I have decided to cut back my efforts from blogging, and spend more time with my family and my new job (a promotion !). I plan to post only on weekends.

Do you really work out ?

Experts recommend an hour of physical activity a day. For most Americans, that is a dream. We spent $4.9 billions on fitness equipment and $17.4 billion on fitness clubs in 2006, but according to the American Time Use Survey, 83% of us don't exercise at all on a given day. Workout is another one of those things we know we should do, but just don't do it (or do enough of it), reflecting the gap between hard-weired (body) apparatus and the logical reasoning.

Source: Time (Nov. 26, 2007)

Thanksgiving Day Numbers

1) Because of depleted frozen-turkey supplies and rising energy prices, this year's Turkey dinner will cost you 11% more than last year.

2) Watch what we eat in the Turkey dinner. Despite clear evidence that eating vegetables can ward off heart disease, diabetes and cancer, less than 10% of Americans meet the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans published in 2005. The New dietary guidelines recommend us to eat 9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, up from 5 servings in the previous guidelines.

3) Drive safely. In 2005 for example, there were more alcohol-related traffic fatalities (628) over the Thanksgiving holiday in US, than over Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Christmas, or New Year’s Day.

Do parents love their children equally?

I suspect that many parents really do like some of their kids more than others. How couldn't they? Children are simply not the same. Even so, I would expect people to say that they feel the same about all of their kids. At least in our society, you're not supposed to play favorites.

However, according to the book No Two Alike (I finished reading it yesterday), many parents admitted to favoritism:

"In two separate studies, British and American parents of two small children were asked whether they felt more affection for one than the other. More than 50% admitted that they did. The overwhelming majority of these parents - 87% of the mothers and 85% of the fathers in the American study - said they favored the younger child".

Different Inflation Perspectives of Men and Women

Between society's “haves” and “have-nots”, the former are better positioned to endure cost-of-living increases. As the results, they tend to be less sensitive to price increases, and have the so called "lower inflation perceptions and expectations".

However the gender is also a factor here - study shows that sex can influence inflation expectations too: after holding income, age, education, race and marital status constant, women consistently think inflation is 1.9% points higher than men, and they expect prices to rise 2.1% points more than men.

Now you know why women love coupons and sales.

Men get their coffee earlier than women

Here is an small-size survey conducted in eight coffee shops in the Boston area. Researchers want to know how long it took men and women to be served. The results:

men get their coffee 20 seconds earlier than women. (There is also evidence that black people wait longer than white people, the young wait longer than the old, and the ugly wait longer than the beautiful. But these effects are statistically not as persuasive.)

Not sure if this is because men are more decisive orderer than women, or coffee shops' staff feel more implicit psychological pressure to meet the needs of the male customers.

Where is my love ?

A recent survey reveals 25% Americans think that the Internet can serve as a substitute for a significant other for some period of time, and 11% say they would be willing to safely implant a device that enabled them to use their mind to access the Internet. This survey was conducted online, so I think these numbers, although disturbing, are true and say a lot about US Internet users.

Also according to this survey, more than 25% Americans has a social networking profile on sites such as MySpace or Facebook, and 78% of 18-24 year-olds report having a social networking profile.

Numbers of the day

1. Veterans are only 11% of the adult population in US, but they make up 25% homeless people, according to a report. The sad thing is that "young veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are trickling into shelters and soup kitchens seeking services, treatment or help with finding a job".

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2. do you agree on this? most people feel comfortable lying about their sex life. 70% of married people "hide sexual fantasies they secretly want fulfilled", and 53% admit they "fake orgasm, pretending to like a partner’s sexual skills".

World's primates are threatened with extinction

The Conservation International, is releasing a report documenting the world's 25 most endangered apes, monkeys, lemurs and other primates, which are under unprecedented threat from destruction of tropical forests, illegal wildlife trade and commercial bushmeat hunting.

Today, 29% of all species in danger of going extinct, and we may soon witness the first primate extinctions in more than a century. Overall, 114 of the world’s 394 primate species are classified as threatened with extinction. On the left is the images of the possibly doomed Horton Plains slender loris.

Funny video - Barack Obama on Saturday Night Live

Voting candidates based on how they makes us feel

Earlier research had shown that people make judgments about someone’s trustworthiness, competence, aggressiveness and other traits in a mere 1/10 of a second, by just looking at that person's face, or in another word, how that person makes people feel.

Now, in a study published recently, reseacher goes one depressing step further: these lightning-quick facial judgments can predict real-world election results, with 70% accuracy.

Marriage is a strong deterrent to poverty

What do you think distinguishes the high and low poverty populations? There are some evidence that "the only statistical distinction between both the black and white populations is marriage. There is far less poverty in married-couple families, where presumably at least one of the spouses is employed. Fully 85% of black children living in poverty reside in a female-headed household".

According to earlier Census data, only 4.0% of married couples without children are in poverty. In contrast, the poverty rate for singles without children is 8.6%. One study found that married men earn 22% more than their unmarried counterpart.

Pay Gap between men and women

Sicilian asked me what are the stats on women's salaries in the Fortune 500 companies (and she bet they are much lower than the men's salaries). See below for the pay gap between men and women; the good news is that the gap is shrinking.

Top 26 Beautiful Castles Around The World

Check this link out, you can see 26 most beautiful castles around the world. The Craigdarroch Castle in Canada (below) is the only one I have visited.

Women leaders Help Boost the Bottom Line

A recent study showing that Fortune 500 companies with the highest proportion of female directors are more profitable and efficient, on average, than those with the lowest: an 83% higher average return on equity, 73% higher return on sales, and 112% higher return on invested capital.

Note that these correlations do not necessarily mean senior women cause superior financial performance. Rather they points to the fact that a "gender balanced" environment is more conductive to better business performance.

Do you believe in ghosts ?

I don't believe in ghosts, but I am too scared to see ANY horror movies.

According to recent survey in US, about 1/3 of people believe in ghosts, and nearly 23% of people say they've actually seen a ghost or felt its presence. About 19% say they accept the existence of spells or witchcraft. Nearly 48% believe in extrasensory perception, or ESP. The most likely candidates for ghostly visits include single people, Catholics and those who never attend religious services. By 31% to 18%, more liberals than conservatives report seeing a specter.

Simple sentences spread ideas farther

Taking advantage of a new Amazon feature, Steven Johnson has done some interesting (but not surprising) research on the complexity of the work of a few writers:

two stats that I found totally fascinating were "Average Words Per Sentence" and "% Complex Words," the latter defined as words with three or more syllables -- words like "ameliorate", "protoplasm" or "motherf***er." I've always thought that sentence length is a hugely determining factor in a reader's perception of a given work's complexity, and I spent quite a bit of time in my twenties actively teaching myself to write shorter sentences. So this kind of material is fascinating to me, partially because it lets me see something statistically that I've thought a great deal about intuitively as a writer, and partially because I can compare my own stats to
other writers' and see how I fare. (Perhaps there's a literary Rotisserie league lurking somewhere on those Text Stats pages.)

So I spent a few hours last week plugging in the numbers for my books, as well as a few other authors that I assembled in an entirely unscientific fashion: Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Pinker, Seth Godin, Christopher Hitchens -- and then, just to see how far I'd come, I threw in my intellectual (and, sadly, stylistic) heroes from my early twenties, the post-structuralist legends Michel Foucault and Frederic Jameson. I compiled stats for 3-4 books for each author, except Gladwell who has written two, and then plotted them on a scatter chart, with the y axis representing % complex words and the x axis representing words per sentence.

Number below are what Johnson found (click to enlarge):

Based on the popularity of authors (Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin), the conclusion appears that short, simple sentences sell more books, and spread ideas farther and faster.

Few workers connect to the company emotionally

According to a new survey, only 21% of workers worldwide are "engaged" (HR term for 'ready to expend some extra effort at work'), while 38% are either disenchanted or disengaged. Among all nations, Japan has the lowest portion of engaged workers, only 3%, and 72% are disenchanted or disengaged (this got has something to do with the Japan's life-time employment). Below the full list of engagement levels by country:

Taxes are growing around the world

So, according to this report, either the entire planet is vastly over taxed -- or we here in USA, speaking relatively, aren't shouldering such a bad tax burden after all . . .

Ovulating strippers make more money

In a revealing study, University of New Mexico researchers recruited 18 subjects (professional lap dancers working in gentlemen's clubs) to log their work shifts, earnings and menstrual cycles on a Web site for two months, or about 5,300 lap dances. The naked truth: participants scored $335 per five-hour shift while ovulating, compared with $260 per shift during the luteal phase after ovulation, and $185 while menstruating. Participants using contraceptive pills showed no estrous earnings peak.

The dancers' scientifically gyrating pelvises provided the first direct evidence for human estrus in contemporary human females.