Human papillomavirus is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the U.S. and one of the leading causes of cervical cancer. There’s a vaccine for boys and girls that can be administered around the age of 12 to prevent both. For whatever reason, critics of the vaccine contend that it will lead young men and [...]
About 20 percent of Americans identify themselves as no religion in particular, agnostic or atheist — a figure that has doubled since a similar survey was taken in 1990. Also, that number increases to a third when you focus on people under 30. That’s not to say those people don’t believe in God, it’s just [...]
Riffing off the famed post that you can’t be further than 107 miles from the closest McDonalds in America, Jim Davenport crunched the data on Starbucks to determine the farthest one can get from the ubiquitous coffee shop is approximately 170 miles. But, that’s just a jumping off point for a more cogent examination of the [...]
The National Journal “analyzed Scarborough Research data, which includes 200,000 interviews with American adults, to determine the politics of beer drinkers.” What did this totally legit survey determine? For starters, Dos Equis is a bipartisan brew — Republicans and Democrats both like to drink it. Republicans love their Coors Light and favor Sam Adams, while [...]
If you’ve been to one city you’ve been to them all, right? Of course not. Urban life is a cacophony of sights, sounds, architecture and smells all grafted onto one another over the course of time. Paris is nothing like Los Angeles, which is nothing like Melbourne, which is nothing St. Petersburg. Cities are urban [...]
One of the biggest problems with certified organic food is that it costs so much money to get certified by the government that small farms that are organic can’t afford to do so, while larger farms that aren’t technically organic can do what’s necessary to secure certification. Certified organic signifies the use of synthetic pesticides, [...]
A new study by researchers at the University of Cincinnati suggests married men drink a lot less than their bachelor friends, while married women tend to drink more than their single counterparts. Sociologists conclude, obviously enough, that wives have a positive effect on their husbands and husbands are a negative influence. I have no guesses [...]
From The Atlantic Cities: To better understand the geography of music in America, my Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Charlotta Mellander analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics figures on the concentration of musicians and U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis stats on music and recording industry business establishments, and combined the results into a Metro Music Index. It is important to point out that [...]
We all want people to do the things we want of them. But the question is how? Psychologists have studied the art of manipulation and found several techniques that seem to work. One is called the door-in-the-face technique. You start by asking for something outrageous; when that’s turned down, you then ask for something reasonable. A boss [...]
Contrary to Radiohead’s declaration that meeting people is easy, the NY Times has a look at the difficulties of making new friends in your 30s and 40s. In studies of peer groups, Laura L. Carstensen, a psychology professor who is the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity in California, observed that people tended to interact [...]
