Just five minutes alone with an attractive female raise the levels of a man’s cortisol, the body’s stress hormone, according to a study from the University of Valencia.

The effects are heightened in men who believe that the woman in question is “out of their league.”

Researchers tested students by asking each one to sit in a room and solve a Sudoku puzzle. Two strangers, one male and one female, were also in the room.

When the female stranger left the room and the two men remained sitting together, the volunteer’s stress levels did not rise. However, when the volunteer was left alone with the female stranger, his cortisol levels rose.

The researchers concluded: “In this study we considered that for most men the presence of an attractive woman may induce the perception that there is an opportunity for courtship. I don’t know about that but I certainly don’t want to look like a dummy in front of any woman.

“While some men might avoid attractive women since they think they are ‘out of their league,’ the majority would respond with apprehension and a concurrent hormonal response.

“This study showed that male cortisol levels increased after exposure to a five-minute short social contact with a young, attractive woman.” In my office the men are out numbered three to one…I am not giving all the credit to cortisol but I know the men are much more calm and laid back at work than in other office environments that I have experienced.

Cortisol can have a positive effect in small doses, improving alertness and well-being. However, chronically elevated cortisol levels can worsen medical conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and impotency.

Remember that old rock and roll song? “if you want to be happy for the rest of your life get an ugly girl to be your wife.” Well looks like there could be scientific proof of that now.

A good percentage of mobile phone users play games on their phones, according to a Mobile Access 2010 report and GamesIndustry.biz. The survey claims that the amount of people playing games on their mobile phones rose from 27% last year to 34% this year.

Along with that statistic, they also found that 60% of younger users with mobile phones played games on it. 55% of the participants are women and they spend an average of 10 minutes per day playing.

Apple and the iPhone have contributed a lot to the success of gaming on phones, especially with the recently sold 1.7 million iPhone 4′s.

Mobile browser use is also on the rise with 40% accessing the internet at some point on their phones. Many used it for email or instant messaging as well. This is a rise from 32% just last year.

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Well, I’ll answer that question right off the bat: Yes it has. Even before the moronic Avatar in 3D, audiences were lapping up such animated fare as Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and Monsters vs. Aliens.

And now, Hollywood is running wild with 3D movies. This week, it was announced that Oscar winner Michel Gondry’s adaptation of The Green Hornet was going to be delayed once more (pushing it til January 2011)–this time so that it could get the 3D treatment.

This is nothing new.

Earlier this month, the silly remake of Clash of the Titans opened to big numbers, largely due to marketing ads boasting the film to be in 3D. It’s not. Like Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, Titans was not shot with 3D cameras. Instead, after the fact, it was decided by studio execs to be put through a sort of ’3D rendering’ which gave the illusion of 3D on the big screens. It’s cinematic cheating and worse, it’s consumer theft. Theatres are still charging obscene 3D ticket prices for a film that is essentially fake 3D. Gondry’s Green Hornet is one of the latest additions.

So what does it all mean? Is 3D the devil? Not necessarily. If placed in the hands of a brilliant director it could serve the story. For instance, Martin Scorsese is filming a movie in London this summer in 3D. That should be interesting. And 2011 has the Steven Spielberg 3D motion capture film Tintin.

But what Hollywood needs to do is reevaluate its 3D structure. It needs to stop and say, “Wait, what films SHOULD be told in 3D?” Harry Potter certainly is a good example. Warner Bros. will release the next two “Harry Potter” films in 3D, a move underscoring the post-”Avatar” rush for extra-dimensional box office returns.

The current problem is that Hollywood is only asking, “How many more movies can we cash in on by rendering them to be 3D?!”

Until that turning point comes though, expect to see more wasted efforts like Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D.

Keeping it Wild was created in 2005 by several Atlanta citizen-advocates who perceived the need to bring together members of diverse conservation communities in order to promote better stewardship for the natural lands in our area.

KIW connects people to the land and to each other in order to protect and restore the natural and wildlands of Georgia and the Southeast.

The Keeping it Wild Board of Directors includes Atlanta community leaders as well as representatives from local grassroots groups and leading regional and national conservation organizations. I was elected to the Board two months ago.

KIW also offers a wide range of hikes and outings for all skill levels to beautiful Georgia wilderness as well as to green spaces in Atlanta’s backyard. The outings are led by field experts who are knowledgeable about local ecosystems.

There is a very well orchestrated seminar series that features scholars and conservation community leaders from across the country, with a special focus on the perspectives of African Americans and other people of color. They are offered in partnership with Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, Emory University, and other educational institutions.

Saturday, October 9 is the annual Gala dinner organized to help KIW raise funds for next year’s activities.
Please visit our site at keepingitwild.org

If you are reading this on Xanga you will most likely be interested in the new movie “Social Network.”

The film is about Mark Zuckerberg and the humble beginnings of his creation, Facebook, is a prime example of an op-ed movie – a film so topical it transcends typical movie fare these days.

Does this also mean it’s a great film? Well, no, although you wouldn’t know it from all the advance critical hoopla and of course I loved it because I am in the business of web and social networking. Most movies are unconcerned with the real, roiling world of commerce and communication. “The Social Network,” by contrast, depicts the Facebook enterprise as, like it or not, a cosmic cultural shift.

Director David Fincher and his screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (creator of “The West Wing”), loosely adapting Ben Mezrich’s nonfiction book “The Accidental Billionaires,” are not uncynical about the ways in which this enterprise and its instigator racked up the betrayals on the road to glory. More often than not, Mark comes across as a soulless savant. I thought perhaps a more accurate title for this film might be “The Revenge of the Nerds.”

Fincher is nevertheless awed by the system that made Facebook possible. “The Social Network” is a warts-and-all celebration of visionary capitalism and of the moxie required to realize the vision. Mark is both the unlikeliest and likeliest of heroes – or, more precisely, antiheroes – for our time. He’s a wolf in geek’s clothing. (I read that barb in another review.)

It begins in the fall of 2003, when Mark, having just been dumped by his girlfriend and licking his wounds, retreats to his Harvard dormitory and hacks into the university’s computers to create the site Facemash – a database of all the women on campus. Photos are lined up two at a time and users are asked to choose who is “hotter.” The site is instantly so popular that Harvard’s entire system crashes.

From these unseemly beginnings is born what eventually becomes Facebook, which quickly spreads beyond Harvard to become a global phenomenon. Along the way, Mark, who drops out of college after his sophomore year to run the business from Palo Alto, Calif., inevitably runs a gantlet of accusations and recriminations.

He alienates his closest friend and Facebook’s cofounder, Eduardo Saverin, who sues him, and is likewise sued by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, identical twin Harvard BMOCs who, with a whiff of WASP-ish disdain, claim Mark stole their idea. (In an amazing feat of filmic prestidigitation. He also attracts the attentions of Napster founder Sean Parker, who functions for Mark as a cross between Svengali and Eddie Haskell.

Fincher periodically intercuts his straightforward chronology with deposition scenes involving Mark and both Eduardo and the Winklevosses. In flashback, he presents “Rashomon”-style versions of what really happened and leaves it up to us to sort out the truth, or truthiness, of the claims.

From a legal standpoint, this is probably the only way that the filmmakers could have told this story without getting sued by everybody under the sun, but it also conveniently absolves them from taking a stand on the Facebook hoopla one way or the other. Since Mark is presented as a human cipher anyway, the deliberate ambiguity of the flashbacks registers as just one more blur in a fuzzy landscape.

Fincher trumpets the irony that an essentially friendless dweeb – the “Mark Zuckerberg” they created for this movie – founded the world’s preeminent aggregator of friends (or, to be more exact, “friends”). But why is this such a surprise? If Mark had a raft of real friends he probably would not have felt the need (or had the time) to create a social-network engine. The virtuality of his life gave rise to the reality of Facebook.

We are continually bombarded in today”s world on TV and in the press with tons of data and statistics especially regarding the economy. The problem is we are also often misled by the numbers and by our misunderstanding of probability.

I recently read in Wired magazine an article that brought a new light to this wave of stats and how we parse them.

We use only 10 percent of our brain! That familiar statement is false. There’s no evidence to support it. Still, something about it just sounds right, so we internalize it and repeat it. Such is the power and the danger of statistics.

Our world is shaped by, as Wired called it, widespread “statistical illiteracy.”

We fear things that probably won’t kill us (terrorist attacks) and ignore things that probably will (texting while driving).

We buy lottery tickets. We fall prey to misleading gut instincts, which lead to biases like loss aversion—an inability to gauge risk against potential gain. The effects play out in the grocery store, the office, and the voting booth (not to mention the bedroom: People who are more risk-averse are less successful in love).

And it’s getting worse: We are now 53 percent more likely than our parents to trust polls of dubious merit. (That figure is totally made up. See what I mean?)

Where do all these numbers that we remember so easily and cite so readily come from? How are they calculated, and by whom? My mother often says, “they” say this or “they” claim that… who the heck is “they”/

How do we misuse all these stats to make them say what we want them to? I am always amazed that in politics two parties can look at the same statistics so differently.

One more stat; I am 100% certain that this is good advice, please don’t text and drive.