According to a new study, women who are perceived to be the most attractive are short, with long legs. So Scar-Jo, Racquel Welch, Marilyn Monroe, me. “We found that shorter, slimmer females with long slender legs, a curvy figure and larger breasts are more attractive,” said lead researcher Dr William Brown of Brunel University.

Additionally, men with broad shoulders and shorter legs are found to be more attractive — most male athletes have some varying body type of broad shoulders with shorter, narrow legs. I guess that’s true.

The researchers presented 77 body renderings of different shapes and sizes to a group of people, and asked them how attractive they were. No, there were no heads on the bodies. Men and women found symmetrical bodies more attractive than asymmetrical ones.

So volunteers rated men with high body masculinity most attractive, while evenly proportioned women with low body masculinity were deemed the most beautiful. They were also the most symmetrical too.

Photo by Alan Light

Now, I like watching a lot of Olympic events, but I haven’t really been super pumped about anything except for track and field. Unfortunately, we got schooled in the women’s 100M and the marathon, but in the events that many people aren’t paying attention to (those that take place inside of the track) we’re not doing too poorly…

Stephanie Brown Trafton, 28, was the first American to win the gold in discuss since 1932, and according to NBC, we should feel super lucky — we haven’t had anyone advance to the discus finals since 1984. Her throw of 64.74M (207 feet!!) was executed on her first of 6 throws…yeah, try following that act.

“Someone told me that I was coming to the Bird’s Nest to lay a golden egg,” Brown Trafton said. “That’s what I tried to do.”

Jenn Stuczynski, 25, pole vaulted her way to a silver medal in Beijing. Stuczynski broke the US Women’s record in the event at 16″ 3/4″ at the Adidas Track Classic in May. In Beijing, she cleared 4.80M (15′ 3/4″), close but no cigar to beat Russian competitor and world record holder Elena Isinbaeva who cleared 5.05M (16′ 1/2″)

Hey there, 20somethings — you’re making the TV news dorks itch with anxiousness. Seems that since our preceding generation didn’t really give to poops about politics, we’re something of a rebirth of political conscious. Polls are showing a surge in primary votes from people under the age of 30… probably because a lot of us are smart enough to realize that we have to be the best balance between those pie-in-the-sky Boomers and the mopey, dot-com kids, the Gen-Xers: are we hopeful? Sure. Are we creative? Yes. Are we materialistic and self-centered? I guess so (that’s what I keep hearing from Boomers who are jealous of our iPhones).

However, Millennials are also the most entrepreneurial generation alive right now, and probably more politically savvy, and geographically aware than our parents were at our age… well, there still are a lot of dumb-ass 20somethings out there, but for the most part, I think we’re pretty rad.

Anyway, you would think that these broadcasting honchos would be rolling in cash with all of these young people (read: coveted demographic) but we don’t watch TV. Haw-haw. According to the NY Times:

Young people are catnip for advertisers, but they mostly shun TV, and especially news broadcasts. A biannual news consumption study released Monday by the Pew Research Center found that only a third of news consumers younger than 25 watch TV news on an average day. That’s still twice as many as the 15 percent who read a newspaper on an average day.

Add to that, the fact that the average age for the evening news is 60.5. Well, honestly, when was the last time you watched Brian Williams? All that news is hack, anyway.

So, if you’ve noticed, the big dogs are looking for ways to court younger political watchers.

On cable news, CNN promotes a “League of First Time Voters” and the Fox News Channel is covering what it calls the Y Factor with a full-time correspondent. On broadcast, NBC has assigned Luke Russert, the son of the late anchor Tim Russert, to the youth vote beat and ABC, CBS and PBS are all running stories by student journalists.

So, do you watch broadcast news? If so, what networks/shows do you watch? Or does it all just suck? Personally, I’d rather listen to NPR and read news magazines…

(photo by Thirty30 Photography

The GOP’s 2 favorite topics…

“I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party. And I also feel that — and I’m not trying to equivocate here — that Americans want us to work together. You know, [former Pennsylvania Governor] Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don’t think that that would necessarily rule Tom Ridge out … I think it’s a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. We just have a — albeit strong — but just it’s a disagreement. And I think Ridge is a great example of that. Far more so than [New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg, because Bloomberg is pro-gay rights, pro, you know, a number of other issues.”

Well, at least he’s not hating on those who prefer to let women and their doctors decide whether they want an abortion, but is he really taken aback by Bloomberg who is “pro-gay rights, pro, you know, a number of issues”? I find it interesting that McCain is alright with allowing pro-choicers into the Republican mix, but gays? Hell-to-the-no, as Maya Rudolph as Whitney Houston would say.

Wapo via Sullivan

Photo by Image Editor

You know, I get that in some parts of the country, this hog calling thing is a big deal. I’m sure it’s a very lucritive activity in which to partake.

But I feel like this video of this woman is almost mocking her, just by sheerly capturnig this… I mean, I laughed like crazy watching this 40 seconds of hilarious hog calling, but it’s almost as though she doesn’t know how progressively crazy she looks.

Did you know that Gwen Ifill is the only woman moderating in the presidential debates (she’s moderating the Veep debate this fall) and has been the only woman doing it since 1992? I heart Gwen and all, but that’s kinda sad. For those of you who aren’t aware, Ifill works for PBS’s Washington Week and the Jim Lehrer News Hour. She’s reported for some of the top newspapers in the country including the NY Times, Baltimore Sun, Washington Post as well as NBC News. And she’s really cool bc she was born in Queens, N.Y. (What, I had to throw that in there). Maggie from Feminist Underground explains…

The first televised debates were in 1960, and, not surprisingly, had no female moderators or panelists. But when the next debates came in 1976, there was a significant amount of female involvement. All four debates had a female panelist or moderator. All four women from that year are excellent role models, the kind of women who entered journalism at a time when it was a heavily male-dominated industry but went on to become highly successful reporters.

And then look at this Wall Street Journal headline announcing the slate of presidential debate moderators (three in all):

Interesting that the WSJ left out Ifill in the headline…

You would think that with the broadening of cable television, (somewhat) more diversity in newsrooms, and other progress (kinda) made in the mainstream media, there would be more women in the mix, doing the three presidential debates this year… oh yeah, that topped with the fact that we had a woman running for office in the first place would make me think that there would be more lady involvement. There were soooo many primary debates in 2007 into 2008, many involving women, but what’s with the drop off now?

via Feministing