I have been a gigantic Rolling Stones fan since approximately the Spanish-American War

The students at Stanford University may be known for being unfailingly intelligent, but I've never pegged them as amazing athletes.  Until now.  The football team managed to beat Oregon yesterday which is a pretty big deal.  Oregon has a great team.

I love those upset games where the underdog somehow manages to scrounge out a win, especially when it's a pretty solid one.  Nice going, guys.

Saw this on NPR...

Murray Straus, professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, says that spanking can actually make kids dumber, citing two studies he conducted.

In a study of American kids, Straus and a colleague asked parents of about 1,500 young children participating in an IQ research project how often they spanked their children.

The findings? The 2- to 4-year-old kids who weren't spanked at all, according to their parents, had IQs that were, on average, about five points higher after four years than the kids who were spanked. The same trend held for 5- to 9-year-olds, though the differences were less pronounced.

The results are being published in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma.

Diane Sawyer will take over nightly news anchor duties for ABC when Charlie Gibson retires from "World News" at the end of this year, a network spokesman confirmed Wednesday.

I wish they would say something about the time period in which the cookie dough would have had to be purchased, but after reading this article about the latest Nestle recall, it sounds like I should probably throw mine away. Not cool!

Interesting article from Men's Health.  Here's some summaries...

Starbucks doesn't want you to to know...
...that most of its lattes pack more sugar than a two-scoop ice cream sundae. The Starbucks nutrition website boasts that one Grande Latte provides half of your recommended calcium intake for an entire day ; what it doesn’t say is that some of those calcium-packed beverages also provides almost your entire day’s worth of sugars. Check it out: a no-whip Grande Gingersnap Latte packs 34 grams of the sweet stuff, a no-whip Grande Cinnamon Dolce Latte offers 38 grams, and the healthy-sounding Grande Black Tea Latte includes 31 grams. Add whipped cream, add sugar. And cutting back from 2 percent milk to skim doesn’t help, either—in fact, the fat-free versions are even sweeter.

Dunkin' Donuts doesn't want you to know...
...that its muffins are worse than its donuts. Even the reduced fat blueberry muffin still has 450 calories—more than all but two donuts on the menu.

Subway doesn't want you to know...
...that you’ll eat more calories there than you would at McDonald’s. It’s not exactly Subway’s fault—most of their offerings are healthy, nutritious, and low-calorie. But a 2007 study at Columbia University found that when shown two 1,000-calorie dishes, people underestimate the load by about 159 calories in food they consider "healthy." The researchers also found that when people eat at "healthy" restaurants, like Subway, they tend to order 131 percent more calories in side items than they do at known "unhealthy" restaurants. Not that calorie-count alone tells the whole story about the nutritional quality of the foods you’re eating, but if you’re already going out of your way to eat as healthfully as possible, it’s important to remember that it’s still possible to overdo it, even at "good" restaurants.

Taco Bell doesn't want you to know...
that you’re better off ordering a Cheesy Double Beef Burrito than its Fiesta Taco Salad. The salad is actually the most caloric item on its menu—with 840 calories, 45 grams of fat, and 1.5 grams of trans fats, this is not a healthy choice. Cut almost half the calories by either opting for the shell-less salad, or the Double Beef Burrito, as mentioned above.

As the recession deepens and the stock market drops, some U.S. corporations  are offering a helping hand to those most afflicted -- job seekers.

February job losses brought the nation’s unemployment rate to 8.1%, so there are plenty of people out there looking -- another 651,000 joined the jobless ranks last month, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

If you’re one of these people -- and even if you’re not -- you can get copies of your résumé made at the FedEx Office (formerly FedEx Kinko’s) store near you -- for free.

On Tuesday, March 10, all customers can have 25 résumés copied free during regular business hours at any FedEx Office Print and Ship Center. The one-day-only event is good for black-and-white copies and valid only for orders placed and picked up at the store. Orders may be submitted in printed format or as a digital file; copies will be printed single-sided.

“We understand that the economy has affected many people in a very profound way, and we want to help,” said Brian Philips, president and CEO of FedEx Office, in announcing the offer.  “Printing résumés is one small way we can use our resources to help those who need it.”

Bravo!

BAGHDAD – U.S. military deaths in Iraq plunged by two-thirds in 2008 from the previous year, a reflection of the improving security following the U.S. military's counterinsurgency campaign and al-Qaida's slow retreat from the battlefield. By comparison, the war in Afghanistan saw American military deaths rise by 35 percent in 2008 as Islamic extremists shift their focus to a new front with the West.

According to a tally by The Associated Press, at least 314 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq in 2008, down from 904 in the previous year. In all, at least 4,221 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in 2003.

President-elect Barack Obama plans to tape a weekly address not just for radio listeners, as presidents have for years, but for YouTube Internet viewers, too.

Connecting the White House hearth to the American home, Franklin Roosevelt talked to the people through the radio, with crackling broadcasts delivered near a crackling fire. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan mastered television.  For Obama, who built a big part of his campaign on the Internet, it's Google Inc.-owned YouTube. 

About 75 years after Roosevelt used a new medium to reach out during troubled times, the president-elect is doing the same with Web videos.

Obama was recording a four-minute address Friday at his transition office in Chicago. It will be posted Saturday through a YouTube link on his transition Web site, http://www.change.gov, and he will continue to do the videos when he takes office on Jan. 20.