Flirting makes men dumb

Who’s ever heard of harmless flirting? Apparently it’s not as harmless as it looks.

A new research is suggesting that talking to attractive women is actually bad for a man’s brain.

This study revealed that men who spend even just a few minutes conversing with attractive women do more bad in tests measuring their brain function than talking with someone that they don’t fancy, the Daily Mail reports.

The researchers believe that it’s because men use up a lot of their “cognitive resources” trying to impress pretty ladies that they don’t have a lot of room doing anything else.

The research also revealed that it also influenced the level of productivity in the workplace, and the test scores in co-educational schools.

However, this doesn’t work the other way round, because women are found to be affected conversing with attractive men. The psychologists at Radboud University in Netherland believes that it is because men are programmed to think about mating opportunities.

The researchers took 40 male heterosexual students for study, giving then cognitive tests to test their levels. Then they spent several minutes talking to either a male or a female member of the team before doing the test again.

It was found that men were slower and less accurate after the chat, and the more they fancied them, the worse their mark.

But when it was done to their female counterparts, the affect was not shown in their results.

Read full story

Online Social Networks increases Risk of Robbery

Stop blogging and avoid being targeted, says researchers.

A news report from British firm Legal & General has found that people who regularly update their status and profiles on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are at a higher risk of being targeted by robbers than their non-blogging friends.

The Digital Criminal report found that 38% of Facebook and Twitter users had posted updates about their holiday plans and when they will leave their houses, while a third of the bloggers told followers when they planned to be away for the weekend.

Reformed criminal Michael Fraser, who appears on the BBC's Beat the Burglar, helped the insurers develop the report. Fraser said that there was no doubt that criminals were using the internet to target people.

"I call it internet shopping for burglars," he commented.

"It is incredibly easy to use social networking sites to target people and then scope out more information on their actual home using other internet sites like Google Street View, all from the comfort of their sofa.

"It scares me to see how many people are prepared to give away valuable information about themselves, to people they simply don't know well enough - if at all."

It was found that 64% of 16 to 24 yr olds had detailed holiday plans online, and more than 70% of internet users said sites like Facebook were perfect for showing off new purchases for presents.

Read full story