better-tasting sandwiches
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"Why do sandwiches taste better when someone else makes them?" asks The New York Times Magazine. "When you make your own sandwich, you anticipate its taste as you're working on it. And when you think of a particular food for a while, you become less hungry for it later. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, found that imagining eating M&M's makes you eat fewer of them. It's a kind of specific satiation, just as most people find room for dessert when they couldn't have another bite of their steak. The sandwich that another person prepares is not 'preconsumed' in the same way."
China's rush to urbanize
"This is the year China finally became an urban nation," The Guardian reports. "In April, the census revealed that 49.7 per cent of its 1.34 billion population was living in cities, compared with around a fifth as economic reforms got off the ground in 1982. By now, China's urbanites outnumber their country cousins. 'The process they have been going through over three decades took four or five decades in Japan and [South]Korea and 100 years in the West,' says Edward Leman, whose Chreod consultancy has advised numerous Chinese cities on development."
Regrettable tattoos
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Readers of BBC News Magazine wrote in with their examples after an article on tattoo remorse:
- “When I was in my early 20s, I got the barcode from a condom packet tattooed on my arm. I don’t regret it, but I do still wonder exactly what made me do it.”
- “I remember a workmate giving another worker a ‘home’ tattoo. He must be the only man in Scotland with the unique tattoo of SCOTTLAND (with two Ts) on his arm.”
- "I chose a unicorn and asked for it to be put on my backside. It hurt. There are an awful lot of nerve endings on your bottom. The tattooist cocked it up. I ended up with a unicorn with seven legs and a neck like a banana. I have never had it covered up and its only saving grace is that I never get to see it.”
- “I had a Pegasus inked on my arm at an early age; by the time I was 21, I realized I had a My Little Pony on my arm.”
Spotting sexy male librarians
"Attention all gentlemen thinking of dressing up as a sexy librarian for Halloween: Male sexy librarians look totally different from female sexy librarians," The New Yorker says. "No glasses. No hair in a bun with a pencil stuck through it. No cardigan. No pumps. In fact, clothing is optional. Props, however, are required: A book is best, but a dog, a barbell, a toothbrush or a KitchenAid mixer will do. A smile is nice, but not essential. … [T]e 12 men of the amazing 2012 Men of the Stacks calendar … are all professional librarians, and they are all, from the looks of it, extremely well-read."
Man-cave etiquette
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Contemplating man caves for Slate online magazine, Bryan Curtis writes: "To see how far men have come – or maybe how far they've retreated – we need to start at mid-century, at a proto-man cave: Toots Shor's eponymous saloon in New York. … Fleshy and obscene, Shor pulled in manly types – Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason; sports stars like Joe DiMaggio; sportswriters like Jimmy Cannon; even Chief Justice Earl Warren – to join his nocturnal party. As Shor liked to say, 'A bum who ain't drunk by midnight ain't tryin'.' Shor also enforced a male tribal code. To be one of his 'crumb bums,' you had to make frequent and tender declarations of friendship. You were expected to smother your ego. (Charlie Chaplin, enduring a 20-minute wait for a table, was told by Shor, 'Have a drink and be funny for the people.') And although he was happily married, Shor did not make his inner sanctum particularly woman-friendly. … Switch up a few particulars, and this is man caving today. What changed is that middle-aged male 'palship' – Shor's excellent phrase – is now practised on sofas. The saloon came home."
Thought du jour
"The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it 'Jumping up and down.' "
- Rita Rudner (1953-), U.S. comedian and writer