HOME |
RSS | 
Where does the candy you’ll give to trick-or-treaters rank among internet users? Science writers David Ng and Ben Cohen put together a candy hierarchy lastyear and received a lot of feedback. They took those opinions into account when publishing their 2011 Candy Hierarchy. Some of the findings:
(1) That despite various lobbying efforts, clear consensus within the peer review process was wholly absent. No agreement on any specific candy was represented higher than 5% of the total comments (although status of fresh versus stale versus fruit flavored Tootsie Rolls was especially hotly debated). Indeed, consensus was only noted in the following: that last year’s hierarchy, in a word, sucked. In fact, the word “travesty” and similar synonyms were uttered more than a few times (Koerth-Baker, 2010).
(2) That with current data, Candy Corn is impossible to rank. It is liken to the “String Theory” of candy: largely theoretical nature and difficult to pin down. In the hopes of moving forward on this strange phenomenon, we are currently exploring a grant proposal that would give us time on the LHC.
(3) That this study was a great portal to science culture in general. This was demonstrated by an example of scientific plagiarism (link), as well as the prevalence of scientist bias, because despite repeated commentary on the contrary, we stubbornly stand by our evaluation of Whoppers.
Of course, the new hierarchy, published at Boing Boing, has already sparked a debate over the merits of a certain American brand of chocolate. Link
Sure its in poor taste, but is ranking girls on their appearance criminal? Apparently so, according to Oak Park, Illinois, police:
The teenager is believed to be responsible for a list that ranked 50 female students — using racial slurs and ratings of body parts — that circulated around the school and on Facebook, police said. The teen is accused of handing out hard copies of the list Jan. 14 at various lunch periods and posting a copy online, according to police.
Link – via Technically Incorrect
A poll of 238 presidential experts at the Siena Research Institute has ranked the USA’s presidents. This is the fifth time they have published such a list; the last one was in 2002. For the first time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt came in at number one. The top five are:
1. Franklin D. Roosevelt
2. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Abraham Lincoln
4. George Washington
5. Thomas Jefferson
President Obama ranks #15. You can see the complete rankings in .pdf form. Link -via J-Walk Blog
This site Sexual Congress has nothing to do with political scandals; it is rather like a “hot or not” site where you will be shown two members of the US Congress, and you decide who is the sexier of the two. Politicians should be able to handle the scrutiny, if anyone can. You may choose to vote for men only, or women only, or skip to the current standings. The current leaders are Mary Bono Mack of California’s 45th district and Aaron Schock of Illinois’ 18th district, both Republicans. Link -via b3ta
The annual United Nations human development index, released today, names Norway the best country in which to live. The list of 182 countries is based on 2007 statistics on life expectancy, literacy, school enrollment, gross domestic product, and other criteria.
The top ten countries listed on the index are: Norway, Australia, Iceland, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Switzerland and Japan.
The United States ranks 13th, down one spot from last year.
China wins the most-improved award, moving up to number 92. Niger was at the bottom, and Afghanistan came in second to last. Link -via Digg
Twingly, the spam-free Swedish blog search engine, has released its list of the Top 100 blogs in the world and Neatorama made it! (We’re no. 35)
Twingly groups the blogs it follows by language – so if you don’t write in English, you can still find out how you rank against other blogs in the same language. Another interesting thing that Twingly has is BlogRank, which is sort of like Google PageRank, but for blogs.
Link – Thanks Anton Johansson!
