The 21st century is truly an amazing time to be alive. We’ve got nanotechnology, genetic engineering, robot vacuums that leave our household floors spotless; but it’s not all rainbows and lollipops. Improving one thing often comes at the expense of something else, and the more knowledge we seem to accumulate about the world around us, the easier it becomes to point out all the glaring flaws of the human condition that still stain modern society. Not sure what we’re talking about yet? Read on and find out.
12. Silver Medalists Feel Worse About Their Accomplishments Than Bronze Medalists
Cornell University researchers learned that silver medalists feel the sting of missing out on gold, whereas bronze winners are more likely to concentrate on the fact that they nearly went home empty handed. So basically, silver medalists feel jilted while bronze medalists feel lucky to have placed.
11. Your Brain Starts to Deteriorate at Age 27
In 2009, researchers at the University of Virginia tested the cognitive skills of over 2,000 participants ranging in age from 18 to 60. The results revealed that 22-year-olds had the best cognitive abilities and that scores generally began to drop off in people older than 27.
From the study, the researchers concluded that some aspects of age-related cognitive decline begin in healthy adults when they’re in their late 20s.
10. CPR Almost Never Works
Despite all those shows and movies where an unconscious drowning victim is miraculously brought back to life after being given a few puffs of air from a sexy lifeguard, in reality, the technique isn’t nearly as effective. In fact, studies have shown that roughly only 2% of adult patients who require CPR make a full recovery. And for those who are successfully resuscitated, brain damage is often an aftereffect of the oxygen supply to the brain temporarily being shut down.
9. Climate Change Will Soon Allow for Ships to Cross the North Pole
Climate change is definitely set to create a lot of problems for Earth’s inhabitants, but some shipping companies might actually be looking forward to the rising sea levels. A study published in 2013 revealed that the increasing global temperatures should eventually make it possible for ships to sail directly across the North Pole—an area currently covered in ice up to 65 feet thick. If the new shipping route opens up, it’s expected to dramatically shorten boat trips from Europe and North America to Asia.
8. A Toddler Shoots Someone Every Week in the United States
After the Washington Post ran a story about a two-year-old in South Carolina who shot his grandmother, a few of their researchers did some number crunching and came to the shocking realization that, in the U.S., toddlers shoot about one person a week on average.
In their analysis, a toddler is defined as a child of three years or younger. They also included incidents in which the toddler shot themselves. The data showed that by October 14, 2015, toddlers had already shot and killed two people, injured 10 others, and shot themselves 18 times. Additionally, there were 13 instances of toddlers fatally shooting themselves.
Some of the other geographic trends that the researchers noticed were that Missouri is the toddler-shooting capital of the U.S. followed closely by Florida, and that New England and the Upper Midwest states have considerably fewer toddler shootings. Admittedly, the data set is likely too small to draw any formal conclusions, but these are still some pretty frightening statistics.
7. Poor People Are More Likely to be Killed in a Car Accident
Even though the total number of traffic accidents has been in decline, for one specific demographic the situation actually seems to be getting worse. It seems that people with little education and low incomes are much more likely to die in a car crash than anyone else.
According to research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, people without a high school diploma are 4.3 times more likely to die in a car accident than someone with at least a college level education. However, this doesn’t indicate that less educated people are bad drivers, it just points to the fact that, more often than not, they’re forced to live in environments where their safety is less assured. Generally, less educated people make less money, therefore the cars they drive tend to be older and have lower crash test ratings. Furthermore, the areas they live in are typically less safe with more dangerous roads and far fewer hospitals than other affluent districts. When all these factors combine, it makes the situation for poor people a lot more perilous than many people realize.
6. Rich People Live Longer
If poor people are more susceptible to death, it should follow that rich people live longer lives, right? Well, it turns out that’s actually true. Although life expectancy is increasing for the global population overall, the life expectancy of the wealthiest people now far exceeds the life expectancy for the poorest people.
The National Academy of Science has been following how the growing inequality of wealth and income in the United States has been accompanied by (or perhaps is the actual cause of) an increasing gap in life expectancy between the exceedingly rich and the working class. For men born in 1930 who were in the bottom 20% of income earners, life expectancy at age 50 was 76.6 years; and similar numbers were recorded for men born in 1960. However, for men who were in the top 20% of income earners, their life expectancy shot up from 81.7 to 88.8.
What this effectively means is that rather than the rich living just five years longer the poor, like they did 35 years ago, now the richest people in the U.S. can reasonably expect to live 12 years longer than the poorest people who were born in the same year.
The trend doesn’t seem to be limited to the U.S. either, as researchers in the UK have noted a similar shift in life expectancy.
5. Your Credit Score Could Determine the Success of Your Love Life
According to a report published by the US Federal Reserve Board, one of the most influential factors in determining the success of a relationship is compatible credit scores. The economists found that people generally had a tendency to enter into long-term relationships with someone who had a comparable credit score. They also learned that couples with good credit scores were more likely to stay together. They reasoned that the circumstance might occur because credit scores sometimes reflect how people live their lives. Meaning people who pay their bills on time and have good money management skills are more likely to do things like keep a clean house, remember anniversaries, and take care of problems as soon as they arise. Although there are most certainly some individuals who go against this correlation, it’s hard to think of anything less romantic than choosing a prospective partner based solely on a person’s credit score.
4. Smart Women are Less Likely to Find a Date
Currently, in colleges across America, the average ratio of women to men is 57 to 43. And while this exemplifies the progress achieved by the fairer sex over the decades, there seems to be a negative side effect associated with their increasing intellects: they’re having more trouble finding dates.
The reason for this seems to stem from the fact that the majority of us tend to date and marry people that fall within our own class. So back when there were still lots of college and university educated men around, women had to fight the men off with sticks. But now that there are almost 40% more college-educated women under 25 than there are men in places like New York and California, educated women in the U.S. are suddenly realizing it’s much more difficult to find a prospective partner than it once was. Which seems like an incredibly unfair way to reward success. However, if you happen to be a girl with a superiority complex, you should do just fine.
3. Your Name Probably Impacts Your Life Much More Than it Should
You might have heard about the 2003 field study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research in which evidence was provided that people with black sounding names, like Jamal Jones, were 50% less likely to receive a call back for a job interview than people with white sounding names like Greg Baker. Well, as it turns out, that study just scratches the surface of the numerous ridiculous ways in which your name can effect your life. For instance, in 2002 an analyst for the research company Gallup found that people seem to gravitate towards a profession that sounds like their first name. To give you an idea, there are a statistically unlikely number of lawyers named Laura, dentists named Dennis, and seashell shop owners named Sheryl.
Additional perplexing facts about how names impact our lives:
- Having a surname that starts with a letter that’s higher in the alphabet has been shown to correlate with success.
- Boys who have asexual names (such as Ashley) are more likely to misbehave in school.
- Girls with feminine names (such as Juliet) are less likely to study traditionally masculine subjects.
- Teenage boys with rare names (such as Roderick) are more likely to become criminals.
So, if you’re expecting a child and haven’t yet picked out a name, you might want to give it some very careful consideration.
2. After Fifty Shades Of Grey Was Published, There Was a Huge Rise in Sex Toy-Related Injuries
Whether it’s a good thing or not, Fifty Shades of Grey is a book largely credited with bring S&M to the mainstream. And while it’s probably responsible for spicing up a lot of people’s boring sex lives, it may have also resulted in a rash of sex-related injuries.
In 2011, injuries resulting from sex toys hit a high of 1,500 recorded instances. But when Fifty Shades of Grey hit bookstores in 2012, sex toy injuries sky rocketed to over 2,500. According to doctors and physicians, the injuries are pretty much what you’d expect. Many of them were what’s commonly referred to in the medical community as “foreign body removal.”
Although 60% of the patients reporting injuries were men in their 40s and 50s, most of the women who sustained injuries were in their 20s—precisely the target audience that Fifty Shades of Grey seemed to be geared towards.
1. In Texas Schools, Toy Guns are Viewed as Being More Problematic Than Real Guns
Yes, Texans love their guns. But some of the laws the state has recently enacted, such as allowing people to carry concealed guns on campuses, really seem to fly in the face of common sense. Under this new law, some Texas colleges and universities now consider it more troubling for students to own toy guns than real ones. For example, Texas A&M University specifically bans candles, toasters, and NERF guns in dorms but, as of 2016, they have no problem with students keeping real guns in their rooms. In fact, with the concealed carry law in place, it will officially become a more serious offence to wave a dildo around in public than it is to brandish firearm. Although, with all sex toy-related injuries at an all time high, perhaps a bit of logic did manage to work its way into the Texas lawmakers’ decision making.
