It was a good week for my news feed

I learned several interesting things this week as I skimmed through the headlines in my news feed and elsewhere.

With regards to gratitude:
Facebook analyzed what English speakers in the US were most likely to be thankful for by state. The results were kind of interesting. People are actually thankful for YouTube? People need to get a life. Arizona being thankful for rain isn’t that surprising.

Researchers have done studies and determined that we are more grateful when we feel the person doing the service was acting out of their own free will rather than having been forced in some way or another to do the service. Makes sense to me. Nobody wants to feel like a project. But everyone loves getting cookies out of the blue.

With regards to dinosaurs:
Paleontologists are rather annoyed with Hollywood for ignoring the last 30 years of dinosaur research in the making of the new Jurassic Park movie. The movie dinosaurs are too big and don’t have any feathers. I find it rather funny but I’m going to side with the paleontologists on this one. Real dinosaurs are much more fascinating and reality is often much scarier than fiction.

With regards to health:
Being fat is responsible for a large percentage of new cancer cases, especially in North America. Interestingly, they expect the trend to only increase as economic prosperity spreads. People get rich. They get fat. They get cancer. Given my family history of cancer I’m willing to do whatever it takes to reduce my odds. Maintaining a healthy weight is definitely one of the things I can control.