Glob-a-log

(Photo from Arbroath)

Truly, I’m a huge fan of all things scientific. Scientists can easily be as entertaining as a roomful of Britneys or a den of Palins dancing around a witch’s cauldron.

Still, if I have one gripe with my beloved science tribe, it’s that I wish that they were slightly less inconsistent – or at least would have the good grace not to contradict themselves within the course of one day.

So, in a study, done over five seasons, during which 114 men were shown pictures every three months, scientists found out that winter’s supposedly cruel and cold attributes can, in fact, contain and reveal many joyful sights and occasions:

Anthropologists asked a group of male subjects, at different times of the year, to rate photos of women. There were three kinds of photographs: full body portraits of women in black swimsuits, exposed breasts of different sizes, and faces of young women. They gave their highest scores in the winter and autumn, and their lowest scores in the summer.

You’ve got to love these anthropologists… Who else would come up with a brilliant idea like, ‘Hey, let’s show photos of naked winter tits to 114 men and see what happens!‘?

Anyway, so one group of scientists proved that winter can be a quite stimulating time, if you provide the right distractions. Which is nice – but then another bunch of scientists come and spoil it again for all who had just begun to think that cold could be cool:

Loneliness and coldness are often associated in everyday language, but psychologists have found that social isolation does make people feel cold. The University of Toronto team found people feeling excluded said a room was colder than those feeling included. A UK psychologist said the findings could help people feeling isolated, particularly in the winter months.

(‘Help people feeling isolated’ in what manner precisely, I wonder. By giving these poor saps a nice sweater?)

So, in a manner of speaking, these psychologists found that, far from making us think of all the naked women who might come out the moment the first snow flakes hit the window, this wintry cold was, in fact, caused by a distinct lack of naked women to start with.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 20:30 and is filed under Columns, Satire, Science, Sex. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.