My Links 3

I'm going to break this links entry into two sections. The first three links are interesting news updates.

The last three links are just amusing images.

News:

German town removes traffic lights and stop signs to cut down on accidents - This seems counter-intuitive, but I guess that if you have to be hyper alert all the time, drivers can't be lazy and follow guidelines. Still, this is one idea that wouldn't fly with America.

Study finds that liberal brains are smarter - This isn't all that well explained in the article, but the basic idea is that they put a bunch of people in front of terminals that give them easy questions they have to answer very quickly by pressing buttons, and 80% of the answers correspond to one of the buttons. The participants also rate their political leanings from -5 (liberal) to +5 (conservative). The researchers then looked at the 20% of questions whose answers didn't correspond to the button that the people were used to pushing. Sure enough, there was a different; the more liberal you were, the lower your error. According to researchers, liberals' minds are better able to adjust to and process and consider new things, politically and otherwise. The results were examined by an independent researcher at Berkeley who was unconnected with the experiment (and had nothing at stake).

Hormone linked to Autism - Levels of a male sex hormone in fetuses are positively correlated with the probability the resulting child will be autistic or have autistic traits. While it's unclear whether this is a cause or effect of autism, it's an important discovery in the ongoing investigation.

The Lighter Side:

The Safest Airline

Adorable animals made out of vegetables

Why My Kids Won't Be Allowed Online