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December zingers: Avatar, record number of women win Nobel prize

Every December we round up a few factoids—zingers—from the week to throw out at the holiday parties. Here goes:

The movie Avatar cost in the neighborhood of $300 million and may be the most expensive film ever made
Complete with blue people who speak a language made up specifically for the film, Avatar is a 3D, digital extravaganza about a paralyzed soldier who escapes to a fantastical planet called Pandora (the blue people have tails). The movie took four years to produce and new cameras were invented to film it. Whose baby is this? James Cameron’s—director of the highest grossing film ever, Titanic. So, he has a track record! The film launches Dec. 18 and so far the early reviews are good.

Twenty-one million people are “underbanked”
Under what? Underbanked, says the FDIC, which estimates that about 21 million people who don’t have bank accounts use alternative forms of banking, say a check cashing service or a payday loan shop, all which take hefty fees. About 9 million don’t have bank accounts at all, with minorities and low-income people making up the majority of these groups. The FDIC works with banks to try to get some of these folks banking services.

Casual sex is not so damaging on the psyche
Young, unattached adults engaging in casual sex aren’t at “increased risk for harmful psychological outcome compared to those in more committed relationships.” That’s according to a new study publishes in a health journal from the Guttmacher Institute. The paper apparently refutes abstinence only teachings that warn that casual sex is hard emotionally, and says the focus should be on safe sex. The Onion, however, claims it’s only rewarding “for the first few decades.”

Five women accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Sweden, the most ever
Since 1901, 822 Nobel prizes have been awarded and just 40 women have won during that time—five of them this year. One of them, American Elinor Ostrom, was the first woman to win the prize for economics.

Free mammograms: Women's health in reform

You might have thought that all the sports news this week revolved around Tiger Woods and his “transgressions.” 

But of course politics is something of a sport as well, and there was plenty of gamesmanship on display this week, from President Obama’s decision to both send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and outline a timeline for withdrawal by 2011; to reminding the American public that the government is still focused on a jobs stimulus despite everything else that's going on; to the football-like grappling in the U.S. Senate over the health reform bill.

Senators locked horns over costs, and also women’s health—namely, mammograms.

Free mammograms
A couple weeks ago a government panel said women who aren’t predisposed to breast cancer should get mammograms starting at age 50 rather than 40, setting off a firestorm. So the Senate passed an amendment to its version of the health bill (they pass many amendments to revise the bill that came out of committee beforevoting on the whole bill) that would require insurance companies to cover mammograms before age 50 and also make them—and other types of screenings and preventative services—FREE. The amendment passed 61-39.

Fear of rationing
Exactly why they should be free and not subject to some kind of a co-pay is not entirely clear.