Posts Tagged ‘Society’
Alcohol “Protects Men’s Hearts”
From BBC News:
Drinking alcohol every day cuts the risk of heart disease in men by more than a third, a major study suggests.
The Spanish research involving more than 15,500 men and 26,000 women found large quantities of alcohol could be even more beneficial for men.
Female drinkers did not benefit to the same extent, the study in Heart found.
Experts are critical, warning heavy drinking can increase the risk of other diseases, with alcohol responsible for 1.8 million deaths globally per year.
The study was conducted in Spain, a country with relatively high rates of alcohol consumption and low rates of coronary heart disease.
The research involved men and women aged between 29 and 69, who were asked to document their lifetime drinking habits and followed for 10 years.
Crucially the research team claim to…
Minnesota Dad Spoke Only Klingon to Child for Three Years
Yes, Mr. Worf. That does sound bonkers. Hart Van Denburg writes in Minneapolis / St. Paul City Pages:
Is this taking the whole Star Trek thing a teensie weensie bit too far? d’Armond Speers spoke only Klingon to his child for the first three years of its life.
Klingon? Not Spanish, French, Mandarin? Not some gutteral genuflecting concoction from the deepest recesses of Borneo? Klingon? You heard it right. (And if you don’t know about the Klingon Empire, look it up.)
“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers told the Minnesota Daily. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”
And get this, Speers says he isn’t really a huge Star Trek fan.
Evolution of the God Gene
Nicholas Wade reports in the New York Times:
In the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico, the archaeologists Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery have gained a remarkable insight into the origin of religion.
During 15 years of excavation they have uncovered not some monumental temple but evidence of a critical transition in religious behavior. The record begins with a simple dancing floor, the arena for the communal religious dances held by hunter-gatherers in about 7,000 B.C. It moves to the ancestor-cult shrines that appeared after the beginning of corn-based agriculture around 1,500 B.C., and ends in A.D. 30 with the sophisticated, astronomically oriented temples of an early archaic state.
This and other research is pointing to a new perspective on religion, one that seeks to explain why religious behavior has occurred in societies at every…
The Man Who Made You Put Away Your Pen
Listen on NPR:
When was the last time you actually set pen to paper and mailed off a personal letter to someone? It’s probably been awhile — and the man to blame is Ray Tomlinson.
Back in 1971, Tomlinson was a young engineer at the Boston firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman — known today as BBN Technologies. He’d been given a task: Figure out something interesting to do with ARPANET, the newborn computer network that was the predecessor of the modern-day Internet.
“We were working on ways in which humans and computers could interact,” he tells NPR’s Guy Raz. But instead, Tomlinson started tinkering with the interaction — or lack of it — between distant colleagues who didn’t answer their phones. He eventually found a way to send messages from one computer…
Can Mind-Altering Drugs have Mental Health Benefits?
From the Telegraph:
New studies are testing whether psychedelic drugs such as LSD and MDMA can treat OCD, post traumatic stress and cancer related anxiety.
On September 19 this year, 12 people gathered in the suburban Hermsdorf district of Berlin for a group psychotherapy session that allegedly involved illegal drugs. A day later, two of the participants were dead and another in a coma. The substances used and exact cause of death have yet to be confirmed. Local newspaper reports have claimed that heroin and MDMA (ecstasy) were taken, but other drugs may have been in circulation.
Garri Rober, the therapist who led the session which included his wife, Elke, is facing possible charges in connection with the deaths and on suspicion of supplying illegal drugs. The other nine participants were released from…
NZ Crew to Drill for Whisky in Antarctic
From MSN News:
A team of New Zealanders is preparing to drill in Antarctica in the New Year, and they hope to strike – whisky.
Among the supplies British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton abandoned on his unsuccessful 1909 expedition to the pole were two crates of the now extinct rare old brand of McKinlay and Co whisky.
Now Whyte & Mackay, the drinks giant that owns McKinlay and Co, has asked for a sample of the drink for a series of experiments, the Telegraph newspaper reported in London.
The New Zealanders will use special drills to free the trapped crates and rescue a bottle from the crates, discarded near the Cape Royds hut used by the Nimrod expedition, or at least draw off a sample using a syringe.
[Read more at MSN News]
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Evangelist Sentenced to 175 Years for Taking Child Brides
JON GAMBRELL writes on the AP via Yahoo News:
Evangelist Tony Alamo used his stature as a self-proclaimed prophet to force underage girls into sham marriages with him, controlling his followers with their fears of eternal suffering.
But the judge who sentenced Alamo on Friday to 175 years in prison for child sexual abuse warned of another kind of justice awaiting the aging evangelist. “Mr. Alamo, one day you will face a higher and a greater judge than me,” U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes told the preacher. “May he have mercy on your soul.”
Barnes leveled the maximum sentence against the 75-year-old, who preyed on followers’ young daughters and took child “brides” as young as age 8. A jury convicted Alamo in July on a 10-count indictment accusing him of taking the…
Five Great Things You Didn’t Know Came from Horrific Tragedies
Henry Stennett writes on Cracked.com:
In Japan they have an ancient saying: “The most beautiful flowers grow only in the shit of Godzilla.”
And you know what? They’re right. Great things not only happen despite horrible disasters, but often because of them. We’re not saying that we’re glad these horrible things happened, or that it was even worth it. But a lot of what’s great about the world today is a result of history’s darkest hours. Like…
#5. The Black Death: We know this statement is going to be pretty controversial down in the comments section, but we’re going to say it and stand by it: the Black Death was bad. We want to make it clear right off the bat that when we talk about a silver lining, we are not advocating that the Black Death be brought back. We would not support any such proposal.
The Black Death, a.k.a. The Plague, utterly ravaged humanity, killing between 30 and 60 percent of Europeans, and dropping the population of the entire world by 20 percent by some estimates…
No, It’s not Elitist to Think the Tea-Baggers Are Idiots
From Alternet:
A post over at the Seminal is taking “liberal elitism” to task for not taking the Tea Party people seriously, and that that will lead to the election of Sarah Palin and other such ilk.
To quote our vice president, malarkey.
While I have long argued that there is too much elitism on the left for my tastes, there’s a wide gulf between holding your nose in the air for no good reason and dumbing yourself down in order to appeal to the lowest common idiotic denominator. Suck is the case with the Tea Party group and their leaders like Palin.
Far from the liberals in the ’70s who were clearly not responsive enough to the middle class, leading to the rise of Nixon and resentment politics, today’s left has gone to great…
“Restless Vagina Syndrome”: Big Pharma’s Newest Fake Disease
From Alternet:
It’s not your fault, ladies (and certainly not your partner’s), that you don’t orgasm every time you have intercourse, or that you lack the libido of a 17-year-old boy. You have a disease: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and the pharmaceutical industry wants to help.
You are among the “43 percent of American women [who] experience some degree of impaired sexual function,” according to a Journal of the American Medical Association article. The FDA’s evolving definition of FSD includes decreased desire or arousal, sexual pain and orgasm difficulties — but only if the woman feels “personal distress” about it.
So, convincing women to feel distress is a key component of the drug company strategy to market a multi-billion-dollar pill that will cure billions of women of what may not ail them.
By promoting…
Rare Headshrinking Footage Confirmed?
What could be the only footage of an actual human headshrinking ceremony in South America — which shows heads being boiled and dried — may be real, says an explorer in a new documentary.
Cheltenham 2012 Website becomes Hollywood Sensation
Bruce Fenton, the subject of this great article at ThisisGloucestershire, is a long time supporter of all things Disinfo and creator of 2012Rising.com. Keep up the great work Bruce!
Bruce Fenton has long been a prophet of doom – and now Hollywood has caught on.
As the latest end-of-the-world blockbuster 2012 hits movie screens today, the 32-year-old says he will be first through the cinema doors.
Bruce, from Cheltenham, claims to runs the UK’s most popular website dedicated to the cataclysmic Mayan prophecy from which the film takes its story.
The estate agent has spent the past 10 years researching the Mesoamerican culture, which predicts the earth will undergo a series of powerful transformations on December 21 or 23 of that year.
The forecast is based on what’s thought to be the end-date of the Mayan…
11-Year-Old Gives Birth to Baby Girl … After Going into Labor at her Wedding
By Barbara Degarmo, Daily News
An 11-year-old girl became one of the world’s youngest mothers — after she went into labor at her wedding.
Kordeza Zhelyazkova, from Sliven, Bulgaria, was still wearing her wedding dress and tiara when she was rushed to the hospital, where she gave birth to a 5-pound, 8-ounce girl.
“I’m not going to play with toys anymore — I have a new toy now,” Kordeza told reporters as she showed off little Violeta.
Kordeza — who got pregnant two weeks after her 11th birthday — told the News of the World: “It feels strange…now I must grow up. I am not going back to school.”
Read more on the Daily News
