Daily chart: American birth rates. Just over 4m babies were born in America in 2010, some 3% less than the previous year. Women aged 40-44 were the only age group that had more babies in 2010 than in 2009, and the birth rate for teenagers fell to a record low.
What about the math that saved Neil Armstrong from having to pay for Michael Collins’ portion of that extra-large basket of wings, because he SAID he only ate 5, but he was really just miffed about the “stay in the capsule, Mike, just watch the capsule” thing? How much will you pay for that?!
(via jtotheizzoe)
life:
Sit back, relax, and take a look through our Week’s Best Photos.
Pictured: A trio of King penguins pose by the coast along Saint Andrews Bay, South Georgia Island, 400 miles from civilization in the South Atlantic Ocean.
13C is the 1%!
Top-secret Obama security detail found lying in a gutter
Somebody’s getting a stern talking to: In a kind of amazing story that, for some reason, absolutely nobody is reporting, a classified copy of President Obama’s security detail was discovered lying in a gutter outside Australia’s parliament on Wednesday. The 120-page document contained seating arrangements of the presidential motorcade, and details of how exactly the Secret Service goes about protecting the president. Thankfully, it was discovered by reporter Dylan Welch who, as one would expect, wrote an article about it (after the president left the country, which he was visiting as part of his tour of the Asia Pacific) . But what if it had fallen into the wrong hands? Coming days after a man was charged with attempting to assassinate the president, this doesn’t look make anybody look good. The White House hasn’t commented on the incident. source
(Source: shortformblog)
The Science Behind Four Loko
It turns out it’s not the alcohol and caffeine that gets you; it’s the psychology.
For one thing, caffeine doesn’t seem to affect the way that alcohol gets absorbed by the body. Moreover, many drugs, including alcohol, are known to be more potent if they are taken in an unusual context. In a 1976 paper in Science, Siegel termed this the “situational specificity of tolerance.” Environmental variables ranging from the room where a drug is administered to flavor cues can influence an individual’s drug-related tolerance. What this comes down to is classical Pavlovian conditioning. The body of a social drinker learns to prepare for the alcohol in response to the environment, before the alcohol is even ingested. Siegel’s argument is that people became especially drunk after drinking Four Loko because of the unexpected way in which it was presented: it doesn’t actually taste like alcohol.
Canada’s new plastic $100 bill is all tricked out:
This week, our friend to the north introduced the first in its new line of all-plastic notes — a cool $100 bill made out of a single sheet of plastic polymer and tricked out with all kinds of high-tech security features.
In a statement, the Bank of Canada said that the new notes will last twice as long as paper money and will also be recycled, which makes them generally greener (even though the $100 bill is kind of yellowish in color).
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
It’s like Orwellian Double-Speak….