Rotundus.com

Do You Actually Eat All You Can Eat?

"Psychologists at Cornell University wanted to see if people actually eat as much as possible at an 'all-you-can-eat' buffet. ... the researchers worked with a pizza buffet in Chicago and tried two different pricing conditions ... At the regular price, buffeteers ate about four slices on average. But when the price of the buffet was slashed in half, pizza eating dropped 27%. People only ate three slices!" Perhaps the fatwa against all-you-can-eat buffets wasn't such a bad idea as far as fighting obesity goes?

Student involved in razor incident will return to school Friday

Apparently stopping someone from cutting themselves up with a razor blade might not be worthy of expulsion after all - shocking!

Latvians honor Nazi allies from World War II

The article's text seems to suggest that they were celebrating the local forces fighting against the Stalinist invaders rather than the Nazis themselves. Whether Hitler or Stalin posed a greater threat to Latvians doesn't quite seem clear to me. Both racked up an extremely high body count though I think recent estimates hold Hitler accountable for more. Stalin's system in some regions of killing the upper class and deporting substantial fractions of the remaining population in a number of areas might have been worse for a small country like Latvia though. Read a book like Bloodlands and it becomes hard to determine which of the two was worst in a number of regions.

When Doctors Need to Lie

What's the balance between acting in the best interests of a patient and (immediately) telling them the truth?

From the New Republic:

here’s something to ease your guilt if you skipped the Paralympics: Most disabled people don’t watch—or like—the event, either. According to a 2011 poll commissioned by U.K. disability charity Scope, nearly one in four disabled people believe the Paralympics are patronizing, and two-thirds would prefer they be merged with the Olympics. Six months before the London Games, just 11 percent of British people—and less than a quarter of British disabled people—said they were excited about the Paralympics.
For a 2013 paper in the journal Disability & Society, a team of sports researchers led by Stuart Braye - a Paralympic medalist himself - investigated disabled people’s attitudes towards the Paralympics by surveying 32 disability activists in the U.K. Braye was surprised by their “negative and at times vitriolic comments…towards Paralympic athletes.”

Should those who think that biological sex differences have no impact on performance consider having women's events at the Olympics also patronizing? (Not having gender-segregated events would result in women being awarded very few medals).

Needy robotic toaster sells itself if neglected

"As a connected toaster, he's in constant contact with other connected toasters like him -- and thus keenly aware of how much action they're getting. If he's not being used as much as his friends, Brad gets upset. He'll wiggle his little handle to get your attention, begging you to make some toast or at least to give him a reassuring pat on the side. Ignore him long enough, and he'll take a more drastic measure: pinging a network of potential owners to find a new home."

Tale of the Teletank: The Brief Rise and Long Fall of Russia’s Military Robots

It's seems that the current generation of military drones piloted aren't the first to be used in combat. Seems the Soviets already used remote-controlled vehicles in WW2.

Lack of exercise kills roughly as many as smoking, study says

"The results are fatal. Lack of exercise is tied to worldwide killers such as heart disease, diabetes and breast and colon cancer. If just a quarter of inactive adults got enough exercise, more than 1.3 million deaths could be prevented worldwide annually, researchers said. Half an hour of brisk walking five times a week would do the trick." On a related note the average obese woman gets just 1 hour of exercise a year (vs. 3.6 hours/year for obese men).

A Countertop Composter That Zaps Your Food Scraps Into Healthy Soil Fertilizer

"This is all the reason for a new kitchen device called the Food Cycler Home that aims to make it much easier for people to compost their scraps, even in cities that don't offer composting services (which is most cities). In three hours, it can sterilize and deodorize anything and everything from orange rinds to meat and convert it to a soil amendment that can be safely sprinkled on plants."

I came across an interesting paper entitled What a feeling! Touching sexually laden stimuli makes women seek rewards. Its abstract (with portions highlighted by me):

We argue that women's previously documented unresponsiveness to sexual primes when making economic decisions may be a consequence of the specific types of primes that have been used (i.e., visual primes). In three studies we show that presenting women with tactile sexual cues does influence their decisions about economic rewards. Similar to the effect found in men, the first study demonstrates that touching a pair of boxer shorts leads to a craving for monetary rewards in women. In the second study it is shown that touching a pair of boxers makes women less loss averse for both money and food. The third study explicitly focuses on the relative effectiveness of tactile versus visual sexual cues in altering women's economic decisions, and reveals that women's willingness-to-pay for economic rewards increases only when the sexual cue is tactile. We suggest that touching (vs. seeing) sexually laden stimuli prompts pre-programmed consummatory Pavlovian responses that promote approaching economic rewards.

So along with the idea that looking at women might cause most men to act kind of strangely - which I'm guessing most are familiar with - most women might shockingly be interested in men and act somewhat differently when they're around. The type of stimulus which each responds to appears to be different as well which leads to utterly shocking conclusion #3 - that men might respond more to visual stimuli than women.

Update: It occurred to me that this is something that the generally-extremely-sleazy pickup artist community has been aware of for quite some time and even has a term for exploiting touch as a way to excite female interest - meet kino:

The word kino is short for kinesthetic approach, meaning physical touch with the intention of getting to know someone better. A commonly referred to word in the pickup artist world, kino usually refers to the act of touching someone in a non-threatening manner in order to build trust to eventually have sex with them. Kino can involve subtle touches such as brushing up against one's arm, holding hands, or stroking someone's hair.