science-bot will now return to his box

It’s not the PERCENTS of infected men that determine the strength of a country. It’s the TOTAL.

i.e. if this infection really did make men better at soccer, then the US would still have more of these awesome men than France, because 10% of a HUGE POPULATION is more than 50% of a small population. So in the US we still have more TOTAL infected men, which means more chances of getting people who are awesome at soccer.

And there is the flaw. Goodbye.

I wonder if cultures that prefer cats results in less time being spent dragged around by a dog, and therefore encouraging people to find other ways to spend their outdoor time together, like with a soccer ball…

They even note in the article that it can’t be known whether this correlation is a coincidence or a side effect of the true cause of the correlation.

A more logical explanation would be that in the US, football (to give the sport it’s proper name) is mostly played by kids twice a week in an organised fashion. In the rest of the world from the age of three, kids spend every free moment kicking a ball around in addition to regular practice in clubs in a culture that has over a century of collective experience.

Greetings from the country that sent Brazil home.

“infected people showed different personality traits to uninfected people … [infected] men became aggressive, jealous and suspicious.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii

That slate article itself was such a steaming pile that I felt dumber for having read it. It’s stats without math.

In angry retaliation, a Toxo league could form, where only those infected could compete, or at least only those unconcerned with the issue. Which is kind of the default now.