While we're on the subject of language....Peg or Peggy is frequently a nickname of people named Margaret, as Bill is for William and Bob for Robert (Dick used instead of Richard is less common these days, but anyway,) and i've always been curious as to the logic behind that. Googling away, my personal theory includes Cockney rhyming slang, but the internets seems to like consonant mutation better.
Kelly AT shared a rather interesting link arc of her own today, culminating in the super interesting and prolly-never-able-to-be-repeated study of the effects of starvation diets, done in the '50s in Minnesota (even more interesting, participant involvment apparently an alternative to the draft). She came upon it through links in an article on the ridiculous (fitness-related) stuff that comes out of Paul Ryan's mouth, including the claim of having between 6-8% body fat. His debunked claim of a sub-3 hour marathon has incited the wrath of the running community something fierce, and there's been a ton of recent articles regarding people lying about their now-easily-checked race times pop up in various places; an article today in the Times here, the original Runner's World Ryan thread here, and a semi-related one a few weeks ago in the New Yorker about a man who even went so far as to make up an entire race (with other "people" and their times). Sheesh.
Also fitness related/along the same lines as the starvation study, only with exercise, a recent article in the Times reporting a study indicating that moderate amounts of exercise will decrease weight more (teehee) than large amounts.
From NPR via LZ, a study of beer safety following nearby nuclear explosion. "As for radiation, they checked, and found that bottles closest to ground zero were indeed radioactive, but only mildly so. Exposure, the authors say, "did not carry over to the contents." The sodas and beer were "well within the permissible limits for emergency use," which means, says Alex, "It won't hurt you in the short term."
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