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A new spin on novelty
"Before you stir that cup of coffee or turn that radio dial, think carefully about whether you want to do it clockwise or counter-clockwise," says The Boston Globe. "A study out of Germany showed that turning cranks, spinning paper towel rolls or watching a square rotate in the clockwise direction increased fondness for novelty, while counter-clockwise rotation had the opposite effect. Also, when people had to choose from an assortment of jelly bean flavours on a Lazy Susan that only turned clockwise or counter-clockwise, they chose more unconventional flavours in the clockwise direction."
Robots in the newsroom
"They won't be works of art, but we could soon be reading thousands of financial news stories crafted by software 'journalists,' " says the New Scientist. "Finance reporters hoping to land a scoop [currently]have to trawl through mountains of company filings – a tedious and time-consuming task. Now MarketBrief, a start-up based in Mountain View, Calif., promises to take the drudgery out of the process. Just as websites are published in HTML, so company statements in the U.S. use a format called XBRL, or eXtensible Business Reporting Language. MarketBrief's software generates articles by extracting key facts from the XBRL data and slotting them into predefined sentences."
You love me? Meaning what?
"There are few phrases more loaded than 'I love you,' " Psychology Today says. "New research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology examines who says it first – and how it's received." Some findings:
- “The vast majority of study subjects believed that women normally say ‘I love you’ first, near the two-month mark. Surprise: In more than 62 per cent of relationships, the man said it first.”
- “On average, men were happier if they received confessions of love before a relationship tuned sexual, while women were happier if first declarations of love came after sexual intimacy in the relationship.”
- “Men in the study started thinking about professing their love about three months into the relationship, while women started thinking about it at the five-month mark.”
- “Male study subjects who, unlike most of their cohorts, were interested in long-term relationships (versus casual sex) preferred to hear ‘I love you’ after sex – when it wasn’t a rash declaration.”
Hungry? Have a restaurant
"[A] food historian Steven Heller ably recounts in the introduction to Menu Design in America – 1850-1985, in its original pre-revolutionary French incarnation, a restaurant was a meat- or vegetable-based broth, a healthful restorative," says The Daily Beast. "Thought to be especially nourishing by growing numbers of affluent, health-conscious Parisians, such concoctions were served at privileged addresses in the three decades or so before the 1789 revolution that turned the world upside down. It was at these establishments that a list of restaurants launched the restaurant as we know it today."
Lawsuits on the menu
- “An obese man has filed a lawsuit against a fast-food chain, claiming its seats are too small,” says Britain’s The Sun. “Martin Kessman, 64, is suing White Castle as he contends uncomfortable booths violate the civil rights of fat people. The [294-pound]New Yorker first complained to the firm two years ago about the size of its booths and says he was told renovations would be carried out to cater to larger customers. Kessman said: ‘The Americans with Disabilities Act is applicable – not only to me, but to pregnant women and to handicapped people. I just want to sit down like a normal person.’ ”
- “A Montana restaurant listed in the phone book under ‘Animal Carcass Removal’ became the butt of a Jay Leno joke earlier this year, but it’s no laughing matter to the owner now suing the publishing company over the business he’s lost,” reports Associated Press. “Hunter Lacey says in his lawsuit that business at his Bar 3 Bar-B-Q restaurants in Bozeman and nearby Belgrade has dropped off since the Dex Media Inc. listing and that his brand and reputation have gone down the tubes. … The listing was reprinted in other printed and online telephone directories last year and this year.”
Thought du jour
"Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating and religion."
– Scott Adams (1957-), creator of the Dilbert comic strip