Stick that cheeseburger back into your mouth and get off the treadmill, a new study suggests obese peoples are as healthy as non-obese peoples and are no more susceptible to health problems. In other news, it has been shown today that smoking is really, really, good for you: 

A recently released study suggests that minority women in Canada have a harder time accessing the Canadian health care system compared to Canadian-born individuals:

Many women from visible minority groups say they have difficulty getting a primary-care physician or specialists to address urgent health concerns or to monitor chronic medical conditions, a study has found.

The study found that 15 per cent of immigrants living in Canada less than five years did not have a primary-care doctor, compared to 7.3 per cent of Canadian-born adults.

That’s terrible. If this is true, it means that only 85% of women from visible minority groups are having no trouble finding a doctor compared to 92% of Canadian born peoples. As a Canadian born male, I’m ashamed to find that we have a very slight advantage whem it comes to finding primary care physicians than that of  newly arrived immigrants.

Furthermore, almost one-third of women who did not often speak English or French at home reported more difficulties accessing care from a family doctor to monitor health problems. That compares to less than 20 per cent of women who speak English or French.

That’s another jaw-dropping statistic. Women from visible minorities who don’t speak English had a slightly harder time finding a doctor than those peoples who actually speak English.

Christopher McIntosh, health services director at the Davenport Perth Neighbourhood Centre, said language can be a huge barrier for recent immigrants and minority groups when it comes to navigating the health-care system.

At the health centre in west-end Toronto, services include providing translators for patients, many of whom are recent immigrants who speak only Spanish or Portuguese.

Finally some good news. Providing translators for those immigrants who don’t speak English sure is a lot easier than the immigrants actually learning to speak English. Immigrants won’t speak English? No problem, we’ll provide translators. What the heck, it’s only time and money that could be used elsewhere….like say, speeding up emergency room times.

Women, in particular, may have fallen through the health-care cracks because many seek care for their children or adult relatives, said McIntosh. “They are typically placing themselves last.”

Martyrs. The whole darn tootin’ lot. All martyrs in The Mayor’s opinion. Imagine, these martyrs are actually placing themselves last behind their children and adult relatives. I do have a suggestion though: while booking an appointment with a doctors receptionist for their children and or adult family member, perhaps the martyrs should just swallow hard and book an appointment for themselves while they’re on the phone. There’s really no harm in that. It’s just a little more ink that the receptionist will have to scrawl down on an appointment paper.

The report, released Tuesday, is part of the larger POWER (Project for an Ontario Women’s Health Evidence-Based Report) study. The researchers say it is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of women’s health in relation to gender, income, education, ethnicity and geography.

POWER? Shouldn’t it be PFOWHEBR? No wonder immigrants are so confused and can’t get proper care. How do we expect immigrants to get proper care when the group detailing the injustices done to them can’t even get their own abbreviations correct?

I’m sure PFOWHEBR has no skin in the game, doesn’t run on government money and isn’t skewing this report for the benefit of getting more money to skew more reports. One thing I do know for sure though: Canada is a racist shithole.

Canada obviously needs more translators, activists and advocators to help non-English speaking immigrants access *free* health care. We have let our immigrants down. We have dropped the ball. At this rate, if these poor souls continue to be not-denied access to *free* health care, they’re going to have to possibly learn English. And we can’t have that now, can we?

That according to research conducted at Debenhams, which I believe is a shoe retailer in Britain. Medical experts believe it is due to the obesity epidemic (not at all like the swine flu epidemic, as the obesity epidemic is supposedly real), where high-density foods eaten during puberty stimulates the growth hormone. Anyway, enough of the sexy talk, let’s hear what some pointy-headed geeks had to say about this:

The research from Debenhams found that in 2009, ladies’ size nines sales increased by 23 per cent, while sales of size sixes jumped by 17 per cent.

The largest shoe it currently stocks as standard is a nine, but they are now considering stocking size 10 on a regular basis.

Ed Watson, from the department store chain said: “Big shoes, especially heeled styles, have to be made much stronger with sturdier load-bearing points, able to cope with greater levels of stress and wear.

Michael Paynton, British Chiropody and Podiatry Association chairman, told The Daily Mail: “I have been in practice 42 years and in that time standard foot sizes have changed dramatically. At one time it would have been difficult for a woman to get a size 6 shoe. Now that is the norm.

“It’s part of the process of evolution, as generally people are getting bigger and taller. We are seeing it clinically in both men and women as modern diets and lifestyle change.

So the obesity epidemic might not be the sole reason (haha) for larger footed British women, but one of many reasons why British women have to wear shoe boxes in order to fit their gigantic hooves.

I know that many specialists would like us to believe that we are getting bigger because we are eating worse than we were in the”olden days”, but the truth is we are eating much better now than we did in the “olden days”. Hence, that’s why we have a life-span that’s greater than 43 years old, like it was in the “olden days”. You see, the “olden days” were shit.

True, we are a gluttonous society, but over-consumption sure beats the hell out of not knowing where your next meal is coming from. I’d rather have too much than not enough. I’d rather have a bloated tummy from eating like a pig than being so hungry that I start to worry about the vultures flying over my head. We are taller, bigger, stronger, and live way longer than our grandparents did. As little as 40 years ago, if you had a sliver in your pinkie finger, the chances of you not seeing your next Birthday were about 50/50. Nowadays, if your heart stops ticking, they’ll just replace it with the heart from a hyena and you’ll be playing volleyball by the weekend. Or something like that.

So what if British women have bigger feet, it’ll just match their bigger heads, bigger hands, and bigger asses. And that’s all I have to say about that.

If I had to rate this post, with 10 being the best and 0 being the worst, I’d give it a 7 based solely on that crack about having your heart replaced with a hyena’s. That was worth the price of admission right there. Haters.

And no, I’m not talking about the chlamydia tests those guys got back this week, I’m talking about a paper published in the international science journal Death Studies that suggests people with names that starts with A are more likely to live longer than those people whose name begins with D. And the science is irrefutable (kind of like gorebal warming irrefutable) -

And, they claim, it could all be down to a subconscious link to school grades, where A represents high achievement and D near failure.

Unlikely as it may seem, the researchers suggest this means people with D names are more likely to develop lifelong low self-esteem, which, in turn, may lower their defences against disease.

But they also suggest parents from poorer backgrounds, who have lower life expectancies, are more likely to give their children names beginning with D.

‘Throughout life, we are constantly reminded that A symbolises the best, whereas D is regarded as almost a failure. With very few exceptions, D signifies poor performance.

And that’s why I named all my children Aaaaalfie Aaaaardvaark.

The examples which were studied were based on American grades, A B C D, apparently there are no F’s in American schools. So Frank, Fiona and your Swedish friend Fluffenheimer don’t fit into the equation.

At a time when the free world has slid into financial chaos, world governments are bankrupt, unemployment is at an all-time high, and people aren’t sure where their next dollar is coming from, it’s good to see our governments have their priorities straight and are investing money into research that truly counts.

In keeping with earth-shattering important studies, I’ve always wondered why people whose name begins A are more likely to enjoy skim milk, while those folks whose names begin with D are more likely to enjoy 2% milk. I’m sure $700,000 in research loot will unlock the secret to that mystery.

One thing is for certain though, this is a banner day for our friend Andy, while this is a terrible day for dmorris. Oh well, if this article is correct, Don probably isn’t even smart enough to read this post.

Which brings me to another thing: I betcha Don is sure glad he never named his daughter Zelda.

Researchers at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, claim that woman may have lower sex drives than men due to guilt. Yes, I said due to guilt:

While most men feel physically and mentally aroused at the same time, women’s minds are less likely to reflect bodily arousal, researchers found.

Researchers found that some women did not realise they were aroused, even though their physical reactions clearly betrayed that they were.

Feelings of guilt and shame around sex could explain this, the research team believes.

“Some women show (physical) responses without reporting any experience of sexual arousal,” according to the findings.

Maybe women have a lower sex drive than men due to guilt, or maybe women have a lower sex drive than men because men are hornier. Case closed. Send me a cheque.

Let’s face it, most men would bone a warm donut if given half a chance. Most women believe there is a time and place for sexy time, if a guy knew he could get away with it, he’d sex-up a woman in the greeting card section of the Shopper’s Drug Mart. The penis has no guilt. The penis is the benevolent dicktator (spelt wrong, I know), and the rest of the body is the cottar. When the dictator stands upright, every other part of our anatomy salutes (that made little sense, I’m starting to lose my train of thought).

The point is, it’s a good thing women have lower sex drives than men. This keeps things balanced. If women had charged-up sex drives like we do, nothing would ever get accomplished. Who would have time to buy groceries? Who would make me a sandwich?

Besides, guilt isn’t such a bad thing. As a matter of fact, if it wasn’t for my knack of guilting women into bed, I’d probably still be a virgin to this day.

Think about this: I just did in 15seconds what the researchers at the Journal of Sexual Medicine couldn’t do in six months – find the G-Spot. It was easy, AND, it’s open 7 days a week.

Thanks to Big Red Kev for the pic.

Researchers at the University of Insanity, England, found that if given a choice, men prefer women that DON’T have exceptionally long legs:

To pin down the most attractive legs, the researchers asked more than 1,000 men and women to rate the attractiveness of a series of images of female bodies.

In each case, the legs had been lengthened or shortened slightly, to alter the ‘leg-to-body ratio’, but the overall height remained the same. 

The men taking part were asked which pictures appealed to them the most, and the women were asked to predict the men’s thoughts.

The men, by and large, preferred mid-length legs – that is legs that accounted for half of overall height.  

The findings surprised the researchers, including Dr Viren Swami, of the University of Westminster in London. 

Writing in the journal Body Image, they said long legs had always been associated with good health, as well as looks.

But it seems leg-to-body ratio is another important factor in attractiveness. 

The researchers are unclear why the men did not plump for the longest legs but it may be because they are subconsciously wary of extremes.

For instance, a woman with very long legs and a small torso might find it harder to carry a baby. 

Carry a baby? Who cares if they can carry a baby, as long as they can carry a few armfuls of grocery bags.

If men weren’t lying, which they are in this case, they would have told researchers the truth and that they indeed prefer women with long legs. The only guys that don’t prefer long legs are short guys. No dude wants his girl to be looking down at him, look at how that has negatively affected Tom Cruise’s life. That, and the fact that he’s gay, of course.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying guys want a woman that consists of legs, neck and head (with the head being optional), but endlessly long, shapely legs win every time over women that have little tiny legs like an alligator or some other small-legged reptile.

If this study is true and guys really did prefer women that don’t have long legs, you would have heard at least once in your life a guy that said, “wow, check out the stubby legs on that chick, they’re beautiful” But you have NEVER heard a man utter that, have you? And why? Because guys prefer women with long legs.

If you had a bad sleep last night and for once it didn’t have to do with the fact that you drained a couple pints of whiskey with your dinner, this handy-dandy sleeping guide will certainly be helpful. I found this on Bits & Pieces who found it through The J-Walk Blog.

I sleep curled up in a ball in the corner of our bedroom, shivering because TLDG has every last blanket, comforter, etc, wrapped securely around her lean frame. Typically, I’ll be clad in my underwear and a pair of socks stretched over my ears. It’s quite a scene. If you send me twenty five bucks, I’ll send you a picture of it. The twenty five bucks will go to pay for a new keyboard, one where the dollar sign is functional.

If you guys intend on boarding the nookie train for a trip down the tracks to Pleasure City, you best be grabbing a mop or a dish rag (Rosanne Barr’s face doesn’t count), because a new study has shown that women are sexually attracted to men that do various chores:

A new study, believed to be the first to examine the connection between housework and sex, has found that spending more hours on household chores is linked to more frequent sex for married couples. The finding surprised even the researchers.

The researchers expected men would benefit from this housework-sex connection because wives tend to do twice as much housework as their husbands and may be motivated to engage in “thank-you sex” if their partners pitched in, she says. Instead, they found the effect applies equally to both genders.

The findings of this study surprise The Mayor. Mostly because I think of some of the household chores I do but never seem to get *chore sex* credit for. For instance, the other day our toilet overflowed. There was something trapped in the back of the bowl and I had to reach my arm down the hole and root around until I could find the cause of the blockage. About 20 into this ordeal I pulled out an old diaper. I knew it was an old diaper because when I was pulling it up out of the bowl it opened and splashed everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Yes, The Mayor was covered in baby crap.

I walked down to the kitchen, but instead of ravishing me, TLDG nearly vomited. She told me to get the hell out of the kitchen, it seemed she was disgusted at the sight of me. How could this be? Wasn’t I engaged in housework?

Before I jumped in the shower I looked at myself in the mirror. The baby gunk was glistening off my abs, I had smell lines like what you’d see in comic books wafting from my triceps, and yet TLDG couldn’t translate that into making sexy with the large bald smelly man commonly known as The Mayor.

Or maybe it’s the kind of chore that gets the sex. Perhaps today’s women don’t get turned on by the thought of their man coming inside out of the cold after chopping a cord of wood –  his muscles rippling, the sweat dripping off his brow. Maybe today’s women get more turned on by Svend the IT Team Player – he who strapps on a dish dress and puts on rubber gloves so his fragile hands won’t get water raw.

Well you know what? Homey don’t play dat.

I am not Svend the Dish Washing IT Team Playing girlie man who gets sex 1.6 times a week, I am Sir Manly Power, the wood choppin’ sweaty bastard that, if he wants sex, just had to drop trow and his wife is more than happy to service him. Twice. Three times on his birth week.

Besides, it’s not the chores that get the sex, it’s the free time because of getting all the household crap done that gets the sex. It’s all math, baby. If your sweetheart is working until 10 at night on household chores, by the time she gets to bed she’s too tired to fool around and you’ll probably be asleep anyway. If you help her with the chores and you’re both looking for something to do at at 7 pm, chances are you’ll do each other at 7 pm. Just don’t cover yourself in baby feces first. You’re going to have to trust The Mayor on that one.

Thanks to Dmorris for sending The Mayor this article. His reward will be given to him in heaven.

A study out of Germany suggests that women tend to cry more than men:

German experts provided confirmation today: women cry more often than men, for longer – and in a more dramatic fashion.

According to the German society of Ophthalmology, which has collated different scientific studies on the phenomenon, women shed tears on average between 30 and 64 times a year and men six to 17 times.

Men tend to cry for between two and four minutes, but for females sessions last around six minutes.

And weeping turns into full-blown sobbing for women in 65 per cent of cases, compared to just six per cent for males.

What a startling revelation.

I understand the reasons why women cry, I tend to be a pretty open and understanding fella. Crying is like the body’s natural release, it can often times be cathartic. It’s almost as if women need to cry, it’s as if crying is a woman’s mechanism for growth and recovery in a way. So ya, I totally get it. But having said that, when it comes time for a woman to cry, to completely break down and start laying out everything from her heart and soul,  must they do it when it’s either overtime in the hockey game, or right before I go to sleep? Why can’t it be when I’m chopping wood, or power-washing the gutters?

I hear you, I feel for you, I know what you’re saying. But is it possible you can do it quieter, and maybe away from the television?

If you said bald Adonises named The Mayor from a little place I like to call Mitchieville, then you sir/madam are correct. But since this article is about actual countries and not specific love making machines, you’ll have to read onwards to find out the real answer:

A poll of 15,000 women found that Germans are considered “too smelly”.

English lovers came second because they are so lazy, while men from Sweden were branded “too quick to finish” and came third.

Technically, if the Swedes are “too quick to finish”, wouldn’t that make them *come in first*?

Rimshot.

Spanish men topped the table as the best lovers, followed by Brazilians and Italians.

The poll, carried out by global research site www.OnePoll.com, asked women from 20 countries to rate nations on their ability in bed and give reasons for their answers.

Germans were deemed to have bad body odour, Englishmen were accused of letting women do all the work, whilst Swedes were a bit too quick to finish.

Men from Holland were “too rough” between the bed covers and Americans were accused of being “too dominating” in the bedroom.

Greek men were said to be a bit too soppy.

Other countries who didn’t fare well in the poll were Scotland (too loud), Turkey (too sweaty) and Wales (too selfish).

Russian men crept in at tenth place amid accusations they are too hairy for the average woman.

I have no idea if German guys stink. I have no idea if British men are lazy in bed. I certainly have no idea if Swedes finish too fast. But I do know that any woman who has enough sexual information on a multitude of men from a multitude of different countries, and then goes onto an obscure website to  fill out a survey based on her sexual proclivities by actually being able to rate these guys, well, she must be a little bit of special herself.

On the flip side, Canada placed tenth when it came to world’s best lovers. And if it wasn’t for the guys that reside in BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan, we would have come in second.

A new book entitled “Nurtureshock” by authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman is causing quite a stir apparently, as the book has been described as “challenging many of our most basic assumptions about children and parenting.”

Basically, what the authors are saying is that every liberal approach in the last 20 years in regard to raising your child has been nothing more than a load of steaming crapola:

At its heart is one of the most fundamental questions of our time: why, after decades of caring, progressive parenting and education, do we have so many social problems with children and teenagers from all backgrounds?

Based on a massive review of the latest scientific studies, authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman  -  who are established writers on social issues  -  insist that much of what we think of as being good parenting is actually wrong.

They argue that many of our strategies for nurturing our children are backfiring because we haven’t properly understood the science of how children think or develop.

While they are not advocating a return to Victorian parenting, with children seen and not heard, or beaten when they’re naughty, what they do argue is that the touchy-feely brand of modern parenting, where parents are too weak to criticise and discipline, will actually damage our children in the long term.

One of the biggest failures of modern parenting, say the authors, has been our belief in the importance of instilling high self-esteem at all costs. We praise our children constantly and indiscriminately. A simple drawing is ‘brilliant’; getting a few ticks on their homework earns a delighted ‘you’re so clever’.

We have ’star charts’, where children earn rewards for good behaviour. At sports days, no one is allowed to come first, so other children will be protected from feeling like a failure.

The theory is that this will build confidence and self-esteem in all the children  -  attributes which have been linked to happier, more successful lives and relationships in later life.

But new research from Dr Carol Dweck at Colombia University, who studied groups of children over ten years, indicates that the opposite is true.

Building up a child with false platitudes ends up destroying the child in the long run. If everything your kid does is fabulous, and you’re always telling him “good effort”, “good job”, when he does meet with failure – and he WILL meet with failure – he will have zero coping mechanisms for dealing with it. If a child never receives constructive criticism and suggestions for improving himself, he’ll never be able to deal with the reality of people telling him he made a made a mistake, or his work isn’t perfect.

Take an example from the workplace: Very seldom, if at all, does a person ever get praise or positive feedback for the job they do. You never hear the words, “Excellent job on crunching those numbers today, Steve”, or, ”Fantastic work cleaning out that toilet, Tim!”, do you? But if those numbers aren’t up to par, or if the crapper isn’t spic and span, you sure as hell will hear about it. If their whole life your Snowflake has received nothing but praise from momma and pappa, how are they going to react when Brody the Manager from Hell™ reads the riot act to them and dresses them down?

The authors then go on to bring truth to power concerning “very hands-on-dads”:

Over the past two decades, there has been a huge rise in progressive dads – the kind of man who is an active presence in his child’s life from birth onwards, who has no truck with traditional gender roles, and who is just as likely to wash and dress their child or to take a day off work when their child is sick.

This has generally been considered an overwhelmingly positive thing, and the kind of ‘new’ parent that both women and children want.

However, new research from parenting expert Dr Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan shows that while ‘co-parenting’ has some benefits, it also leads to more arguments over parenting decisions, and to more conflict in the marriage.

Progressive fathers rate their marriages as less happy, and rate their families as not functioning as well as those with traditional fathers where gender

Progressive dads are also weaker at setting and enforcing family rules. They are very clear about ways they don’t want to discipline their children (such as hitting or shouting), but confused and inconsistent about what to do instead.

As a result, the children of progressive fathers who are proud to be hands-on are almost as aggressive and badly behaved at school as the children of fathers who are either absent from the home, or play very little part in their children’s lives.

Can I get a hallelujah?

The line, “They are very clear about ways they don’t want to discipline their children (such as hitting or shouting), but confused and inconsistent about what to do instead”, is DEAD.ON.RIGHT.

Fathers will attempt to discipline their kid, but when the child gets upset and mad at their father, the dad tends to feel guilty and tries to be their friend, backpedals, takes away or minimizes the kids punishment. That’s weak. Daddy can’t handle Snowflake being mad at him, so he tries to make Snowflake feel better. Dad loses. Snowflake wins. 

Most of you reading this are nodding in the affirmative at the conclusions the authors have made. Most of you regard what they say as simple common sense. The fact is though, the last 20 years of liberal social engineering has been a colossal disaster, Kids have little guidance because of touchie-feelie nonsense perpetrated by the dope-smoking 60’s losers why can’t raise a house cat, but are now suddenly experts at child rearing.

Many people think today’s youth are useless, spoiled brats. Perhaps they’re right. But the kids didn’t get there on their own accord. They got there because their parents lacked the guts to be disciplinarians. It was easier for mommy and daddy to be friends to Snowflake than to be disciplinarians to Snowflake. And then mommy and daddy get upset when Snowflake calls them assholes. Well, you know what, mommy and daddy? You are assholes. Snowflake has your number.

The article goes on with plenty more great material, and The Mayor suggests you read it, and then knock on the door of your neighbour, Holly and Ridge, and tell them to read it too. There is still hope for their kids (Madison and Brady).