Watercooler Sensation

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A Stripper’s Guide To Cash (And) Flow

First, a lesson from the animal kingdom. Often, when females of a certain species are in heat, they produce signs — sights, smells, and sounds — to let the males know. The baboon’s behind, for instance, becomes bright pink during periods of high fertility. [Psychology Today]

Humans, though, prefer the subtle route. Subconsciously, women dress more provocatively and men find them prettier when it’s prime time for conception. Turns out, our whispered ways have economic consequences. Especially at the nearest gentleman’s club.

Researchers from the University of New Mexico “tapped the talent” (so to speak) at local strip joints and counted tips made on lap dances.

And here’s what they found: Dancers made about $70 an hour during their peak period of fertility, versus about $35 while menstruating and $50 in between.

Psychologist Geoffrey Miller “links the wage fluctuations to changes in body odor, waist-to-hip ratio, and facial features. Despite operating at the upper limits of flirtatiousness already, he says there may also be subtle shifts in their behavior—"how they talk and move when enticing a customer to buy a dance, and how they perform the dance itself.”

Meanwhile, turns out the pill is an occupational hazard for strippers. Dancers on the pill averaged $37 (and had no performance peak) versus $53 for women off-pill.

Just ‘coz she dances go-go / that don’t make her a ho, no.

Green Chemistry 101

• “Green chemistry” is the idea that chemical processes and products can be designed without using toxins or generating hazardous waste. [CNN]

• Paul Anastas, Director of Yale’s Center for Green Chemistry and Engineering, coined the phrase over fifteen years ago when the idea was only a theory.
• Today it’s a reality. But how does a young, wannabe green chemist get his or her start? Well, it’s not easy. Currently, only about a dozen colleges and universities across the country offer programs in green chemistry. But that number is growing.
• The University of Oregon and Carnegie Mellon have been teaching green chemistry for years. And this year CambridgeCollege in Massachusetts is offering the nation’s first bachelors and master’s degrees.
• While most green chemists see a moral imperative to their work, Anastas notes, “Green is also the color of money.” That is, it’s useless unless it’s profitable.
• Fortunately more and more businesses are seeking green chem grads in the hopes of saving money. Because, you know, it’s quite expensive to dispose of and clean up millions of pounds of waste.

Good news, Kermit. It’s getting a lot easier to be green.

Love In A Time Of Ethics Violations

• Want to marry your Hill Sweetheart? Forget about asking her dad...now you need to ask her Congressman.
• New congressional ethics laws are designed to keep lobbyists and lawmakers from figuratively hopping in to bed together. Now it turns out it may actually block them from physically hopping into bed, too. [Washington Post]
• The new statutes say lawmakers and their aides can’t accept meals, entertainment, travel or expensive gifts from lobbyists.
• But what if you’re dating one? It turns out wooing breaks the rules, and you and your cute new lobbyist love interest could face jail time.
• Romantic dinners? Not allowed. Weekend getaways to Tahiti? Better book your own travel.
• Dan Danner of the National Federation of Independent Business: “Everyone will have to go to training and to certify that they attended and understand the rules.”
• Should you make it through your courtship without landing in the slammer, there’s one more hurdle. Under current law, an “engagement ring” counts as a contraband “expensive gift” and is banned.
• Never fear, young lovers, there is hope. Congressional aides and lawmakers may appeal to the ethics committee in the Senate or the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct in the House for a one-time waiver.
• That’s right. Your Eternal Happiness (and whether you get to wear a rock on that finger) could be in the hands of Reps. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D., OH) and Doc Hastings (R., WA). How romantic.

Thank Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham and the other “ethically challenged” lawmakers for this new wrinkle in your love life.

Radioactive Assassination Isn’t Just For Russian Secret Agents

• Remember when that critic of Russian President died from radioactive poisoning in London earlier last year? Well, during the Cold War, the U.S. considered poisonings just like that. [AP]
• According to documents acquired by the Associated Press, in the late 1940s, the U.S. military approved “new-concept warfare” that would use radioactive materials as slow killing weapons.
• Among these: a “radiological weapon for targeting high-ranking individuals” that could be used “by secret agents or subversive units for lethal attacks against small groups of important individuals, e.g., during meetings of civilian or military leaders.” More tea, Mr. Castro?
• The practice of assassinations by the U.S. government was officially outlawed in an executive order by President Gerald Ford in 1976.
• But don’t shelve those conspiracy theories quite yet. According to the documents, America sought a radiological weapon that would make it “impossible to trace the U.S. government’s involvement.”
• The weapons would be inconspicuous, easily transportable, and disguise “even the fact that an attack had been made.” Eek.

Can’t imagine anyone the government would want to assasinate these days.

We’d Rather Date Our Computers

• It’s all about the way she looks at us. Or, maybe, it’s how she hums to us...ever so softly. Or could it be that sound she makes when we turn her on? Get your mind out of the gutter, folks — we’re talking about our computers. [Live Science]
• In a rather, eh, disturbing study conducted earlier this year, 64 percent of Americans say they spend more time with their computer than with their significant other. Meanwhile, 84 percent said they were more dependent on their computer than they were three years ago.
• Turns out, love’s not the only strong emotion that computers can make us feel. The same survey reported this: When confronted with a dead computer, 19 percent admitted to wanting to hurl it out the nearest window, 9 percent felt stranded and alone, 11 percent used language normally reserved for special occasions, 7 percent did so loudly, 3 percent did so tearfully and 3 percent additionally vented their wrath on inanimate objects.
• Meanwhile, 32 percent of the respondents said they shrugged.
• Funny, having a computer IS like having a long term girlfriend: Thirty percent of respondents said they currently felt more frustration with their computer than they felt three years ago.

Oh, the times we’ve had to break up over the black screen of death...

By the Numbers

HURRICANE VICTIMS

The thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina are still struggling to rebuild their lives. Here are the numbers: [Census Bureau]

Over 250,000

Number of people displaced by Hurricanes and Rita in 2005

38%

Percentage of these people whose income is below the poverty line

29%

Percent unemployed. Most common jobs of those employed: cashiers, salesmen and janitors.

50%

Percentage of displaced children who are living below the poverty line

Celebrities: Unfiltered

“Oh sh—, he’s dumb as hell. Fred Thompson. Who is he? He won’t say anything.”

and then...

“He isn’t very smart, is he?..But he’s friendly.”

— Never one to parse words, ex-president Richard Nixon tells us what he thinks about GOP candidate Fred Thompson.

[Blotter]

Speed Round

1,524 POUNDS

The size of the award-winning pumpkin at the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival. [AP]

CUTE ALERT! CUTE ALERT!

A golden retriever has taken up nursing a stray kitten. Awwwwwwwwwwwww. [AP]

IRONY IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

Elephants are terrified of bees. [Reuters]

REDUNDANT

Lindsay Lohan says rehab was “sobering.” Also says fire is “hot” and water is “wet.” [AP]

MR. PRESIDENT, WE FOUND IT

Construction workers find a brain in a paper bag outside an apartment complex. [AP]

ART PUNCHER

French police apprehend five suspects for “punching a hole” in the Impressionist painting Le Pont d’Argenteuil by Claude Monet. [BBC]

INNOVATIVE PRACTICE METHODS

“Montana Football Player Tackled by Grizzly Bear” [AP]

EAT MORE POO

Seriously. “Our centuries-long program of winnowing out all the muck has turned us into sissies and withered the substantial part of the immune system mediated by our intestinal tract.” [Slate]

FOUND!

The Case of the Missing Mayor of Atlantic City has been solved; he was hiding out in rehab. [NBC 40]

MONEY CAN’T BUY ME LOVE

Three out of every five rich women in the U.S. say they’re cheating on their husbands. [Forbes]

HUCKABEE’S COMEDY KILLER

“If I were some of these guys, I’d have to be sitting in a warm tub of water with razor blades” – Gov. Mike Huckabee, on how his rivals must feel about his campaign fund-raising skills. [AP]

GEEK HEROES

A man who started to steal a laptop from Best Buy is tacked by a member of the Geek Squad before he could escape. [Sun Herald]

TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE

New studies say that migraine drugs may also help another kind of headache: those endured by alcoholics. [USA Today]

$6,000

Reportedly, how much Charlie Sheen is willing to pay for a sex doll. [Mollygood]