I KNEW IT! but it still doesn’t make me feel less angry.

news today:

Bad drivers? Blame their genes
Published October 29, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - No need to curse that bad driver weaving in and out of the lane in front of you -- he cannot help it, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

They found that people with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people with a different DNA sequence.

The study may explain why there are so many bad drivers out there -- about 30 percent of Americans have the variant, the team at the University of California Irvine found.

"These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away," Dr. Steven Cramer, who led the study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, said in a statement.

Cramer and his team tested 29 people -- 22 without the gene variant and seven who had it -- asking them to drive 15 laps on a simulator and then repeat the task a week later.

To their surprise, they found that those with the mutant gene did worse, consistently.

The gene controls a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which affects memory.

The team was not really looking for insights into driving but chose the driving test because it uses common skills.

"I'd be curious to know the genetics of people who get into car crashes," Cramer said. "I wonder if the accident rate is higher for drivers with the variant."

girls just wanna have noms

Pants has nominated November be changed to Nomvember in honour of the holiday, and i second the motion!

and you thought punctuation wasn’t important

there is a cold war waging on the interwebs, between the grammatically precise and the laissez-faire conversationalists. the precise long to see the honour of English grammar preserved everywhere, from formal business pages to juvenile YouTube comment insults (it’s “You’re a gaywad,” not “Your a gaywad.”). the conversationalists counter this with the arguments of “u no wat i ment” and “ur gay.”

and generally, i fall between the two extremes. i enjoy, nay, cherish grammar in all its delicious nonsensical contradictions. but i do think some slack might be let out to comprehensible, if not completely correct, writings. if i understand the object of the statement, is it so necessary the sentence not end with a preposition?

mind you, this does not exclude formal writing, including formal e-mails, from the laws of English. it just keeps me from freaking out in my special obsessive-compulsive way over grammar. i will dissect everything, from adverts to captions, if i feel compelled, tearing apart any syntax error with glee, particularly if i already have a bias against the author. yes, i have been known to knit-pick a song or two.

i’m also a firm believer of knowing the rules before you break them. i’m much more likely to avoid rolling my eyes internally when an afficiando of grammar breaks a rule. any poet worth his or her salt will tell you that it is the fine structure of English grammar and punctuation that makes it so delightful and powerful to write with poor grammar and punctuation.

as such, it delights me that a single period sent crashing the internet for an entire country.

why can’t we be friends?

there’s been a bit of research, perhaps you’ve heard tell, on how having overweight friends can actually make oneself overweight. if i understand correctly, the idea is that seeing heavy people makes you tend to think it’s ok to put on a few pounds.

now there is a study saying thin friends make you fat.

participants had a ‘movie night’ with a researcher; either the researcher showed up as her lil’ ol’ self (barely breaking 100 lbs.), or she wore a fat suit. when she wore the fat suit, participants ate considerably less than she did. when she was thin, they ate less than the researcher but more than the fat suit groups.

the theory is people think “well, if she’s thin and can eat that much, so can i.”

so we can’t have fat friends, and now we can’t have thin friends.

good thing i’m anti-social.