Stormy's Corner

Pioneer Woman featured on CNN

I really enjoy reading The Pioneer Woman's blog and I even bought her calendar because I like her pictures so much.  This is the woman who left Los Angeles, married a rancher and now home schools her four children.  And takes 75-150 pictures a day of life on the ranch.    I've wondered several times what she sounds like in person and what she looks like.  Well, she was featured on CNN so now I know!

Are you always hot? Or always cold?

Cognitive Friday got some interesting data about who is always hot and who is always cold.  As most of us would have guessed, women are much more likely to be cold than men.  (As I type this my hands are freezing!)  Thin people and young people are also more likely to be cold. 

One related theory I heard is that women have a much smaller range of "comfortable" temperatures because their bodies need to be able to regulate a fetus' temperature.  I no longer believe this one because the one thing I really loved about being pregnant was always having warm hands!  So obviously I was much warmer when I was pregnant than when I'm not pregnant.

Cognitive Friday also discovered that exercise didn't change people's answers at all which surprised me.  I wonder if you could measure muscle mass if that would coorelate to feeling warmer like being overweight does?

Do you fit the data?  If not, how are you different?

Would you prefer a homosexual president or an atheist one?

If you are like most people, you picked the homosexual one, but let us know below!  As James Joyner writes:

A recent Gallup poll reveals that Americans are much more likely to elect a black man or a woman president than a Mormon or an old man. More interestingly, they’d rather be governed by a homosexual than an atheist

I continue to be surprised at how anti-atheist Americans are.  It makes me laugh (in an ironic way) because so many people aren't actively religious, and if people went around preaching, they'd annoy a good many people - probably more than those that are anit-atheist!

The good news is that things are looking good for women and blacks.  See all the data here:

	Yes, would vote for	No, would not vote for
	%	%
Catholic	95	4
Black	94	5
Jewish	92	7
A woman	88	11
Hispanic	87	12
Mormon	72	24
Married for the third time	67	30
72 years of age	57	42
A homosexual	55	43
An atheist	45	53

What do you think?  Who would you vote for?  Or not vote for?

Small businesses: More Generation Y, Women and Baby Boomers

Intuit published an interesting study about small business trends.  According to the study more small businesses will be owned by Generation Y (1981-2001), baby boomers, women, and immigrants.  Generation Y because they don't believe in trusting a company to take care of them and they are quite comfortable with all of the new technologies and able to easily start not just one business but multiple ones at once.  Many high schools have now started small businesses.  I personally interviewed a Generation Yer who had started his own company in college - a website for trading video games online.  Baby boomers, according to the study, are more likely to start business with social causes in "retirement."  Women owned business will grow - maybe as they become more disillutioned with the glass ceiling.  Immigrant owned businesses will grow as the number of immigrants continue to grow. It's an interesting study, an easy read and well worth reading.