It's one of those surveys that make you wonder how they reach these conclusions. More to the point, why did poll takers bother going around asking Americans what their most annoying word is. In the end, will it have any effect, anyway?
Again for the second consecutive year no less, the word 'whatever' topped a Marist poll for being the most annoying word or phrase in the English language. Who wants to know this and why?
To discover the answer to this question, one must go to the source of the question, the Marist Poll, for a further explanation. To break it down, 39% of Americans actually despise(!) the word followed by 'like' coming in at 28%. Following close behind, 'you-know-what-I-mean' is deemed the biggest verbal gaffe by 15% of the population. Close on the heels is 'to-tell-you-the-truth' at 10% and 'actually' is irritating to a mere 5% of the population.
Come to think of it (a term I use very often and probably bugs a lot of people) these are phrases that most people utter regularly. My choice is you-know-what-I-mean. There is something about that phrase...
Interestingly, among younger Americans in the 18 to 29 category, 44% wouldn't mind if 'like' was eliminated for everyday conversation, while 37% of those in the 30-44 age category claim the usage of the word 'whatever' bothers them the most. Finishing it off, 46% of Americans in the 45-59 age group and 40% of those in the 60 years old category agree.
In case anyone was wondering, "The Marist Institute for Public Opinion (MIPO) is a survey research center at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Founded in 1978, MIPO is home to the Marist Poll and regularly measures public opinion at the local, state, and national level. The Marist Poll is highly respected and is often cited by journalists and analysts around the globe."
Your most annonying word(s)?
Whatever...
Showing posts with label scientists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scientists. Show all posts
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Monday, December 10, 2007
FEELING CHILLY? TRY THE HEATED BRA!
Women living in cold climates or at least climates that experience winter for a good portion of the year, might welcome this new innovation or some would call it, gadget.
A leading lingerie company has joined Japan's fight against high fuel use, unveiling a heated bra for winter.
You read it right: a heated bra to keep your breasts nice and warm and cozy. Now how this fits into the big picture of fighting global warming is somewhat questionable.
The fluffy creation contains special pads filled with an eco-friendly gel that can be easily heated in a microwave oven or with a hot water bottle. The design also includes a furry boa designed to double as a winter scarf.
Lingerie giant Triumph unveiled the bra months after PM Junichiro Koizumi urged Japan's office workers to ditch ties to save on air conditioning.
Being padded, the new bra packs a little more bulk than most regular designs, but the Japanese arm of Triumph insisted the look was more chic than sheep.
Sheep?
"We hope this will not only help prevent global warming but also provide a little fashion chic to the office," the company said in a statement.
The bra, which comes only in white, also features a pendant shaped like a chili pepper dangling on its front.
Only in white? How unfashionable! And a chili pepper? The siginifigance one presumes is that the bra provides enough heat as when consuming a chili pepper. Or something similar... I dunno!
The boob warmer also comes with matching shorts but is not being offered for general sale and the two pieces are being promoted as a prototype product, the first step towards mass-producing eco-friendly clothing.
Japan's government is encouraging people not to set their domestic heating higher than 20C this winter, to reduce fuel consumption and conserve energy stocks.
During the summer, Mr Koizumi surprised Japan's traditionally well-dressed office workers by discarding his tie and urging his countrymen to do the same.
Just wondering how discarding a tie will help the environment. Perhaps it's a small effort to keep cool. Go know!
The drive to reduce air-conditioning use and thus greenhouse gas emissions was estimated to have saved enough power to supply 240,000 homes for a month.
Somehow and maybe it's just me but a bra that is heated in a microwave makes me a little nervous.
See a photo of the bra here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4420820.stm
For some interesting and fun postings on a variety of subjects, drop by the:
Writers & Friends
www.jrslater.com/forum
A leading lingerie company has joined Japan's fight against high fuel use, unveiling a heated bra for winter.
You read it right: a heated bra to keep your breasts nice and warm and cozy. Now how this fits into the big picture of fighting global warming is somewhat questionable.
The fluffy creation contains special pads filled with an eco-friendly gel that can be easily heated in a microwave oven or with a hot water bottle. The design also includes a furry boa designed to double as a winter scarf.
Lingerie giant Triumph unveiled the bra months after PM Junichiro Koizumi urged Japan's office workers to ditch ties to save on air conditioning.
Being padded, the new bra packs a little more bulk than most regular designs, but the Japanese arm of Triumph insisted the look was more chic than sheep.
Sheep?
"We hope this will not only help prevent global warming but also provide a little fashion chic to the office," the company said in a statement.
The bra, which comes only in white, also features a pendant shaped like a chili pepper dangling on its front.
Only in white? How unfashionable! And a chili pepper? The siginifigance one presumes is that the bra provides enough heat as when consuming a chili pepper. Or something similar... I dunno!
The boob warmer also comes with matching shorts but is not being offered for general sale and the two pieces are being promoted as a prototype product, the first step towards mass-producing eco-friendly clothing.
Japan's government is encouraging people not to set their domestic heating higher than 20C this winter, to reduce fuel consumption and conserve energy stocks.
During the summer, Mr Koizumi surprised Japan's traditionally well-dressed office workers by discarding his tie and urging his countrymen to do the same.
Just wondering how discarding a tie will help the environment. Perhaps it's a small effort to keep cool. Go know!
The drive to reduce air-conditioning use and thus greenhouse gas emissions was estimated to have saved enough power to supply 240,000 homes for a month.
Somehow and maybe it's just me but a bra that is heated in a microwave makes me a little nervous.
See a photo of the bra here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4420820.stm
For some interesting and fun postings on a variety of subjects, drop by the:
Writers & Friends
www.jrslater.com/forum
Sunday, September 16, 2007
A FISH TALE WITH A HAPPY ENDING
So y'see...as it is in life, there was this male salmon who met a female salmon and they got along really well. So well that they decided they wanted to start a family but after a while and no eggs to speak of, they did what many human-types did: they found a surrogate parent...fish.
Researchers in Japan have put a new spin on surrogate parenting having engineered one fish species to produce another to preserve endangered fish. Scientists in Idaho are continuing this concept in an attempt to produce a sockeye salmon, highly endangered in the state, but using trout as surrogate parents.
Those first experiments, funded by a Japanese research institute, used still fairly plentiful species to develop the technique. Now comes Idaho's attempt to prove if the method is really useful in trying to produce the endangered sockeye salmon.
Last January, YoshiGoro Yoshizaki, a Tokyo University marine scientist who is leading the research helped University of Idaho scientists collect and freeze immature sperm tissue from young sockeye salmon being raised at a state-run hatchery. Next month, he'll be back to help thaw the tissue and implant it into sterile rainbow trout.
In Japan, Yoshizaki is focused on bluefin tuna, noting that standard "marine ranching" techniques are difficult for tuna that can reach man-size.
He has begun experiments into how to produce baby tuna from mackerel, which are nearly a thousand times smaller than adult tuna. If it works, "we can save space, cost and labor," he predicted in an e-mail interview.
Read about the entire cut-and-implant process here:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0058EF3E-E7F2-99DF-3C2EC5A22E22A477&chanID=sa007
I dunno. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature... I mean, at some point down the line, a trout just may receive the unexpected (and traumatic) news that his mama was a salmon. Or a tuna may discover it has mackeral-ish tendencies. Who knows where all of this can lead...
Writers & Friends
http://www.writersandfriends.org/
Researchers in Japan have put a new spin on surrogate parenting having engineered one fish species to produce another to preserve endangered fish. Scientists in Idaho are continuing this concept in an attempt to produce a sockeye salmon, highly endangered in the state, but using trout as surrogate parents.
Those first experiments, funded by a Japanese research institute, used still fairly plentiful species to develop the technique. Now comes Idaho's attempt to prove if the method is really useful in trying to produce the endangered sockeye salmon.
Last January, YoshiGoro Yoshizaki, a Tokyo University marine scientist who is leading the research helped University of Idaho scientists collect and freeze immature sperm tissue from young sockeye salmon being raised at a state-run hatchery. Next month, he'll be back to help thaw the tissue and implant it into sterile rainbow trout.
In Japan, Yoshizaki is focused on bluefin tuna, noting that standard "marine ranching" techniques are difficult for tuna that can reach man-size.
He has begun experiments into how to produce baby tuna from mackerel, which are nearly a thousand times smaller than adult tuna. If it works, "we can save space, cost and labor," he predicted in an e-mail interview.
Read about the entire cut-and-implant process here:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0058EF3E-E7F2-99DF-3C2EC5A22E22A477&chanID=sa007
I dunno. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature... I mean, at some point down the line, a trout just may receive the unexpected (and traumatic) news that his mama was a salmon. Or a tuna may discover it has mackeral-ish tendencies. Who knows where all of this can lead...
Writers & Friends
http://www.writersandfriends.org/
Sunday, September 09, 2007
PLANTS (MAY) LIKE CLASSICAL MUSIC
I knew it all along! Better be careful what you say in front of your house plant. Seems that scientists believe they have found "a set of sound-responsive genes in plants" in what other experts said would be an astonishing finding.
Astonishing maybe. Surprising not really according to an article focusing on this subject.
Plants are known to respond to light, temperature, touch and vibration, and the South Korean team, led by Dr Mi-Jeong Jeong, decided to investigate whether they could also respond to sound in some way.
They played classical music, such as Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Clair de Lune by Debussy and Winter from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, to a rice crop. The plants appeared unmoved.
Perhaps - just speculation now - rice prefers rock music...or even elevator-music-type stuff.
However, when single notes were played, the scientists noticed an effect on two genes known to respond to light, New Scientist magazine reports today. These became more active when exposed to a high-pitched sound and less active when a low one was played.
"As far as we know, this is the first report of characterisation of plant sound-responsive genes."
This might cast a different light on the comment by the Prince of Wales, who reportedly told a television interviewer in the mid-1980s: "I just come and talk to the plants, really. It's very important to talk. They respond, don't they?"
So the future King of England talks to plants so there has to be something to it. No? Then again, some people believe that some royals have been known to be - how shall we say - imaginative.
Dr Jeong's team plans to look into the matter further.
"I would be astonished if plants could tell the difference [between types of music]. But you never know," he said. "This would be of large interest to the plant community in general if it were true, but it's a very big claim."
Dr Wigge said vibration caused by sound waves might have something to do with the Korean team's results, but added the effect on the genes was so small it could also be "natural variation".
"We know plants are responsive to wind and sense touch and vibration, so that could be having an effect," he said.
Dr Wigge said people had looked "very hard" for decades for signs of something more to plants.
"There was a claim that plants were sensitive and they had feelings; plants had a mood and it depended on electrical currents," he said. "All these studies, unfortunately, have never panned out."
Those non plant-likers are so negative but we plant lovers know different. Mine like Justin Timberlake and Phil Collins. Don't ask how I know. I just do.
Astonishing maybe. Surprising not really according to an article focusing on this subject.
Plants are known to respond to light, temperature, touch and vibration, and the South Korean team, led by Dr Mi-Jeong Jeong, decided to investigate whether they could also respond to sound in some way.
They played classical music, such as Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Clair de Lune by Debussy and Winter from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, to a rice crop. The plants appeared unmoved.
Perhaps - just speculation now - rice prefers rock music...or even elevator-music-type stuff.
However, when single notes were played, the scientists noticed an effect on two genes known to respond to light, New Scientist magazine reports today. These became more active when exposed to a high-pitched sound and less active when a low one was played.
"As far as we know, this is the first report of characterisation of plant sound-responsive genes."
This might cast a different light on the comment by the Prince of Wales, who reportedly told a television interviewer in the mid-1980s: "I just come and talk to the plants, really. It's very important to talk. They respond, don't they?"
So the future King of England talks to plants so there has to be something to it. No? Then again, some people believe that some royals have been known to be - how shall we say - imaginative.
Dr Jeong's team plans to look into the matter further.
"I would be astonished if plants could tell the difference [between types of music]. But you never know," he said. "This would be of large interest to the plant community in general if it were true, but it's a very big claim."
Dr Wigge said vibration caused by sound waves might have something to do with the Korean team's results, but added the effect on the genes was so small it could also be "natural variation".
"We know plants are responsive to wind and sense touch and vibration, so that could be having an effect," he said.
Dr Wigge said people had looked "very hard" for decades for signs of something more to plants.
"There was a claim that plants were sensitive and they had feelings; plants had a mood and it depended on electrical currents," he said. "All these studies, unfortunately, have never panned out."
Those non plant-likers are so negative but we plant lovers know different. Mine like Justin Timberlake and Phil Collins. Don't ask how I know. I just do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)