Beware of short glasses
Apparently if you pour free hand into a short wide glass, rather than a tall slender one, you'll end up with 20-30% more. For more insight into the optical illusions and how we act - Cornell Professor Brian Wansink is a good place to start
BFFE
yes, it is true - at least according to a SciAm Mind article called "Good Friends"; "social interaction contributed greatly to the evolution of our brain" and "friendship increase life expectancy". Part of the reason seems to be the fact that friendships are "two-way streets" of mutual confirmation, both parties have to agree - it is not something "random" based on common lineage. According to Dunbar, we organize our friends into three general circles of 3-5 close friends, 12-20 friends and 30-50 looser acquaintances. And this is directly related to our brains, and their ability to handle complexity - he has developed a formula for estimating the "natural" size of groups for various animals, based on brain measurements.
Monkey see
Why do most people in the world go crazy over football, while most Americans think it involves holding and throwing a bloated banana? One interesting avenue is the influence of "mirror neurons" - which among other things enable empathy. They fire when we do certain actions, and help us remember how to do it. But they are also fired when we hear the actions described - or more importantly in this setting - when we see others performing the same action. So everyone who has felt the rush of shooting the ball in the net, will "relive" that when watching others play. (Yes, I'm simplifying by a factor of 1000....) And since a majority of youths in Europe, Africa, South America and soon (?) Asia, have played football on a dusty street, a vacant field or a parking lot after hours - the game will keep us enthralled for another generation and then some.
