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Wednesday, 13 April 2011

New three stooges movie

They have picked two actors already for Curly and Larry. What I want to focus on is Moe. Who could be Moe?

My thought was: (prepare for a blinding flash of brilliance)

Shawn spencer from the program Psych!

He's really good at slapstic type humor and way too funny. I think he's make a great Moe.

Friday, 28 August 2009

Krugman 100% Wrong on deficit
It may surprise those of you concerned about the $9 trillion deficit America faces over the next decade, but "deficits saved the world," Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman declares in his NY Times column today. "In fact, we would be better off if governments were willing to run even larger deficits over the next year or two."
Krugman goes on to say the U.S. economy is big enough to handle a $9 trillion deficit, suggesting "the dangers are political, not economic."
John Tamny, editor of RealClearMarkets.com, might agree about the political danger but says "Krugman is 100% wrong" about the deficits. "The economy is recovering despite the stimulus, not because of it."
Taking a page from the Austrian School of economics vs. Krugman's Keynesian, Tamny argues the government "should have done nothing" in the face of the economic crisis last year, for the following main reason:
- Government spending "crowds out" private enterprise and rising deficits raise the risk of a run on the dollar.
- Stimulus spending causes people to become unproductive because it shows enterprise isn't rewarded. "It's a disincentive to work," he says, making a similar argument about unemployment benefits.
- Bailouts impede capitalism by rewarding failure and giving capital to non- or unproductive businesses, as we'll discuss further in another segment.
Watch the video:

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/313552/%22Krugman-Is-100-Wrong%22-About-Deficits-and-Govt.-Spending-RCM's-Tamny-Says?tickers=%5EDJI,%5EGSPC,SPY,DIA,TLT,TBT,GLD

Wednesday, 17 December 2008

Romantic movies and unmet expectations

I saw this article in the news:
According to relationship experts at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, romantic comedies give people unrealistic ideas about love and sex, and cause them to "fail to communicate with their partner." Here's more:
Psychologists at the family and personal relationships laboratory at the university studied 40 top box office hits between 1995 and 2005, and identified common themes which they believed were unrealistic.
The university's Dr Bjarne Holmes said: "Marriage counselors often see couples who believe that sex should always be perfect, and if someone is meant to be with you then they will know what you want without you needing to communicate it. We now have some emerging evidence that suggests popular media play a role in perpetuating these ideas in people's minds. The problem is that while most of us know that the idea of a perfect relationship is unrealistic, some of us are still more influenced by media portrayals than we realize."
Do you think this is true? Is real-life romance a big ol' letdown? Sure, lots of people like the idea of a perfect man or "happily ever after," but does that mean we're all unable to separate fantasy from reality?
Also, have you ever had an experience that could have been right out of a romantic movie (think John Cusack holding up a boom box)?

I think that most movies have in my experience nothing to do with reality. Relationships take a lot of work, and how can that be put in a "Fun" movie? Work is rewarding, but it doesn't make for good whimsical feel good movie viewing (maybe unless it's drama) but anyway, I think Hollywood's version is just going to be sooo way iff in so many ways it's just kind of dumb.

Wednesday, 13 August 2008

The pill makes women choose bad mates?

So now rather than people making bad choices, it's all the pill's fault!!! is this messed up or what??

The Pill Makes Women Pick Bad Mates

Jeanna Bryner
Senior Writer
LiveScience.com Tue Aug 12, 8:21 PM ET

Birth-control pills could screw up a woman's ability to sniff out a compatible mate, a new study finds.

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While several factors can send a woman swooning, including big brains and brawn, body odor can be critical in the final decision, the researchers say. That's because beneath a woman's flowery fragrance or a guy's musk the body sends out aromatic molecules that indicate genetic compatibility.

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes are involved in immune response and other functions, and the best mates are those that have different MHC smells than you. The new study reveals, however, that when women are on the pill they prefer guys with matching MHC odors.

MHC genes churn out substances that tell the body whether a cell is a native or an invader. When individuals with different MHC genes mate, their offspring's immune systems can recognize a broader range of foreign cells, making them more fit.

Past studies have suggested couples with dissimilar MHC genes are more satisfied and more likely to be faithful to a mate. And the opposite is also true with matchng-MHC couples showing less satisfaction and more wandering eyes.

"Not only could MHC-similarity in couples lead to fertility problems," said lead researcher Stewart Craig Roberts, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Newcastle in England, "but it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the contraceptive pill, as odor perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners."

Sexy scents

The study involved about 100 women, aged 18 to 35, who chose which of six male body-odor samples they preferred. They were tested at the start of the study when none of the participants were taking contraceptive pills and three months later after 40 of the women had started taking the pill more than two months prior.

For the non-pill users, results didn't show a significant preference for similar or dissimilar MHC odors. When women started taking birth control, their odor preferences changed. These women were much more likely than non-pill users to prefer MHC-similar odors.

"The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the contraceptive pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odors," Roberts said.

Pregnant state

Based on the work by Claus Wedekind, a University of Lausanne researcher who preformed similar studies in the 1990s, Roberts suggests a likely reason for the pill's effect on a woman's odor preferences. The pill puts a woman's body into a hormonally pregnant state (the reason she doesn't ovulate), and during that time there would be no reason to seek out a mate.

"When women are pregnant there's no selection pressure, evolutionarily speaking, for having a preference for genetically dissimilar odors," Roberts said. "And if there is any pressure at all it would be towards relatives, who would be more genetically similar, because the relatives would help those individuals rear the baby."

So the pill puts a woman's body into a post-mating state, even though she might be still in the game.

"The pill is in effect mirroring a natural shift but at an inappropriate time," Roberts told LiveScience.

The results are detailed in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Original Story: The Pill Makes Women Pick Bad Mates

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