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Humans weren't made to hibernate Add to ...

Why not hibernate?

With five or six months of winter fast approaching, many Canadians may be considering this approach to the season. However, as BBC Focus magazine reports: "Humans don't hibernate for two reasons. Firstly, our evolutionary ancestors were tropical animals with no history of hibernating: Humans have only migrated into temperate and sub-arctic latitudes in the last hundred thousand years or so. That's not quite long enough to evolve all the metabolic adaptations we would need to be able to hibernate. Much more importantly though, we discovered fire, clothes, shelter, hunting and agriculture, all of which are much more effective ways of surviving the cold. Any ancient tribes that tried to sleep their way through the winter would quickly have been ousted by the guys with the fur clothes sitting around the campfire in the next cave along."

Love? Not so simple

"Falling in love is not as simple as it seems, but it is very quick," The Independent reports. "Those intense overpowering feelings of being truly, madly, deeply in love are the result of complex and rapid brain activity. Being in love … is a pretty complicated affair. According to new research, it's not a basic emotion, as some thought, but a highly complex and businesslike process involving 12 areas of the brain working together to produce and sustain that magic moment. And researchers have discovered that the first brain activity specific to love starts within one-fifth of a second of being smitten."


"Studies show that only 5 per cent of middle-schoolers tell their parents when they're the victims of cyberbullying," CNN.com reports. Some clues:

- Social withdrawal.

- Fear of technology: Your child spends evenings catching up on reading instead of logging on to a computer, and appears nervous when text messages arrive.

- Bad behaviour.

- Ask other parents: Odds are that tweens will tell their best friends about cruel comments made online, and friends will have told a parent.

- If all else fails, Internet parental controls and monitoring software can help you identify a bully.

Give your vote: None

Nevada is the only U.S. state that includes "none of the above" as a ballot option. If "none" finishes first, however, the second-highest vote-getter wins.

Chicago Tribune

Garbage pickup: Giddy-up

Sixty French towns have replaced the garbage truck with the horse and cart. The noise of motors has been replaced by the clip-clop of hooves.

The Guardian

Departnering: 60

As many as 60 Goldman Sachs executives could be stripped of their partnerships this year to make room for new blood, people with firsthand knowledge of the process say. The firm does not disclose who has been "departnered."

The New York Times

Word watch: Nevertirees

A survey of more than 2,000 wealthy people in 20 countries finds that 60 per cent of them plan to work past retirement age. Barclays Wealth, which conducted the poll, calls them "nevertirees."

Sunday Times of London

Thought du jour



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