I was wondering if this matter would gain traction:

Snacking at the wheel can affect vehicle control to a similar extent as using a hands-free phone, and is actually a causal factor in more crashes. So far, though, there has not been a controlled empirical study of this problem.

Source: “Crash dieting: The effects of eating and drinking on driving performance”
Accident Analysis & Prevention, Vol. 40, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 142-148

What Google says about religions

Tech news here on Google’s auto-suggest feature. Algorithms analyze and rank popular views of various religions.

Forgetting is the friend of learning

Psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. NYTimes did not place this story on top of the front page??!!

Tips: Instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing. Spacing works: An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now improves recall.

“We walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”

Overview of prescription drug use

This stumps me. Half of us buying prescriptions hides many factors no chart can reveal.

September report from Centers for Disease Control:

• The percentage of Americans who used at least one prescription drug in the past month increased from 44% in 1999-2000 to 48% in 2007-2008.
• The percentage of persons who used two or more prescription drugs increased from 25% in 1999-2000 to 31% in 2007-2008.
• The percentage of persons who used five or more prescription drugs increased from 6% in 1999-2000 to 11% in 2007-2008.

Methinks I’ll blame this on Bush too. Why not? Those years, his watch. Spending for prescription drugs was $234.1 billion in 2008, which was more than double what was spent in 1999.

Leveraging dream factories

Village Voice. Is it, was it always, real estate schemes?

“Scientology is supported, in fact, by a few thousand wealthy members. Some of these, like Tom Cruise, Nancy Cartwright, Craig Jensen (Diskeeper), Sky Dayton (Earthlink) and a few others are very wealthy and contribute millions.

Under-reporting outright perversion

Some find these numbers to be incredible.

The Department of Justice estimated that 25 percent of college women will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate.

Minimum 97,000 cases of sexual assault or date rape each year. Study [pdf] from the Department of Justice.

Stop the world. Do not sleep. Fix this.

Washington Post tidbits as the story is told:

…the mine’s [original] stash of emergency food – two spoonfuls of tuna and half a glass of milk per man every 48 hours …finally through the roof of the miners’ shelter, the workers had run out of food and had not eaten in 48 hours.

…the men on a 12-hour shift schedule, using the headlights of trucks to simulate sunlight.

…a new shelter, a drier area about 200 yards farther down the shaft. They had already spent days reinforcing the roof.

Drilling will spill 18,000 gallons of water into their chambers …plans to construct drainage and holding pools and canals to shunt water away from the miners’ living quarters.

Plebs and Plutocrats

I searched many pages failing to find the original link, faint praise for the wonderfully silly photo of a dressed chicken. But surprise, I did discover that Mary the Genji-robed chicken received the New Yorker’s 2009 Critterati Award.

A sleeping bag that makes it easy to ‘go’ in the cold.

They call it the Dreamwalker.

It even has pockets.

HA!

An audit of the regrets of the dying:

Number 5: ‘I wish that I had let myself be happier’.
Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice.