Curvy Women Smarter?
Not everyone agrees with the conclusions found by a recent US study discussed on BCC News Health but for those of us who are curve endowed, it gives some hope . . . 🙂
Curvy women may be a clever bet
Women with curvy figures are likely to be brighter than waif-like counterparts and may well produce more intelligent offspring, a US study suggests.
Researchers studied 16,000 women and girls and found the more voluptuous performed better on cognitive tests – as did their children.
The bigger the difference between a woman’s waist and hips the better.
Researchers writing in Evolution and Human Behaviour speculated this was to do with fatty acids found on the hips.
In this area, the fat is likely to be the much touted Omega-3, which could improve the woman’s own mental abilities as well as those of her child during pregnancy.
Men respond to the double enticement of both an intelligent partner and an intelligent child, the researchers at the Universities of Pittsburgh and California said.
The findings appear to be borne out in the educational attainments of at least one of the UK’s most famous curvaceous women, Nigella Lawson, who graduated from Oxford.
But experts are not convinced by the findings.
“On the fatty deposits being related to intelligence front, it’s very hard to detangle that from other factors, such as social class, for instance, or diet,” said Martin Tovee of Newcastle University.
“And much as we logically like the idea that men are interested in the waist to hip ratio, it actually features relatively low down the list of feature males look for in a potential partner.”
Drive to Reduce Traffic Deaths in Qatar
I am a great admirer of Brig Mohamed Abduallah al-Malki. I remember once, when Qatar was much smaller, when he printed his phone number in the paper and told people to call him when they saw drivers misbehaving. What a brave man, a committed man, and a courageous man.
I admire his persistence, his sincere desire to bring down traffic deaths in Qatar.
Yesterday, as I was driving, I noticed most drivers slowing down – when that happens, you know there are new speed cameras set up, and you slow down too. You slow down – or most of us do. There are a visible few who seem to believe that the rules do not apply to them.
There is a persistent rumor that traffic fatalities fell dramatically when the new laws were introduced – and enforced – equally – against all law breakers. As long as laws are enforced equally against ALL nationalities, the death rate will lower.
To me, it is a huge national tragedy that so many young Qatteri men lose their lives, or are seriously physically damaged, in traffic accidents that could have been prevented. It is like a huge national resource, just wasted, all that potential, gone.
This is from today’s Gulf Times
Drive to raise students’ road safety awareness
Traffic department and IBQ officials at the launch of the campaign yesterday
By Riham el-Houshi
The ‘Schools without Accidents’ campaign launched yesterday for the second year running by the Traffic Department is aimed at cutting the number of road accidents in Qatar by half, a top official has said. The campaign aims at raising awareness about road safety among students.
Traffic Department expert and general co-ordinator of the National Campaign for Road Accident Prevention, Brig Mohamed Abduallah al-Malki, said “there has been a decrease in the number of deaths in 2009 but a final picture will emerge only by December.”
The number of road accident deaths in the country fell by 20% in 2008 compared to the previous year. The total number of road accidents last year was 20,455, with approximately 200 deaths, according to the Traffic Department.
The initiative, launched within the framework of the ‘National Campaign for Road Accidents Prevention,’ is a programme to raise awareness on the importance of road safety among students across Qatar.
Al-Malki added that 35% of road accident victims were pedestrians who were usually expatriates.
“Therefore the campaign this year will focus on expatriate schools as well as local ones,” al-Malki pointed out.
The campaign will be funded by the International Bank of Qatar (IBQ), who has given QR500,000 to the Traffic Department. The bank donated QR250,000 to the cause last year. According to al-Malki, the money will be spent on brochures, signboards, and competitions.
“Too many of our young people never have the chance to realise life’s opportunities as their lives are cut tragically short by preventable road accidents,” said IBQ managing director George Nasra.
“We can and must do even more to reduce the number of traffic accidents and fatalities – especially among our youth.”
A recent survey conducted by Gulf Times had shown that 41% of the respondents feel that Qatar was the worst country to drive because of the number of accidents caused by reckless driving.
Economic Turnaround Slow
Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in America, and one of the humblest, has written an Op-Ed piece for The New York Times (you can read the entire piece by clicking here) on the tiny signs of economic upturn and what they might forecast for the near and medium future. It makes fascinating reading – solutions come at a cost, and he spells out the costs.
One blogger jumps from this to forecast a turnaround in the real estate market. Not so fast, I think. There is a huge demographic factor, a huge bulge of the population stepping out of the productive work-force and into retirement, a population which has largely lived large – for today – with little thought to the retirement years.
Those who planned, and squirreled away their monies into investments, into businesses – have also been hit hard. Turnarounds take time, and even so, there is a cost. Not all will recover what they have lost.
Many of this aging bulge will be paring down their expectations and paring down their lifestyles. They will be paring down their spending, except for health care. I don’t think we have a clue what that is going to look like.
The Greenback Effect
By WARREN E. BUFFETT
Published: August 18, 2009
Omaha
IN nature, every action has consequences, a phenomenon called the butterfly effect. These consequences, moreover, are not necessarily proportional. For example, doubling the carbon dioxide we belch into the atmosphere may far more than double the subsequent problems for society. Realizing this, the world properly worries about greenhouse emissions.
The butterfly effect reaches into the financial world as well. Here, the United States is spewing a potentially damaging substance into our economy — greenback emissions.
To be sure, we’ve been doing this for a reason I resoundingly applaud. Last fall, our financial system stood on the brink of a collapse that threatened a depression. The crisis required our government to display wisdom, courage and decisiveness. Fortunately, the Federal Reserve and key economic officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations responded more than ably to the need.
They made mistakes, of course. How could it have been otherwise when supposedly indestructible pillars of our economic structure were tumbling all around them? A meltdown, though, was avoided, with a gusher of federal money playing an essential role in the rescue.
The United States economy is now out of the emergency room and appears to be on a slow path to recovery. But enormous dosages of monetary medicine continue to be administered and, before long, we will need to deal with their side effects. For now, most of those effects are invisible and could indeed remain latent for a long time. Still, their threat may be as ominous as that posed by the financial crisis itself.
To understand this threat, we need to look at where we stand historically. If we leave aside the war-impacted years of 1942 to 1946, the largest annual deficit the United States has incurred since 1920 was 6 percent of gross domestic product. This fiscal year, though, the deficit will rise to about 13 percent of G.D.P., more than twice the non-wartime record. In dollars, that equates to a staggering $1.8 trillion. Fiscally, we are in uncharted territory.
Because of this gigantic deficit, our country’s “net debt” (that is, the amount held publicly) is mushrooming. During this fiscal year, it will increase more than one percentage point per month, climbing to about 56 percent of G.D.P. from 41 percent. Admittedly, other countries, like Japan and Italy, have far higher ratios and no one can know the precise level of net debt to G.D.P. at which the United States will lose its reputation for financial integrity. But a few more years like this one and we will find out.
An increase in federal debt can be financed in three ways: borrowing from foreigners, borrowing from our own citizens or, through a roundabout process, printing money. Let’s look at the prospects for each individually — and in combination.
You can read the rest HERE
Islamic Crescents’ Observation Post
You can visit this very cool site, Islamic Crescents’ Observation Post, “to know the crescent visibility of the current month, the locations from which you can see the crescent, where the crescent was actually seen, the official month start in different Islamic countries and much more….”
Not Good News: More Foreclosures in USA
U.S. home foreclosures set another record in July
Thu Aug 13, 2009 12:11am Reuters
By Lynn Adler
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. home loans failed at a record pace in July despite ongoing federal and state programs to avoid foreclosures, which have severely strained housing and the economy.
Foreclosure activity jumped 7 percent in July from June and 32 percent from a year earlier as one in every 355 households with a loan got a foreclosure filing, RealtyTrac said on Thursday.
Filings — including notices of default, auction and bank repossession — have escalated with unemployment.
“July marks the third time in the last five months where we’ve seen a new record set for foreclosure activity,” James J. Saccacio, RealtyTrac’s chief executive, said in a statement.
“Despite continued efforts by the federal government and state governments to patch together a safety net for distressed homeowners, we’re seeing significant growth in both the initial notices of default and in the bank repossessions.”
More than 360,000 households with loans drew a foreclosure filing in July, a record dating back to January 2005, when RealtyTrac started tracking monthly activity.
Notices of default, auction or repossession have reached nearly 2.3 million in the first seven months of the year — with more than half a million bank repossessions, the Irvine, California-based company said.
Making timely payments keeps getting more harder for borrowers who have lost their jobs or seen their wages cut.
The unemployment rate is 9.4 percent and President Barack Obama has said he expects it will hit 10 percent.
Obama’s housing rescue is gaining traction in altering terms of loans for struggling borrowers, but slowly.
Earlier this month the U.S. Treasury Department detailed the progress of the top servicers in modifying loans and prodded them to step up efforts to stem foreclosures.
SUN BELT STILL SUFFERING
States where sales and prices surged most in the five-year housing boom early this decade remain hardest hit.
California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada accounted for almost 57 percent of total U.S. foreclosure activity in July.
Illinois had the fifth-highest total filings, spiking nearly 35 percent from June, in an example of how moratoriums often delay rather than cure an inevitable loan failure.
Default notices spiked by 86 percent in July, from artificially low levels the prior two months. A state law enacted on April 5 gave delinquent borrowers up to 90 extra days before foreclosure started, RealtyTrac said.
Michigan’s foreclosure activity fell 39 percent in July from June, mostly due to a 66 percent drop in scheduled auctions. A state law that took effect July 6 freezes foreclosure proceedings an extra 90 days for homeowners who commit to work on a loan modification plan.
Other states with the highest foreclosure filing totals last month included Texas, Georgia, Ohio and New Jersey.
Nevada had the highest state foreclosure rate for the 31st straight month, with one in every 56 properties getting a filing, or more than six times the national average.
Initial notices of default fell 18 percent in the month, with a new Nevada law taking effect on July 1 requiring lenders to offer mediation to homeowners facing foreclosure. Scheduled auctions and bank repossessions each jumped more than 20 percent, however, boosting overall foreclosure activity in the state by 4 percent from June.
California, Arizona, Florida, Utah, Idaho, Georgia, Illinois, Colorado and Oregon were the other states with the highest foreclosure rates.
(Editing by Kenneth Barry)
Things are turning around in the USA, but these foreclosures were already in the pipeline, and more are coming due principally to people borrowing more money than they could really afford, and people who have lost jobs and can no longer pay their mortgage.
Now I am going to sound like your MOTHER: Do not take an adjustable rate mortgage. Fix your credit, get a good score, and take the very best 15 or 30 year FIXED mortgage you can get, and before you buy, make sure that you figure taxes and insurance as well as the monthly mortgage and interest when figuring your monthly payment. Make sure you can still eat, and have a little left over for emergency car repairs. It is so much better to live in a house that you can afford than to lose everything you have invested in a house you can’t afford.
If you get into trouble, talk to your lender right away. Lenders do not want to foreclose; it is in their interest as well as your own to find a way to allow you to reduce payments for a while to keep the relationship on track. There is some flexibility. Negotiate.
Stat Bump
There are a lot of factors in blogging that I don’t control. I have no control over the policies of the countries I live in. I have no control over who might like my posts and tell their friends. And I have no control over what posts might tickle interest among blog readers.
Kuwait has a lively, active blogging community, even in the face of competition from FaceBook and Twitter. Many bloggers have gone inactive, working in new areas, and have come back to blogging. Leaving Kuwait, moving to Doha, I lost about 300 – 500 regular viewers per day. I know, I know, some of you found the sunrise-over-the-Gulf daily photos SO so boring, but there were Kuwaitis all over the world who checked in just to see what Kuwait looked like each day, and having been in their position (I still check Seattle every day, and Pensacola) I know how they feel.
Some posts I consider “filler.” Maybe I can’t think of anything to say, so I share a piece of news that interests me. Or I ask a question. Posts I just tapped off and posted without giving it a lot of thought then take off, and over the months and years maintain a steady popularity. The posts I like the best are posts where my readers have stepped in, commented and we’ve all learned more about something.
At Halloween, I had my all time high stat bump – on an article I had written two years earlier. Last night, I watched the numbers climb irrationally on a news article on the Perseids – and oh, by the way, even though last night was the peak, they are still out there, and if you can find a quiet, light free spot, you are in for a thrill. I remember one year, AdventureMan and I headed for Clearwater Beach, and it was like Spring Break except it was dark, what a hoot! Everyone had blankets or beach loungers, laying out flat, looking up at the sky – with all their clothes on! It was night!
This is what I could see this morning:
Ah well, coming up are Friday and Saturday, the two worst-stat days of the week. Some days I don’t even bother blogging on Saturday!
Have you ever had an irrational stat bump? Did anyone in Kuwait or Doha go out last night to watch the Perseids? Any luck?
China Trusts Prostitutes More than Chinese Politicians
LLLOOOLLLL, thank you, BBC News for livening up the deadly August news scene:
China ‘trusts prostitutes more’
China’s prostitutes are better-trusted than its politicians and scientists, according to an online survey published by Insight China magazine.
The survey found that 7.9% of respondents considered sex workers to be trustworthy, placing them third behind farmers and religious workers.
“A list like this is at the same time surprising and embarrassing,” said an editorial in the state-run China Daily.
Politicians were far down the list, closer to scientists and teachers.
Insight China polled 3,376 Chinese citizens in June and July this year.
“The sex workers’ unexpected prominence on this list of honour… is indeed unusual,” said the China Daily editorial.
“At least [the scientists and officials] have not slid into the least credible category which consists of real estate developers, secretaries, agents, entertainers and directors,” the editorial said.
Soldiers came in fourth place.
I can’t help but wonder how the same survey would result in other countries?
Doha Heat
Seattle has – or had, I am not so sure they still have – a women’s basketball team called the Seattle Storm. I think Doha needs a women’s swimming team called the Doha Heat. I have a little direction finder from Sharper Image that I used to use in my car when I got lost so I would know if I was heading north or south (you can get really turned around and not know it) but it no longer sticks to the dashboard, it lost its stick-power from the heat.
Now I keep it on my vanity in my room, with one temperature gauge in the shadow of my windowsill. This is what it looked like on Monday of this week:
It seems to have cooled off somewhat since then, perhaps due to being on the edge of the huge sandstorm in Iraq. People here are wearing breathing masks still, although the greatest haze seems to have passed. It is still hot – temperatures in the triple digits – but not so hot as 117°F.
Today’s Peninsula says to “expect sultry weather from next week.” It says that “the strong Shamal (northwesterly) winds that have been lashing the country over the past four days” have kept the humidity away, but that from Sunday, “a change in the wind direction . . . could cause a rise in humidity.”
Which Ear Do you Use for the Phone?
This article is from BBC Health News, posted Wednesday, 24 June.
It was mildly interesting to me until I got to the part about phones. Yes, I think I hear and process better with my right ear, but I have always used my left ear for phones. I assumed most people do. So I asked AdventureMan, who is left handed, and he said he picks up his phone and listens with his right ear, but that is also because he needs his left hand for taking notes. Aha! And I use my right hand for taking notes.
So my question is – which ear do YOU use, and are you right handed or left-handed? I think it would make a difference.
Right ear is ‘better for hearing’
The left-side of the brain processes much of what is heard in the right ear
If you want to get someone to do something, ask them in their right ear, say scientists.
Italian researchers found people were better at processing information when requests were made on that side in three separate tests.
They believe this is because the left side of the brain, which is known to be better at processing requests, deals with information from the right ear.
The findings are reported online in the journal Naturwissenschaffen.
We can also see this tendency when people use the phone, most will naturally hold it to their right ear
Professor Sophie Scott, of University College London
In the first study, 286 clubbers were observed while they were talking with loud music in the background.
In total, 72% of interactions occurred on the right side of the listener.
In the second study, researchers approached 160 clubbers and mumbled an inaudible, meaningless utterance and waited for the subjects to turn their head and offer either their left or their right ear.
They then asked them for a cigarette.
Overall, 58% offered their right ear for listening and 42% their left.
In the third study, the researchers intentionally addressed 176 clubbers in either their right or their left ear when asking for a cigarette.
The researchers obtained significantly more cigarettes when they spoke to the clubbers’ right ear compared with their left.
Brain
In conclusion, the researchers said: “Talk into the right ear you send your words into a slightly more amenable part of the brain.
“These results seem to be consistent with the hypothesised specialisation of right and left hemispheres.”
Professor Sophie Scott, of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, agreed.
“Most people process speech and language on the left-hand side of the brain and while it is not cut-and-dry a lot of what goes in our right ear will be dealt with by the left-side of the brain.
“The other side of the brain is more involved in things such as interpreting emotion and that is why we have these kind of findings.
“We can also see this tendency when people use the phone, most will naturally hold it to their right ear.”
Very Strange Weather in Qatar and Kuwait
As I was writing a post, I noticed – Holy Cow! It’s 113°F / 45°C in Doha. Checking Kuwait, Holy Moly, it’s 115°F / 46°C. That is Holy Smokes Hot, that is hot hot hot, right?
Thirty seconds later, I look – and my little weatherunderground sticker says it’s “only” 106.9 °F / 41°C in Doha, and “only” 106.9°F / 41°C in Kuwait.
How amazing is that – the temperatures dropping so fast, in BOTH Kuwait and Doha, within seconds?
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