science

Why does it take Google to do real math and create a policy suggestion for ending our nation’s energy crisis? (Don’t we have government types who are supposed to generate these types of plans?)

So while our politicians are scrambling desperately to bail out the sinking financial Titanic they themselves have allowed to side-swipe sub-prime icebergs in recent years, Google has been figuring out how to save the country.

I simply refuse to believe that my daily fix of Diet Coke, a delicious carbonated beverage that tastes like a combination of cola, chemicals and metal shavings, could be unhealthy. But more and more research implies just that.

The latest concerns centre on the safety of ...sodium benzoate, a preservative used for decades by the £74bn global carbonated drinks industry. Sodium Benzoate derives from benzoic acid. It occurs naturally in berries, but is used in large quantities to prevent mould in soft drinks such as Sprite, Oasis and Dr Pepper.

Here's a fun thing to do: Go to Al Gore's Carbon Calculator and see how you personally are responsible for the untimely demise of this planet. TIP: I found that lying will lower your score substantially.

Barring an elaborate hoax, this could be one of the biggest fish stories of recent memory. From the NYTimes:
Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375 million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought "missing link" in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land. You have GOT to see the photo. Wacky.

If you haven't yet had the pleasure of sitting through an endless business meeting, count yourself lucky. For the rest of us, meetings are the bane of our existence, though a necessary evil. Still, many of us have long-harbored the belief that meetings are the largest drain on employee productivity since the invention of Tetris.

Well, now, researchers with nothing better to do have determined (via a recklessly small sampling of only 37 employees), that there is a direct relationship between the number of meetings an employee attends and the number of naps he/she must take under his desk.

Researchers, Luong and Rogelberg, unsurprisingly point out in their "research", "that a general relationship between meeting load and the employee's level of fatigue...was found."

Maybe, instead, researchers should research why so many researchers are doing so much useless research? I'd pay to find that out.

In a shockingly pointless Harvard Business Review study, researchers discovered that you'll do better at work if people like you. Did anyone really need to do a study on this? Gee, when's the People Need Oxygen To Breathe study coming out?

Are you currently Chevy-Chased, Four to the floor, Having the whirlygigs, Legless, Merl Haggard, Monkey-full, Newcastled, Nicely irrigated with horizontal lubricant, Off me pickle, On a campaign, Pie-eyed, Rat-legged, Saying hello to Mr Armitage, Steampigged, Tashered, With the fairies, and/or Zombied? Then listen up.

The supposedly safe Acetaminophen (aka, Tylenol) is the now leading cause of acute liver failure. Especially when mixed with alcohol. Ibuprofen is no better as it can cause ulceration and bleeding, kidney dysfunction, and liver inflammation. While Naproxen has been shown to elevate your risk of heart attack and stroke.

So what's a hungover drunk to do? Take coated-aspirin instead. After all, who needs a stomach lining?