By Paul Krassner (Moronia) Politics: The electoral college will be replaced by a system where voters will choose the polling firm they trust the most. Rick Perry will copyright the word “Oops.” Show Business: Angelina Jolie will legally adopt Brad Pitt. The Tea Party will become a popular sitcom. Capital-punishment executions will become a top-rated [...]

By John Ingold (Denver Post) The passage of state medical-marijuana laws is associated with a subsequent drop in the rate of traffic fatalities, according to a newly released study by two university professors. The study — by University of Colorado Denver professor Daniel Rees and Montana State University professor D. Mark Anderson — found that [...]

By Jenny Deam (Los Angeles Times) According to the Air Force Academy’s enrollment records, only three of United States Air Force 4,300 cadets identified themselves as pagans, followers of an ancient religion that generally does not worship a single god and considers all things in nature interconnected. Still, the academy this year dedicated an $80,000 [...]

(Economist) A recent study found that bosses who don’t play golf are paid 17% less on average than those who do. Could this be because the qualities that make a good golfer—a mixture of hyper-competitiveness with strategic thinking and coolness under fire—also make for a good chief executive? Probably not. The same study found that [...]

By Linda Searing (Washington Post) This study involved 623 children who were born in the mid-1980s weighing 4.4 pounds or less. Their health was assessed periodically, including screening for autism spectrum disorders at age 16 and evaluations to confirm the diagnosis, using standardized measures, at age 21. Overall, 5 percent of the youths had autism spectrum [...]

By Bevi Chagnon I’m a federal contractor who helps US government agencies produce, update, maintain, and publish those regulations you’re talking about. I’ve read tens of thousands of pages of regulations from just about every federal agency here in Washington DC, and I have never found even one regulatory point that I thought was unrealistic [...]

Interview by Douglas Clement (Federal Reserve Bank, Minn.) David Card seems like a pretty mild-mannered guy. True, he speaks with conviction, but it is confidence backed by meticulous research and tempered with open acknowledgment of the limits of that research. Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, is the antithesis of a zealot. [...]

By Mary Catt (PhysOrg) The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, you might just pity those co-workers. Fresh research indicates they don’t even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm. “How is it that people say [...]

(EurekaNet) Despite growing concern about the effects of media violence on children, violent television shows and movies continue to be produced and marketed to them. An Indiana University research study concludes that violence doesn’t add anything to their enjoyment of such programs and their characters. In a research study published in the journal Media Psychology, [...]

(AFP) Romantic novels threaten women’s sexual and emotional health, according to British author and relationship counselor Susan Quilliam, who blasts the books for defining the success of a relationship as the ability to crank out babies, while failing to promote safe sex and encourage patience in achieving female orgasm. Ms Quilliam, writing in the Journal [...]