In a weekend rife with kareoke and Kanye West, one rather serious part stood out almost right in the middle: a 4a.m. debate about the ethics of eating meat. While no one was in the ideal mindset to be debating ideas of this magnitude, I love impromptu debates almost as much as I love impromptu [...]
Did you know that: Every music system in the world shares these five notes in common. Indeed, they’re so fundamental to every note composed or performed anywhere on the planet that it seems, like our instinct for language, that they were pre-installed in us when we were born. These five notes a human genetic inheritance, [...]
Dan Ariely has a new survey up. This one is on a topic I’m really interested in: natural vs. synthetic medicine. I takes about 2 minutes to complete so I suggest clicking here and completing it. When the results come out, I’ll let you know and you can know you were a part of it!! [...]
Take thirteen minutes and listen to Bernie Sanders address the US Senate about inequality in a country that used to pride itself on its middle class. I love the entire speech but if I had to quibble I wish he would have put more emphasis on the fact that the problem isn’t that some people [...]
People got excited last week about a bacterium that can use arsenic, normally a poison, instead of phosphorus, but I find this even more disturbing: In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It [...]
At the beginning of this week NASA made a mysterious announcement of a “finding that will impact the search for extraterrestrial life” which they would disclose on yesterday at 2pm. The media dealt with that ambiguity like a five year old on Christmas Eve by blowing the story out of proportion before they even knew [...]
I had a good reason to stay in bed for an extra half-hour this morning. My alarm, which is always on CBC radio one, seemed to be berating pharmaceutical companies for shady practices. Two facts that stuck with me though I was only half awake were that pharmaceutical companies in Canada (or was it Quebec?) [...]
