Watercooler Sensation

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MADD At Wisconsin

• Shame on you, America. More than 15% of adult drivers reported driving drunk in the last year. [CBS]
• Wisconsin leads the country in stupidity, with 26.4% of drivers reporting driving drunk.
• In close pursuit were North Dakota, with 24.9%, and Minnesota with 23.5%. [Reuters]
• This is one contest you don’t want to win- more than 16,000 people are killed in drunk driving accidents each year.
• It’s not just alcohol- drivers are also driving under the influence of illicit drugs.
• The rates were highest in the District of Columbia, with 7 percent; Rhode Island, 6.8 percent; and Massachusetts, 6.4 percent. [CBS]
• Geographic influences are huge. The states with highest rates of drunk driving are in the Upper Midwest, while the states with illicit drugs are on the East Coast. [FOX]

Utah wins for most sober drivers, thanks to all the Mormons!

Want A Son? Eat More Cookie Crisp.

• So, Mom, you say you want to have a little boy? You might want to try loading up on the Fruity Pebbles and Special K. [USA Today]
• A new report published in “Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Studies” (by British researchers at Oxford and the University of Exeter) is the first of its kind to find a relationship between what a pregnant woman eats and the sex of her unborn child.
• See, “while men’s sperm determine a baby’s gender, it could be that certain nutrients or eating patterns make women’s bodies more hospitable to sperm carrying the male chromosome.”
• More calories and, more importantly, more nutrients are more conducive to having a boy.
• Of the women in the study who had the highest calorie intake before getting preggers, 56% had boys. Of the women who ate the fewest calories before getting pregnant, 45% had boys.
• Women who ate at least one bowl of cereal every day were 87% more likely to have boys. (Doctors thought this could just be a sign that these women were more likely to be eating breakfast in the morning.)
• And have you ever heard the old wives tale that if you want to have a boy, eat a lot of bananas while you’re pregnant? We always thought it was some weird phallic reference, but in the study, women who ate 300 more milligrams of potassium a day were more likely to have sons.
• This may explain the falling birth rate for males in the U.S. – think of the obesity crisis. Even though women are eating a lot, they’re also eating a lot of crap without many nutrients. On top of that, many women are on the dieting merry-go-round, where skipped meals or restricted calories make nutrient levels fluctuate.

The doctors were quick to stress that if you want a little girl, that doesn’t mean you should starve yourself. And pigging out is no guarantee of a boy.

What We Learn From Our Mistakes: How To Make More Mistakes

• We learn from our mistakes all right, but not the lessons we’re hoping for. [Live Science]
• In fact, they’re usually the opposite. New research into a phenomenon called “tip of the tongue” suggests that when we make a mistake, “what we learn is how to make more mistakes” of the same type.
• Here’s what the study from the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology found:
• When our brain “has accessed the correct word, but for some reason can’t retrieve the sound information for it” researchers call it a “tip of the tongue” or TOT.
• In the study, test subjects were given definitions of words and asked whether they knew the word, whether they didn’t know it, or whether it was on the “tip of their tongue.”
• Two days later, when presented with the same definitions, rather than learning the TOT words, as you might expect, “students tended to report TOT for the same words that twisted their tongues in the first test.”
• The reason? “time spent not remembering causes our brains to reinforce that “mistake pathway."”
• Says researcher Karin Humphreys of McMaster University in Ontario, “it’s so counterintuitive to how we feel we should learn from all our mistakes” but instead, mistakes “keep on digging yourself the wrong pathway.”
• The best way to prevent mistake-learning? “Repeat the word (out loud or in your head) once you find the correct answer.”

Learn slowly and steadily.

By the Numbers

Prison Nation

America has more people behind bars per capita than any other nation on earth. The reasons? More crimes that land you in prison (writing bad checks, using drugs), longer sentences, and judges who are “elected and are therefore sensitive to a public that is, according to opinion polls, generally in favor of tough crime policies.” “Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror,” James Q. Whitman, a specialist in comparative law at Yale, wrote last year in Social Research. “Certainly there are no European governments sending delegations to learn from us about how to manage prisons.” Here are the numbers: [NY Times]

5%

The percentage of the world’s population that lives in the U.S.

25%

The percentage of the world’s prisoners behind bars in the U.S.

2.3 Million

The number of people behind bars in America, more than any other nation

1.6 Million

The number of people behind bars in China, a country with four times America’s population

751

The number of people in jail or prison per 100,000 people in the United States (highest in the world)

627

The number per 100,000 in Russia (second highest in the world)

151

The number per 100,000 in England

63

The number per 100,000 in Japan

Celebrities: Unfiltered

“I am the antithesis of cool.”

— Former White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove in the newest issue of GQ. With a nickname like “Turdblossom,” we were already onto that, Karl. [Roll Call]

Speed Round

AUDIO:WHOOPI AND MCCAIN

On The View yesterday, Whoopi Goldberg explained why she almost hopes John McCain wins.

KILLER RATINGS

OJ Simpson is in talks to join the upcoming season of Donald Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice.” [Page Six]

HEADLINE OF THE DAY

You’re blind and have to comb your palms, but at least you’re alive. From Fox News, natch: “Study: Masturbation May Prevent Prostate Cancer” [Fox News]

THE HEADLINE THAT MADE US READ IT TWICE

“Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital” [Reuters]

POP-UP WITH RACHEL AND BILL

Food Network darling Rachel Ray and former President Bill Clinton are opening a one-night-only “pop-up restaurant” next Monday called Café Una Notte. The restaurant will serve one dinner for 70 people and proceeds will go to Ray’s nonprofit (annoyingly called “Yum-O!”) [NY Daily News]

SWEATY SCAMPI

Those delicious shrimp you ordered last night may have come from horrible, prison-like shrimp sweatshops filled with “sexual and physical abuse, debt bondage, child labor and unsafe working conditions” in Thailand or Bangkok. Hope you enjoyed your scampi. [CNN]

JOBS UP IN SMOKE

Whirlpool has suspended 39 workers for smoking after they lied about it on their health insurance forms. [Chicago Tribune]

MY HEART JUST CAN’T HIDE THAT OLD FEELIN’ INSIDE

Paul Davis, best known for his hit song “I Go Crazy” died of a heart attack Tuesday. He was 60.[CNN]

WRESTLING A BEAR DOESN’T ALWAYS END WELL

Will Ferrell successfully wrestled 700lb bear Rocky for his recent film Semi-Pro, but the bear’s trainer was not so lucky. Rocky killed his trainer yesterday with a grizzly bite to the neck. [Chicago Tribune]

WE NEED OUR STORIES

The Afghan government is taking on the people of Afghanistan over a sensitive topic- soap operas. While the conservative government thinks the soaps are un-Islamic and hurt children, the people of Afghanistan want an escape from their everyday lives. One addict even said “"People in other countries have other means of enjoyment and having fun, but we have nothing.” [CBS]

DO YOU PREFER MATTHEW, JOHN, OR LUKE?

The Bible topped a Harris Poll of American’s favorite book, transcending age and gender differences. When it came to second choice, the younger generation stayed loyal to Harry Potter while the older folks couldn’t decide between Gone With the Wind and Lord of the Rings. [Reuters]

NO NO NO TO YO HO HO

New policing measures from the international community are making life tough for pirates off the coast of Somalia. [FOX]

LIKE DISNEY WORLD, BUT UNDER FIRE

“A California company is working to turn a 50-acre swath of land in Baghdad into an amusement park, complete with rides, a skateboard park, a zoo, a concert theater and a museum...” [FOX]

RATIONING

Sam’s Club and CostCo are limiting their sales of bulk rice due to “recent supply and demand trends.” [AP]

COST-O-METER

How will John McCain finance his whopping $300 billion tax cuts? Read the Wonk Room to find out. [Wonk Room]