Our happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.

A leading economist theorizes that video games actually prevent crime.

One of the mysteries of this recession is that the crime rate is continuing to drop. In previous economic downturns, the opposite was true.

Some of this can be attributed to better policing methods and longer sentences for criminals. But Harvard professor Lawrence Katz suspects that video games -- because they keep young men busy (and can be an outlet for their frustrations) -- are also contributing to this baffling reduction in the crime rate.

Katz stressed to The New York Times that this is just an untested theory. However, a study from a couple years ago concluded that the violent-crime rate is lower on weekends when a violent movie opens, a finding that suggests Katz's ideas about video games and crime may have some credence.

While it remains to be seen if video games really do prevent crime, we can say with a high degree of certainty that they prevent sex.