Shake Appeal, Community Drug Testing, Craigslist Revenge
December 9th, 2007 Categories: Amusement
If you can’t make time for the NY Times, amuse yourself with this.
It is heavenly to be on vacation for a few days, lounging around my hotel room while it rains here in Palm Desert. The greatest luxury is lolligaging by the fire with the Sunday New York Times. Check out the Sunday Magazine this week - the feature article is “the seventh annual year in ideas” and there are some doozies.
Careful how you shake it ! Take for example the handshake - Gordon Gallup, an evolotionary psychologist who has studied whether animals recognize themselves in the mirror, and whether semen acts as an antidepressent, has a new idea. He suggests that women take a handgrip dynometer on a first date to measure the strength of their prospective suitors handshake. According to Gallup, the strength of the handgrip is directly related to sexual fitness.
People with high grip strength scores live longer, recover faster from injuries, have reduced disabilities, higher bone density and greater fat-free body mass. Males with high grip strenth scores are more agressive, more dominant, have more masculine body types, increased sexual opportunities and younger ages at their first sexual encounter. Females have an increased hand strength when they are at their most fertile (a trait that may have evolved to prevent forced impregnation by unwanted mates, Gallup speculates).
The essay concludes by asking Gallup if he worries about his own grip strength - the answer is no. “I measured it and it is pretty substantial.”
What drugs are in your community water? Jennifer Field, an environmental chemist at Oregon State University has brilliantly discovered how to identify the drug habits of an entire community by testing a mere teasponfull of water from the city’s water sewage treatment plant. She has run this test in many American cities and been able to identify traces of 11 drugs including methampetamine and cocaine.
This approach preserves anonymity while creating the ability to track a drug epidemic in real time. Interesting to note that one affluent community that Field tested showed very few drugs except an uptick of cocaine usage (peaked on weekends). Meth varies widely from city to city. The single most popular drug? Caffiene by far. I wonder what Davis’ profile would look like.
Watch out for Nichole. Apparently she had a bone to pick with her aunt, who had evicted Nichole’s mother from her home. She got on Craig’s List and gave the address of her aunts home with the tender post “Take what you want. Everything is free. Please help yourself to anything on the property.” It was less than 2 hours before Craig’s List flagged it as false, but everything had pretty much already been hauled off from the unlocked house - including the front door, baseboards and the kitchen sink!
Post a comment to Jamie Madison here or at jamiebmadison@msn.com . Or better yet, spend the $5.00 on the NY Times and treat yourself to hours of amusement.
