Etc...

I'LL KEEP AT IT FOR A WHILE

Has the stock market taken a big chunk out of your financial nest egg? Are you therefore resigned to putting off retirement? Results of a new study suggest that if you're male, you're more likely to choose to stay on the job full-time than if you're a woman. University of Florida gerontologist Amy Mehraban Pienta and Pennsylvania State University sociologist Mark Hayward, who studied 1,818 couples aged 51 to 61, concluded that the male partner attached a far higher probability to working beyond normal retirement age. That's especially true the better educated he was and the less health insurance he had. But women joined men in being likely to continue working if they're self-employed.

Speaking of research, a survey of 10,000 Britons who were born in 1958 found an apparent correlation between height and the number of children one produces. Men 6 ft., 1 in., for example, had significantly more offspring than those just three inches shorter. But the opposite was true for women, proving the adage that females prefer tall men, but men aren't particularly attracted to tall women, the researchers said.

Americans, on average, spent 25-1/2 minutes getting to work in 2000, three minutes more than in 1990, new data from the Census Bureau show. Seventy-six percent of commuters drove alone, a slight rise from the previous decade. Carpoolers declined from 13 percent to 12 percent. The states with the most solo commuters, according to the 2000 Census, and the percentage in each case:

1. Michigan 83.2%
2. Alabama 83.0
3. Ohio 82.8
4. Indiana 81.8
(tie) New Hampshire 81.8
6. Tennessee 81.7
7. Kansas 81.5
8. Missouri 80.5
9. West Virginia 80.3
10. Kentucky 80.2
– Associated Press