Month: May 2019

Big Pharma, Curiositys, Drugs, Health, Manipulation, ScienceLeave a comment

Are Nutritional Supplements a Waste of Money?

Fernando Kaskais

Credit: Getty Images The FDA is stepping up its oversight of the $50 billion nutritional supplement industry By Nutrition Diva Monica Reinagel The FDA recently announced that it plans to increase its oversight of the multi-billion dollar supplement industry. This would include everything from the calcium and multivitamins at your local drug store, to those questionable weight loss and virility supplements pitched on late night cable TV stations. According to the FDA, “Three out of every four American consumers take a dietary supplement on a regular basis. For older Americans, the rate rises to four in five. And one in three children … Continue reading Are Nutritional Supplements a Waste of Money?

Curiositys, Future, Health, Living, Psychology, ScienceLeave a comment

Would You Like to Live Forever?

Fernando Kaskais

Source: Rodolfo Clix / Pexels New research explores attitudes towards life-extending technologies. by Mark Travers Ph.D. This may sound far out, but some scientists speculate that ours will be the last generation that will have to die. Advances in cellular biology and cybernetics, they contend, are bringing us closer to the point of “indefinite life extension.” Death, they suggest, will soon become a choice rather than a fact of life. Whether or not that is realistic, how do people feel about the prospect of such an unprecedented reality? Are we eager to achieve immortality, or do we prefer life as … Continue reading Would You Like to Live Forever?

Curiositys, Living, Psychology, Science, SexLeave a comment

Want to know if your partner’s cheating on you? Just listen to their voice

Fernando Kaskais

Shutterstock Authors Viktoria Mileva Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology, University of Stirling Juan David Leongómez Assistant Professor of Evolutionary Psychology, El Bosque University Disclosure statement The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Picture Morgan Freeman, Donald Trump or Margaret Thatcher. Most likely you can hear their voices in your mind, and the characteristic inflections that they put on certain words, as well as their tone and pitch. Even without listening to the words, when … Continue reading Want to know if your partner’s cheating on you? Just listen to their voice

Animals, Curiositys, History, Media&Culture, Science, TechnologyLeave a comment

Reimagining the Megalodon, the World’s Most Terrifying Sea Creature

Fernando Kaskais

Artist Gary Staab assembles the massive megalodon. A scale model at the bottom right shows what the finished creature will look like. (Ryan Donnell) The ancient beast of the oceans comes to life in a new display at the National Museum of Natural History By Arik Gabbai When I reached the world’s pre-eminent sculptor of long-dead monsters, he was standing atop a ladder inside a 16-foot-tall section of a megalodon tail that was propped upright in his warehouse-size studio. “I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m inside a bathroom,” Gary Staab said on his cellphone. The tail was part of a 52-foot-long, life-size … Continue reading Reimagining the Megalodon, the World’s Most Terrifying Sea Creature

Curiositys, Eco, Media&Culture, Politics, Rights, TechnologyLeave a comment

We need a greener way to die

Fernando Kaskais

What you take with you. illustration by Chelsea Beck Most of us will keep polluting post-mortem. ByNicole Wetsman  Death might be life’s natural and unavoidable conclusion, but humans have ensured that what happens to our bodies afterward is anything but. For more than a century, the circle of life in the United States has looked more like a horseshoe, with burial practices preventing the Earth from reusing our precious raw materials after we shuffle off this mortal coil. But there are alternatives, and a growing number of future corpses might rot as nature intended. Embalming may be our worst offender. … Continue reading We need a greener way to die

Animals, Curiositys, Health, Living, Psychology, Science, SexLeave a comment

Evolution Is Really Not That Into Sex

Fernando Kaskais

Plants and animals have reproduced without sex for eons. So why did nature bother? BY DAVID P. BARASH What is sex for? When I regularly queried students at the beginning of my course in evolutionary biology, most responded that it was for reproducing. Reasonable enough, but wrong. In fact, lots of living things reproduce without sex: Asexual reproduction is found not only in many forms of archaea and bacteria, but also in numerous plants and protists, as well as in fully one half of all animal phyla. Baker’s yeast reproduce by budding, as do hydra and parasites such as tapeworms. … Continue reading Evolution Is Really Not That Into Sex

Bizarre, Curiositys, Future, Health, Manipulation, Matrix, Science, TechnologyLeave a comment

SCIENTISTS SAY BABIES WILL GROW IN ARTIFICIAL WOMBS WITHIN TEN YEARS

Fernando Kaskais

John Vibes, Truth Theory Waking Times The abortion debate is once again taking center stage in US politics, and the prospect of artificial wombs is slowly becoming a part of the conversation, as the technology is actually starting to become a reality. According to some experts in the field, we are just a decade away from this type of technology reaching the public. Dr. Carlo Bulletti, associate professor at Yale University’s obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive science department, has predicted that a fully functioning artificial womb could be used in the medical field in the next ten years. Scientists call this Ectogenesis, which is … Continue reading SCIENTISTS SAY BABIES WILL GROW IN ARTIFICIAL WOMBS WITHIN TEN YEARS

Curiositys, Health, Humor, Living, Media&Culture, Psychology, SexLeave a comment

PENIS SIZE? IT’S NOT LENGTH THAT MATTERS. IT’S TIME TO TALK ABOUT GIRTH

Fernando Kaskais

by Tracy Moore Here’s a gentleman’s guide to letting her know when you’re packing particularly good width “Some men have hair transplants or belly tucks,” 38-year-old mechanic William O’Connor told The Guardianlast year about his decision to surgically increase his penis’ girth by two inches. “I wanted a truncheon in my pants. My whole life I’ve enjoyed impressing women; this was just an extension of that. You could call it a gentlemanly thing to do.” It might very well be a gentlemanly, if unnecessary, thing to do, but is there a gentlemanly way to let a woman know you’ve got a truncheon in your pants? And in … Continue reading PENIS SIZE? IT’S NOT LENGTH THAT MATTERS. IT’S TIME TO TALK ABOUT GIRTH

Activism, Animals, Eco, Health, Literature, Media&Culture, Psychology, RightsLeave a comment

Shelley’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and the Spiritual Value of Vegetarianism

Fernando Kaskais

Illustration by Rebecca Green from How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery. “By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth, to give a fair trial to the vegetable system.” BY MARIA POPOVA “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature writer Henry Beston wrote in 1928 as he contemplated belonging and the web of life, adding: “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or … Continue reading Shelley’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and the Spiritual Value of Vegetarianism

Activism, Animals, Eco, Health, Living, Media&Culture, Psychology, RightsLeave a comment

Eating someone

Fernando Kaskais

Lizzie #1. Photo © 2009 KevinHoran.com from the series Chattel Farmed animals have personalities, smarts, even a sense of agency. Why then do we saddle them with lives of utter despair? Lori Marino is a neuroscientist and an expert in animal behaviour and intelligence. Formerly on the faculty at Emory University, she is the founder and executive director of the Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy in Utah, and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project. Edited by Pam Weintraub We’ve all heard them and used them – the common references to farmed animals that appeal to the worst part of human nature: ‘pearls … Continue reading Eating someone