Halloween. The day where we, the living, dress in strange outfits to confuse the spirits who roam among us. Or, conversely, the day where North America’s sugar intake trebles and the good people at Nestle and Hershey do little jigs around their respective offices, commemorating one of the greatest marketing coups of the 20th century. [...]
Karl Marx, the authour of Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto, may owe more to a thoroughly unpleasant skin disorder than historical materialism. From the Globe and Mail: Sam Shuster, professor of dermatology at the University of East Anglia, believes the revolutionary thinker had hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) in which the apocrine sweat glands – found [...]
Looks like this week is shaping up with an ‘Unfortunate Things Done to Animals’ theme on Nunc Scio. Yesterday, we had the story of how scientists discovered the world’s oldest animal by killing it. Today, we have pigeons-as-missile-guidance-systems. During WWII, weapon designers had a problem. Missile guidance systems were in their infancy, and could easily be [...]
Humans are marvelous creatures. One of our more endearing traits is to accept apparently contradictory ideas with a smile and without a second thought. Example: no one seems to think it odd that the Manhattan Project- which gave us the ultimate spicy meatball of atomic weapons- was based primarily in Los Alamos, New Mexico. And if [...]
I like science. Science does groovy things like cure diseases, put people on the moon, and make twinkies last for a million years. But sometimes you have to wonder about the scientists. The zoological world is all abuzz with the discovery of the oldest animal ever recorded. It is a clam, an Arctica islandica to [...]
From the CBC: An eight-centimetre-long tress of hair supposedly clipped from the head of Ernesto “Che” Guevara grossed $100,000 at a U.S. auction on Thursday, with a Houston bookshop owner taking home the Marxist rebel’s iconic locks. Ewwwww. Man, people sure do dumb things. Of course, what really rankles here is that, as a bald [...]
The UK’s Daily Mail has an article out today, allegedly containting an ‘alarming prediction‘ of humanity’s genetic future. According to ‘evolutionary theorist’ Oliver Curry at the London School of Economics, humans will split into two separate species- a tall, intelligent breed of super-foxy people, and a troll-like genetic underclass. Said Dr. Curry: “The report suggests that the future of man will [...]