The next time someone tries to tell you ancient folk medicine was equivalent to modern science, remind them that people once consumed other humans as part of legal trade. Apothecaries sold powdered mummies, or at least what they claimed were powdered mummies, because of belief in medical cannibalism and that it cured everything from headaches to the plague.Take that, antibiotics, your job could...
read moreSamhain, All Hallows Evening. Hallowe'en, Halloween. The name has changed but the world’s fascination with a day of spooks and scares has never wavered. Except it has also always been about harvests and farming and food. It may seem odd to lump together food and ghosts but that is Halloween in a cultural nutshell; a confusing mash-up of cultures and beliefs. That is actually a good thing. It...
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Are kids walking at night on Halloween safe? What's the physics of ghosts? How many toxic chemicals are in that organic pumpkin I bought? Is there a Secret Sadist out there putting razor blades in candy? You can find out the answers to all those questions and more in Halloween Science 2.0. It covers the history of the holiday, of course, this is Science 2.0, not a textbook, through the lens of...
read moreWe definitely need to DOGE nonsense like acupuncture out of the NIH and use that money for science but I don't want to live in a culture where children's theater doesn't want to have a play about "the ups-and-downs of a lovesick zombie who can’t find a date inthe land of the living."It may not sound all that kid-friendly but this was a children's theater in Oregon and a stroll down any street...
read moreInformation freedom is a good thing but there is no question it has been weaponized. Many scientists have been ruined by activists and their trade groups who use Freedom of Information Act rules to find a sentence in correspondence with corporations or trade groups, remove it from context, and claim science is a corporate conspiracy. Then they publish it thanks to politically aligned schools like...
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