Category: Mind, Body & Health
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Sharon Begley in Newsweek: When the Viaduct de Millau opened in the south of France in 2004, this tallest bridge in the world won worldwide accolades. German newspapers described how it "floated above the clouds" with "elegance and lightness" and "breathtaking" beauty. In France, papers praised the "immense" "concrete giant." Was it mere coincidence that…
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I am sure everyone saw this item in the news yesterday on TV or on the web. There is really nothing chemically or nutritionally yucky here. I guess one just has to get used to the idea. At the international space station, it was one small sip for man and a giant gulp of recycled urine for mankind. Astronauts…
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Pig flu is on the march! Now, if you were recently laid off, and you probably were, unless you're only about to be laid off in which case congratulations for making it this far, you might be wondering how the march of the pig flu is good news. Well, it's not. Obviously. Even the bird…
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H2OM - a blessed beverage, Intentional Chocolate – a snack that is "imbued" with a monk's meditation, Creo Mundi - a protein mix that has been praised loudly. How much will you pay for these "good feeling" (not just feel good) foods? An article in the latest issue of Time magazine reports that some are shelling out generously for foods which are embedded /…
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The US has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. One recent report puts the number of people behind bars at slightly higher than 2 million (including local jails). That translates to nearly one out of one hundred American adults. Of these, many are in Supermax penitentiaries where prisoners are kept under lock-down 23 hours a day . Inmates…
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Turns out, it's not a question of whether money can buy happiness (at least not directly); it's a question of what you should buy to maximize the amount of happiness purchased. You'll buy more happiness, or maybe longer-lasting happiness, with a ski trip or concert tickets than a new big-screen TV.
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As a concession to the grumbling GOP members of the Congress, President Obama dropped the provision for family planning and contraception for low income families from his economic stimulus package. Not that it did much to garner bipartisan support – no Republican voted for the bill. The conservatives had argued that family planning is not a means of stimulating the economy. As…
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We have recently focused a lot on the greed and self absorption (here, here and here) of the wealthy and the powerful who even with plenty to spare, don't stop to think of others less fortunate than themselves. Here now for a refreshing change is the story of ordinary people who thought of the need of others even in a time of extraordinary…
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That’s the tally as I skim the responses to the 2009 Edge Annual Question: “What will change everything?”—or, more prosaically, “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” The respondents tend to represent the science crowd (of the hard, social, and popular varieties), with lots of neuro-this and that-ologists. There…
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(In which we look again at the prevalence of melamine in various food chains, now confirmed to include human babies of practically all countries that use infant formulas from multinational companies like Nestle and Bristol-Meyers Squibb.)
Accidental Blogger 