Random links
- Do bans on texting while driving actually increase accidents?
- "The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that 3 of every 4 states that have enacted a ban on texting while driving have seen crashes actually go up rather than down. It's hard to pin down exactly why this is the case, but experts believe it is a result of people trying to avoid getting caught in states with stiff penalties. "
- Does year-round schooling matter?
- Abstract of the cited article: "In 2007, 22 Wake County, NC traditional-calendar schools were switched to year-round calendars, spreading the 180 instructional days evenly across the full year. This paper exploits this natural experiment to evaluate the impact of year-round schooling on student achievement. We estimate a multi-level fixed effects model to separate the impact of year-round schooling from the confounding impacts of other school, family, and individual characteristics. Results suggest year-round schooling has essentially no impact on academic achievement of the average student. Moreover, when the data is broken out by race, we find no evidence that any racial subgroup benefits from year-round schooling."
- The Biggest Loser does a lousy job of selling the joys of exercise
- "University of Alberta researchers split a group of university students into two groups. One watched a clip of the Biggest Loser while the other watched a clip of American Idol. ... “We did find that the people who watched The Biggest Loser had worse attitudes about physical activity than those who watched the American Idol clip,” said lead author Tanya Berry, adding that the results were consistent no matter participants’ physical activity levels or weight."
- Java junkies in ‘Star’ trek
- These folks make the Tim Horton's obsessed seem like amateurs. Maybe they should add an espresso machine to their disaster survival kits? If lack of power is a concern you could either use your car's battery power, or use a stovetop espresso machine over a fire of some sort.