Marijuana may now be legal in Colorado, said Jordan Weissmann, but do purchasers really know what they’re buying? New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd highlighted that problem last week by describing what happened when she went to Denver to sample edible marijuana. Dowd ate too much of a weed-laced candy bar, which had no dosing instructions, and spent eight hours […]
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The Japanese are working themselves to death. Labor activists have been trying to draw attention to the problem of karoshi, or death from overwork, for decades. Reliable statistics can’t be found, because it’s hard to prove causation in the case of someone who, say, worked 36 hours in a row several times in the same month and then died of […]
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Major depression is not only psychologically crippling but can also age a person’s body on a cellular level. That’s the conclusion of a new study that examined blood samples from more than 2,400 people with and without depression. Researchers at the Free University of Amsterdam measured the length of telomeres, the small caps at the ends of chromosomes that protect […]
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According to a report from Oxfam the world’s eight richest people are worth as much as the 3.6 poorest people in the world. The total of their worth is $426 billion compared to 50% of the world’s poorest at $409 billion. The billionaires included in this list are Bill Gates ($75 billion), Warren Buffett ($61 billion), and Mark Zuckerberg ($45 […]
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Pluto may have company out there in the Kuiper Belt according to astronomers. They found that a small icy world called Sedna is out there past the planet of Neptune and may have company. This possible small planet known as 2014 UZ224 is about the size of Iowa which is about half the size of Pluto. Located approximately 8.5 billion […]
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Too much alone time can kill you. A study conducted by Brigham Young University found that isolation and loneliness are as bad for a person’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic. Researchers examined data from 35 years’ worth of studies on loneliness, and after accounting for participants’ socioeconomic status, age, gender, and pre-existing health conditions, […]
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Why are most mass shootings perpetrated by white males? asked Charlotte Childress and Harriet Childress. In the debate over why America suffers so many killing sprees, race and gender are “the elephant in the room.” At Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, Columbine— “month after month, year after year”—it is seething white men and teenagers who use guns to massacre scores of strangers. […]
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Over the past decade, more Americans died from overdoses of prescription painkillers than from heroin and cocaine use combined, according to government health officials. Most of the deaths were due to misuse of the medications— not to treat pain but to achieve a narcotic high. Recreational abuse has fueled a 300% surge in sales since 1999 of drugs like oxycodone, […]
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Recent polls show that the public has fallen into a mood of pessimism and fatalism. While Washington is halted in a gridlock creating a worrisome “leadership crisis”, many Americans fear that the country is unraveling. Little do they realize, The Greatest Era In Human History is upon us. This era has brought us incredible progress, with the nation’s cities at […]
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If you go to the beach this summer you may come home with some bacteria from the water. Studies show that the water may be contaminated with all sorts of unsafe bacteria. Before rainwater can be absorbed by the ground or evaporated back into the air it travels down to the ocean waters through sewer pipes where it can pick […]
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