Aussie Soccer Team Decides To Go Skins

Remember soccer star Brandi Chastain and her sports bra? Well, as the saying goes, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Twelve members of the Australian women’s national soccer team took it all off for a calendar that sold 75,000 copies in January. More than 180,000 copies of a new version with new photos have been printed.

The soccer team is unlikely to medal at the Olympics in Sydney, but the team members should net about a million bucks in royalties from the calendar and double the attendance at their games.

Being photographed in the buff was a team effort: “We just needed a little exposure,” says 20-year-old defender Amy Taylor.

The calendar’s available at www.worldfootball.com.au. (From March Men’s Journal)

* Talk to your teens: Number of words in the vocabulary of the average 14-year-old in the U.S. in 1950: 25,000.

Number of words in the vocabulary of the average 14-year-old in the U.S. in 1999: 10,000. (From Feb. 14 Time)

* Facts of life: The most-used, long-term form of birth control is female sterilization, with 28 percent of women choosing this option. Twenty-seven percent use birth control pills. Fewer couples — 20 percent — use condoms and only 11 percent opt for male sterilization. (From February Wired)

* Think it’s easy being a woman? In a survey by New Choices magazine, 76 percent of people age 50 and older said they believe it is harder to be a woman than a man.

Not surprisingly, more women (82 percent) than men (64 percent) said women have it roughest. (From Knight-Ridder wire service)

* Coming to a city near us: Kozmo.com delivers everything from videos to snacks, magazines, pregnancy test kits and other impulse buys in Seattle, San Francisco, Boston and several other big cities. Customers order on line and delivery is guaranteed within the hour. By year’s end, the company plans to expand to 30 cities (although they haven’t yet been named).

Kozmo.com already sells more Ben & Jerry’s than any other vendor in New York. Red Vines and Milk Duds, AA batteries and condoms are also top sellers. The bicycle delivery people are instructed not to peek at their deliveries so customers won’t get embarrassed.

Kozmo.com’s target market is busy professionals, parents with young kids and lazy teens who simply don’t want to get in the car and run to the convenience store for a snack. (From February Wired/Feb. 7 New Yorker)

* Try to remember: It’s tough to remember much of what happens each day, says German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. He says 56 percent of newly learned material disappears from our minds instantaneously — short-term memory can hold only about seven items at a time. Another 10 percent vanishes within 24 hours.

A month out, we’ve forgotten 80 percent of newly learned material.

The director of the Johns Hopkins Memory Clinic in Baltimore, Dr. Barry Gordon, says the reason we can’t remember what goes on in our day-to-day lives is because it’s undeniably dull. “Poor memory,” he says, “can be a function of boredom.” (From March Men’s Journal)