Fast as lightning

Carl Douglas came onto the scene with expert timing. Exactly 50 years ago this week he had everyone kung fu fighting as he topped the charts in Canada and the U.S. on his way to having one of the best selling singles of all time.

Fast forward to 2025 and a performance at a recently reopened monastery in Nepal suggests that Carl was onto something. If you don’t believe everyone was kung fu fighting, just check out the awesome demonstration given by these nuns!

Bet you can guess their anthem ;)

Through all the noise about prices, the reality is that several things can be true at once: prices are much higher than millions can handle, yet prices for certain everyday goods and services actually fell in 2024.

For example, gas prices remain quite a bit higher than most would like them to be. However, they actually fell by nearly 8% between January and November of 2024. The same can be said for home heating oil, except in the case of this product, prices fell nearly 17% in the same timeframe.

Will they continue falling in 2025? GasBuddy thinks so, with average prices at the pumps falling to $3.22 per gallon this year compared to $3.33 last year.

Consumer technology prices also fell, with semiconductors and chips continuing to become more efficient and plentiful in supply. Prices for consumer technology in general fell 6.7% in 2024.

Though this is generally the case with what experts call a “deflationary product,” there is one factor that could actually cause such prices to rise in 2025.

“[Tariffs] would increase the prices for a lot of products,” said Rick Kowalski, senior director of business intelligence at the Consumer Technology Association. “Tariffs are a tax on consumers and businesses, they disrupt supply chains, they reduce global innovation and investment.”

Coming out of the Christmas and New Years holidays, you likely indulged in at least one feast that left you feeling like you were in what’s commonly referred to as a “food coma.” It turns out there’s quite a bit of scientific backing for this rather unpleasant feeling

While casually referred to as a food coma, its scientific name is “postprandial somnolence,” which refers to the feeling of fatigue after eating.

“A food coma is a behavioral response to eating food when the animal, whether it's human or another animal, slows down and relaxes after taking in a meal…Another way to put it is rest and digest,” says Nikolay Kukushkin, a clinical associate professor of life science at New York University.

In a study led by Justine Hervé, an assistant professor of economics at the Stevens Institute of Technology, 4,000 students in India took several tests before and after eating. It found the “postprandial” period generally saw cognitive ability drop across the board by 5% to 9%.

In other words, the term “food coma” may not refer to a literal coma, but it also isn’t just common parlance to describe being tired after eating. Rather, it is literally a form of cognitive impairment.

A new study that analyzed the largest iceberg formations of each year between 1976 and 2023 found the most extreme “calving” events occurring in the Antarctic ice shelf aren’t necessarily related to climate change.

Mackie et al conducted this difficult analysis in order to determine how severe the loss of ice is on the shrinking continent and they determined that while the climate warmed in the timeframe studied, the size of each iceberg did not increase over that same period of time.

On the other hand, the group also determined more calving events occurred on average each year over the period of time in question, suggesting the smaller calving events were at least partly a consequence of climate change.

The authors determined, therefore, that Antarctica’s dwindling ice is occurring in the form of “a death by a thousand cuts,” rather than through a pattern in which the most extreme calving events become more extreme over time.

At the same time, however, they also determined the largest iceberg to break off the shelf may still lie ahead, and could be a “once in a century” chunk roughly the size of Switzerland.

Researchers consider superstition a byproduct of a human being’s relationship with and understanding of cause and effect. When it comes to superstitions specifically, they often arise due to a perceived pattern of something happening because of something else, even if there isn’t actually a causal relationship.

Stephanie Gomes-Ng, an Auckland University senior lecturer of Psychology, and her team recruited 371 students from a large Australian university to investigate their ability to detect causality in any given event—could they determine what, if anything, caused something else to happen?

The participants were asked to play several games, the outcomes of which would sometimes be the consequence of the participant’s actions and sometimes would happen independently. In cases when the participants weren’t particularly sure if they caused the outcome or if it happened independently, the majority said “I caused it,” even if it turned out they didn’t.

Gomes-Ng says this type of thinking about the world can actually enhance the confidence of people to pursue goals and control situations. It enhances the perceived agency of individuals, and though that would technically be detrimental in situations that someone doesn’t actually have control over, the researchers say this type of thinking is ultimately a net-positive for mental health and productivity.

The prestigious and exclusive club for the world’s most beloved dog breeds just got a new member. The American Kennel Club (AKC) announced the other day that it was welcoming the Danish-Swedish Farm Dog into its hallowed halls.

"We're excited about it. We're looking forward to it," said Carey Segebart, owner and incoming president of the Danish-Swedish Farmdog Club of America, who helped on the advocacy campaign to get the breed recognized by the AKC. "They're interesting, fun little dogs. They're essentially up for anything. They succeed at most everything."

The breed’s roots can be traced back centuries to what’s now Denmark, southern Sweden and some other European countries. Their original breeding purpose was rodent patrol, but also herding to an extent.

In the 20th century, farmdog lovers made it their mission to get these pups active in competitions on both sides of the Atlantic, and though there are just 350 known farmdogs living in the United States, plenty of them have indeed been competing in agility and obedience competitions.

“[They are] a wonderful addition to a family that is able to provide it with the exercise and mental stimulation that it needs," the AKC’s Gina DiNardo said in a statement.

That story about superstitions got us thinking about one of the best songs from one of the greatest artists of all time. How well do you know Stevie Wonder’s Superstition? Find out with today’s trivia ;)

Have a great weekend Staker!

Trivia courtesy of funtrivia.com. Today’s issue written by Michael Cowan, Joey Cowan, and Maureen Norman.