Science confirms what Jackie Gleason knew more than 50 years ago

Musical choices affect chances with women: study
Agence France-Presse June 19, 2010

French researchers have provided scientific backing to would-be seducers who instinctively know they have to swap rap or heavy metal for Marvin Gaye to improve their odds...

...At the end of their conversation, the young male used a standard pickup line. What swayed his chances of success was the music that had been played in the waiting room, the researchers found. When a "neutral" song was played, only 28 per cent of women responded positively.

But when the romantic ballad was played, his success rate nearly doubled, to 52 per cent.

Jackie Gleason was more than 50 years ahead of science when he released an album of instrumental music titled Music to Change Her Mind. Any of The Great One's albums will do just as well; or you can try The Many Moods of Murry Wilson (1967), which is now available on CD.
For those who like romantic singing to help accomplish their purposes, I recommend Nat King Cole, Roy Hamilton, and Frank Sinatra. If you're really adventurous, you might want to try the album You're My Girl (1958), with Jack Webb talking his way through a dozen romantic ballads. For those of us without anyone, there's Roy Orbison (and Mr. Sinatra when he's in a melancholy mood).

Fathers in Tokyo work too many hours

As reported by Reuters:

Tokyo fathers spend less time playing with their children and pitching in with the housework than dads in other big Asian cities due to working such long hours, according to a Japanese survey.

Among Tokyo dads, only 37 percent spend at least two hours a day with their children on weekdays compared with 50 percent for fathers in Seoul and about three-quarters of Beijing and Shanghai dads, the survey by education services provider Benesse showed.

It also showed that fathers in Tokyo come home from work much later than their Asian counterparts, with about 40 percent getting in the door after 9 p.m. versus 29 percent in Seoul and a low 3 percent in the Chinese cities.

Teenage boys eat a lot

This study from the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development won't surprise anyone who's ever known or been a teenage boy. I just wish I still had the metabolism I had then.

As reported by Reuters, June 15, 2010:

NEW YORK - Parents of teenage boys often believe they are being eaten out of house and home. A new study suggests they’re right.

In a lunch-buffet experiment involving 200 kids ages 8 to 17, researchers found that boys routinely ate more compared with girls their own age. But boys in their mid-teens were the most ravenous of all — downing an average of nearly 2,000 lunchtime calories.

The pattern makes sense, given that boys usually hit their growth spurt — putting on height and muscle mass — in late puberty, according to senior researcher Dr. Jack A. Yanovski, of the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Yet, while teenage boys have a storied reputation for packing it away, there had actually been little objective evidence that this is the norm.

“There’s a lot of folk wisdom that says boys can eat prodigious amounts, but we haven’t had much data,” Yanovski told Reuters Health.

To fill the gap, he and his colleagues had 204 8- to 17-year-old boys and girls come to a lunch buffet on two separate days. On one day, the kids were instructed to eat as much as they normally would during lunch; on the other day, they were told to eat as much as they wanted.

Overall, the researchers found, boys ate more than girls did at each stage of puberty. Prepubescent boys — generally between the ages of 8 and 10 — averaged nearly 1,300 lunchtime calories, versus 900 among prepubescent girls.

Girls showed the biggest increase in appetite during early- to mid-puberty, roughly between the ages of 10 and 13. Girls that age averaged almost 1,300 lunchtime calories, and that figure was only slightly higher among girls who were in late puberty.

That pattern is in line with girls’ development, Yanovski said, as they tend to have their most significant growth spurts in early- to mid-puberty.

Boys, on the other hand, tend to develop later. And their calorie needs appear to shoot up significantly in late puberty, or between the ages of 14 and 17.

While boys in this study showed little change in calorie intake between pre- and mid-puberty, their average lunchtime calorie intake reached nearly 2,000 calories in late puberty. Even for active children, those 2,000 calories would be most of their daily energy needs.

“They really can eat,” Yanovski noted.

For parents, he said, the findings offer an idea of what they can reasonably expect as far as their children’s calorie needs, and the family grocery bills, as kids get older.