Category: science

Were the First Artists Mostly Women?

Were the First Artists Mostly Women?

I find the counter argument pretty interesting:

For adults, caves would have been dangerous and uninteresting, but young boys would have explored them for adventure, said Guthrie, an emeritus professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “They drew what was on their mind, which is mainly two things: naked women and large, frightening mammals.”

That makes sense to me. Put the raw data makes sense too. This study does seem to end the idea that these were done by the hunters. 

The Rational Choices of Crack Addicts

The Rational Choices of Crack Addicts

> “They didn’t fit the caricature of the drug addict who can’t stop once he gets a taste,” Dr. Hart said. “When they were given an alternative to crack, they made rational economic decisions.”

At some point we will have to come to terms with the fact that addiction, poverty and violence are related social ills that can only be solved together and only by collective action.

NYT: Welcome to the Age of Denial

NYT: Welcome to the Age of Denial

Today, however, it is politically effective, and socially acceptable, to deny scientific fact. Narrowly defined, “creationism” was a minor current in American thinking for much of the 20th century. But in the years since I was a student, a well-funded effort has skillfully rebranded that ideology as “creation science” and pushed it into classrooms across the country. Though transparently unscientific, denying evolution has become a litmus test for some conservative politicians, even at the highest levels.

…

Meanwhile, climate deniers, taking pages from the creationists’ PR playbook, have manufactured doubt about fundamental issues in climate science that were decided scientifically decades ago. And anti-vaccine campaigners brandish a few long-discredited studies to make unproven claims about links between autism and vaccination.

This is the age of truthiness. We have an industry that promotes truthiness and employes people to provide fact-like quotes to balance out arguments.

Dementia Rate Is Found to Drop Sharply due to health care and education improvements?

Dementia Rate Is Found to Drop Sharply due to health care and education improvements?

experts on aging said the studies also confirmed something they had suspected but had had difficulty proving: that dementia rates would fall and mental acuity improve as the population grew healthier and better educated. The incidence of dementia is lower among those better educated, as well as among those who control their blood pressure and cholesterol, possibly because some dementia is caused by ministrokes and other vascular damage. So as populations controlled cardiovascular risk factors better and had more years of schooling, it made sense that the risk of dementia might decrease. A half-dozen previous studies had hinted that the rate was falling, but they had flaws that led some to doubt the conclusions.

Why I wish my daughter had been vaccinated

Why I wish my daughter had been vaccinated

until she caught pertussis – which turns out to mean whooping cough. Which turns out to mean months of pain. It is a highly contagious disease that comes in stages, but that horrible, hacking cough that kept her up all night went on for so many weeks that she was prescribed an inhaler. She was past her first birthday, so unlikely to die of it, like newborns can, but it’s disgusting to watch your child needlessly suffer like that. My parents had to come to help us, and then we grownups all succumbed to the revolting condition too. Of course, having wanted to avoid filling her body with chemicals, I ended up giving her all the medicines I could find.

This is just sad. Convinced of grand conspiracies and alternative health, she keep her child unvaccinated and that results in months of suffering and pain.

Are Butterflies Two Different Animals in One? The Death And Resurrection Theory : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR

Are Butterflies Two Different Animals in One? The Death And Resurrection Theory : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR

What he’s saying is, while a moth appears to be one animal, with a wormy start and a flying finish, it’s actually two animals — two in one! We start with a baby caterpillar that lives a full life and then dies, dissolves. There’s a pause. Then a new animal, the moth, springs to life, from the same cells, reincarnated.