Rotundus.com

Girls’ love of high heels is sending them staggering off to casualty. And the killer heels are giving the NHS a kick in the budget.

New research has revealed that damage to feet caused by trendy shoes is costing taxpayers £29million a year.

Soaring numbers of women are needing treatment for bunions or twisted toes.
And with treatments costing up to £4,000 a time, it all adds up to a headache for the NHS.

Source: Daily Star

If this costs the UK roughly $52 million Canadian per year, you have to wonder what this costs worldwide.

A while back I realized that I was committing a cardinal sin - failing to put sufficient water in the pot when boiling pasta. Still, the pasta tasted fine to me, so I didn't change my ways. The New York Times seems to back me up:

SOME time ago, as I emptied a big pot of pasta water into the sink and waited for the fog to lift from my glasses, a simple question occurred to me. Why boil so much more water than pasta actually absorbs, only to pour it down the drain? Couldn’t we cook pasta just as well with much less water and energy? Another question quickly followed: if we could, what would the defenders of Italian tradition say? ... The standard method for cooking pasta, found in Italian cookbooks and on pasta packages, is to heat to a rolling boil 4 to 6 quarts of well-salted water per pound of pasta.

Interestingly, the article suggests that boiling pasta with less water might save $10-20 million in annual energy costs in the US.

Paper, pencil and books are the key to developing one's creativity and maximizing one's intelligence, says Dutch psychologist Christof van Nimwegen.

... In "The Paradox of the guided user: assistance can be counter- effective," van Nimwegen asked two groups to perform the same tasks. The first was allowed use a computer; the second group only got a pen and pencil. The second group executed all tasks faster and performed substantially better. In addition, their solutions to complicated problems were more creative.

... Van Nimwegen says much software turns us into passive beings, subjected to the whims of computers, randomly clicking on icons and menu options. In the long run, this hinders our creativity and memory, he says.

Source: Earth Times

[P]ast research has shown that the average woman responds negatively to ads with explicit or gratuitous sexual content. But now, ... [a] study, published this month in Journal of Consumer Research, finds that women respond more favorably to sexual ads when the item in the ad is described as a gift from a man to a woman. In addition, women have high positive responses to sexual ads that depict a committed and loving man — but not for those depicting a committed and loving woman.

Excerpted from: LiveScience