According to the AP, a new survey of Americans showed that about half of those polled believed the word “whatever” was the most annoying English conversation word and hated when it was used during a conversation.
The poll was conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion and shows that “whatever” received 47 percent of the votes. Second and third place went respectively to “you know” and “it is what it is.”
The word was made popular in the early 90s by the movie “Clueless” and by the band Nirvana and has not left the everyday English vocabulary since.
“It doesn’t surprise me because ‘whatever’ is in a special class, probably,” added Michael Adams, author of “Slang: The People’s Poetry.” “It’s a word that — and it depends how a speaker uses it — can suggest dismissiveness.”
The poll used 938 U.S. adults from around the States.
Result for: adults
According to a survey from the University of Rochester in New York, adults that play lots of action video games can possibly improve their eyesight.
Those who play see significant improvements in “their ability to notice subtle differences in shades of gray.”
“Normally, improving contrast sensitivity means getting glasses or eye surgery — somehow changing the optics of the eye,” said Daphne Bavelier of the study.“But we’ve found that action video games train the brain to process the existing visual information more efficiently, and the improvements last for months after game play stopped.”
The study divided 22 adults into two groups, with one group playing “Call of Duty 2″ and “Unreal Tournament 2004.” The second group played “The Sims 2,” a slower game that requires much less hand-eye coordination and reaction time.
Each group played exactly 50 hours of the games over nine weeks. By the end of the training, those in the first group showed a 43 percent improvement in “their ability to discern close shades of gray,” whereas the second group had no improvement.
Result for: adults
Intel and Harris Interactive have released the results of a recent survey they conducted entitled “Internet Reliance in Today’s Economy.” The survey polled 2,119 American adults.
The first “key” finding of the survey was that 46 percent of women and 30 percent of men said they would give up sex for two weeks rather than give up Internet access for the same two week period.
The Internet ranked highest among discretionary spending items, higher than cable television, dining out, and shopping for clothing.
61 percent of women surveyed said they would rather lose TV for two weeks, then have their Internet access taken for one.
“The survey revealed that 65 percent of adults feel they cannot live without Internet access, and even more — 71 percent — responded that it is important or very important to have Internet-enabled devices, such as laptops, netbooks and mobile Internet devices that can provide them with real-time updates on important issues including the state of the economy,” noted Intel.
