Semi-Scientific Bull***

[Brent]

Note the asinine headline:

Attractive women found to make men bonkers

December 12, 2003
BY MARY VALLIS Advertisement

Science finally has proven what most of us have always known: Men have a hard time thinking rationally when they have beautiful women on their minds.

The study by psychologists at Ontario's McMaster University, reported in the journal Biology Letters, worked like this:

More than 200 students were shown pictures of men and women of varying attractiveness, then offered a chance to win money: If they rolled double digits on dice, they could either accept a check for between $15 and $35 the following day, or wait a week to eight months and get even more money -- $50 to $75.

After viewing pictures of highly attractive women, the male students were more likely to choose the immediate cash rather than wait a day for the extra cash.

But the female students weren't swayed by images of hot guys. They chose the larger reward.

So one would have to conclude that women are driven by money, no? The study would seem to show that they're more more focused on the $$$$$$$.  I'd hate to apply the word "shallow" or the term "mercenary", but I'd be hard-pressed to draw any other conclusion.    ...Brent


Another recent study documented changes in men's saliva when beautiful women are present. Men don't actually drool more, but their spit becomes super-charged with testosterone, University of Chicago researchers found. They paid 41 heterosexual male students $10 apiece to examine their saliva. They took saliva samples when the students arrived at the laboratory.

They were then led to believe the rest of the test was running behind schedule and made small talk with research assistants during the five-minute wait. Fifteen minutes later, scientists took another saliva sample. The testosterone levels in the saliva of men who had spent time with one of five attractive female assistants jumped by 30 percent.

"Results were generally consistent with the possibility of a mating response in human males," the researchers write in the latest issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

Guys like attractive women? Geeez, who could have predicted THAT? Good thing they did a study.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-beauty12.html

[StPaulieGirl]

So one would have to conclude that women are driven by money, no? The study would seem to show that they're more more focused on the $$$$$$$. I'd hate to apply the word "shallow" or the term "mercenary", but I'd be hard-pressed to draw any other conclusion. ...Brent

[p]What if the women already had bf's?  Seeee, didn't think about that, didya Brent ;-)

[Indigo Mom]

-----Guys like attractive women? Geeez, who could have predicted THAT? Good thing they did a study. -----

That's almost as dumb as NASA spending millions of dollars, and something like 12 years to invent a pen that would work in space.  The Russians, they're pretty smart...they brought pencils.

[Brent]

>That's almost as dumb as NASA spending millions of dollars,
>and something like 12 years to invent a pen that would work in
>space.  The Russians, they're pretty smart...they brought
>pencils.

Well, actually that story is an urban legend:

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
Claim:   NASA spent millions of dollars developing an "astronaut pen" which would work in outer space while the Soviets solved the same problem by simply using pencils.

Status:   False.

Examples: (Collected on the Internet, 1999)

Thought for the day.

During the space race back in the 1960's, NASA was faced with a major problem. The astronaut needed a pen that would write in the vacuum of space. NASA went to work. At a cost of $1.5 million they developed the "Astronaut Pen". Some of you may remember. It enjoyed minor success on the commercial market.

The Russians were faced with the same dilemma.

They used a pencil.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[The Moscow Times, 2000]

There is a charming anecdote that roams from e-mail box to e-mail box around the world about how, at the height of the space race, the Americans and Soviets approached the same problem: how an astronaut (or cosmonaut) could use a pen to write in zero gravity.

As the story goes, the Americans spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ambitious, gravity-immune ballpoint pen; they successfully developed such a pen; and this pen went on to become a massive commercial success in the private sector. The Soviets - with the simple elegance their scientists are so rightly famed for - opted instead to use a pencil.
 

Origins:   The lesson of this anecdote is a valid one, that we sometimes expend a great deal of time, effort, and money to create a "high-tech" solution to a problem, when a perfectly good, cheap, and simple solution is right before our eyes. The anecdote offered above isn't a real example of this syndrome, however. Fisher did ultimately develop a pressurized pen for use by NASA astronauts (now known as the famous "Fisher Space Pen"), but both American and Soviet space missions initially used pencils, NASA did not seek out Fisher and ask them to develop a "space pen," Fisher did not charge NASA for the cost of developing the pen, and the Fisher pen was eventually used by both American and Soviet astronauts.

Here's how Fisher themselves described it:

NASA never asked Paul C. Fisher to produce a pen. When the astronauts began to fly, like the Russians, they used pencils, but the leads sometimes broke and became a hazard by floating in the [capsule's] atmosphere where there was no gravity. They could float into an eye or nose or cause a short in an electrical device. In addition, both the lead and the wood of the pencil could burn rapidly in the pure oxygen atmosphere. Paul Fisher realized the astronauts needed a safer and more dependable writing instrument, so in July 1965 he developed the pressurized ball pen, with its ink enclosed in a sealed, pressurized ink cartridge. Fisher sent the first samples to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Director of the Houston Space Center. The pens were all metal except for the ink, which had a flash point above 200°C. The sample Space Pens were thoroughly tested by NASA. They passed all the tests and have been used ever since on all manned space flights, American and Russian. All research and developement costs were paid by Paul Fisher. No development costs have ever been charged to the government.

Because of the fire in Apollo 1, in which three Astronauts died, NASA required a writing instrument that would not burn in a 100% oxygen atmosphere. It also had to work in the extreme conditions of outer space:

In a vacuum.
With no gravity.
In hot temperatures of +150°C in sunlight and also in the cold shadows of space where the temperatures drop to -120°C

(NASA tested the pressurized Space Pens at -50°C, but because of the residential [sic] heat in the pen it also writes for many minutes in the cold shadows.)

Fisher spent over one million dollars in trying to perfect the ball point pen before he made his first successful pressurized pens in 1965. Samples were immediately sent to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Manager of the Houston Space Center, where they were thoroughly tested and approved for use in Space in September 1965. In December 1967 he sold 400 Fisher Space Pens to NASA for $2.95 each.

Lead pencils were used on all Mercury and Gemini space flights and all Russian space flights prior to 1968. Fisher Space Pens are more dependable than lead pencils and cannot create the hazard of a broken piece of lead floating through the gravity-less atmosphere.
Sightings:   This legend was mentioned in an episode of NBC's The West Wing TV series ("We Killed Yamamoto"; original air date 15 May 2002).

[Indigo Mom]

damn dude...I was makin a funky point!  Why all these "studies" when we KNOW both men and women like attractive people?  Common sense says ol Indy here's gonna go for the steak rather than ground beef.  And you know you would, too!  LOLOLOL  

BTW...which are you?  Are you hamburger helper or steak and shrimp?  I personally think I have Mr. Steak with a twist of Mr. Ground Beef, cause while he's adorable as all get out, he has no Mr. Steak 'tood...thankin he's all that 'n stuff.  (though, I've been thinking of divorce based on religious differences...he sometimes thinks he's God, and I disagree....LOL MK will "get" it)