subject: Is This Considered Trivial Pursuit? [print this page] Have you ever forgotten why you went into another room? It's the doorway's fault. When you go from room to room, your brain identifies each room as a new event and sets a new memory trace to capture that event. Thus it's difficult for the brain to retrieve older memories because they've already been filed away. The author of the study, a psychology professor at Notre Dame, suggests carrying a reminder of your intent. If you're going to get scissors, put your middle and index fingers in a scissors position. These reminders are like giving our brain "forget-me-nots".
Is there still 6 degrees of separation between us? In 1967 a social psychologist had 296 volunteers send a message by postcard through friends and friends of friends to a specific person in Boston. It took, on average, 6 steps to reach him. In the early 90's Kevin Bacon said he'd worked with just about everyone in Hollywood, which inspired the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" trivia game. Now that's changed. According to Facebook and researchers at Milan University, the average degree of separation between 2 unacquainted Facebook users is 4.74 steps. That's 4.74 steps for man and one giant leap for mankind.
If you're a redhead, are you afraid to go to the dentist? In a study published in the Journal of the American Dental Association, 67 redheads and 77 "darkheads" answered survey questions about fears and anxieties related to dental visits. Their blood was also tested. Those with the MC1R gene were more than twice as likely to avoid dental appointments. Of the 85 people with the gene, 65 were redheads. It seems those with MC1R tend to be resistant to certain pain medications. Of course, the only pain for artificial redheads is the pain of keeping their roots red.
Do you still long for chocolate milk in spite of all its sugary calories - the calories that caused it to be banned from school cafeterias? Athletes are using chocolate milk as a recovery drink. It boosts endurance after intense workouts and speeds up muscle recovery. Researchers at Penn State are studying how cocoa interacts with a specific digestive enzyme to block it from breaking down fat, thus helping the body to fend off fat. Finally, chocolate skim can be made without high fructose corn syrup and have only 30 calories more than 1% milk. That's the "milk of human kindness".
