You'll never believe this: College students under the age of 21 who have fake IDs are more likely to drink alcohol than those who don't. A University of Missouri-Columbia study, which surveyed more than 3,700 students, found that ownership of fake IDs increased by nearly 20% over the course of four semesters and led to increased alcohol consumption. What's more (this will blow your mind), members of fraternities and sororities were more likely to have fake IDs than non-Greeks.

How about the Center for Recognizing the Sad Truth About What Gets People's Attention? As anyone who's watched a reality show, visited a website or even called the cable company lately knows ("You've been selected to participate in a quality-control survey!"), polls are hot. No longer limited to dry political inquiries in newspapers and marketing surveys about cleaning products, polls don't just reflect public opinion, they reflect our fascination with the whole concept of public opinion -- mostly our own.

Whether we're sounding off about healthcare reform, taking a Glamour magazine "Are you normal?" poll or posting a survey on our MySpace page about whether those pants go with that shirt, what often seems most compelling is not the subject at hand but the feeling of participating, the group thing, the vague stirrings of a democratic process. Never mind that the subject matter is often stupefyingly trivial and the results are about as scientific as interpretive dance. Take, for instance, the recently launched BuzzDash.com, which offers thousands of live, anonymous polls about a host of subjects. Questions range from "Should universal healthcare cover illegal immigrants?" to "Women: would you rather be with a man who is a) very hairy or b) overweight (at last check, hirsute gentlemen were leading by 22%).

BuzzDash founder David Gerken says he wants the site to be the go-to place for anyone who wants to "gauge the pulse of the nation."

"We each only have our own perspective on things," he said. "The Internet lends itself to getting perspectives from broad groups of people. You can get a mainstream poll from someplace like USA Today, but we deal not only with headline issues but human-interest and everyday types of issues. Like, for instance, 'Do you think you're weird?' "

As of a few days ago, 65% of the 742 people who had participated in BuzzDash's "Do you think you're weird?" poll had classified themselves as such. "I consider myself weirdly alluring," went one comment (of course, just answering the question won't do; there must be comments). "It would be weird not to think you're weird," said another.