The Beresovka Mammoth was found in Siberia in the early 20th Century. Its body had been relatively well preserved, frozen for about forty thousand years in the frigid tundra. There were a few mysterious facts that puzzled researchers.
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Most of us admit that we don’t know everything. However, we usually feel certain about some of our facts. We may think they’re obviously true, or that they’re so certain that everyone accepts them. I want to challenge this assumption.
Continue readingMan dies after winning roach-eating contest in Broward :
The contest was to win a python from a pet store.
You know, it’s one thing to drop dead after running a marathon. Even if you didn’t finish, if you got close to the end people will generally give you credit for trying. They figure, “well, he dropped dead, but he was doing something really hard.” At least, that’s how I figure it when I read about the annual “people dropping dead during or after marathon” stories. They always say that the guy was young, in good health, they can’t figure out why he dropped dead. I’ll tell you why: running is bad for you. But I digress…
When you drop dead after eating too many roaches, you don’t get any respect at all. This guy will be remembered long after his death, much longer than if he had survived the roach-eating contest. He’ll always be, “Isn’t he the guy who dropped dead after eating a gazillion roaches?” What a claim to fame.
And he didn’t even get the python.
This is probably one of the least urgent matters that still manages to trouble me…
Continue readingThere is a quotation that is going around, attributed to physicist Albert Einstein. It goes:
Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.
Einstein never said it. It is a quote by Darryl Anka. About the only statement in this quotation that is accurate is that it’s not philosophy. It certainly isn’t that; nor is it physics. It’s bullshit. As physicist Wolfgang Pauli said, “It’s not even wrong.”
Continue readingAccording to this article, a lifeguard was fired for saving someone’s life. Supposedly, by abandoning his post to run to the rescue of a drowning swimmer, Thomas Lopez endangered the lives of the people Lopez was supposed to be watching.
Continue readingAt long last, physicists at CERN in Europe have found something that looks like the elusive Higgs Boson, also called the God Particle. It seems to me that the physicists themselves are pleased, but not ecstatic. It seems to be the media who are waxing poetic about this particle.
Continue readingEvery so often someone asks me, with awe, “did you know that Wagner never went to music school?” My response is that it’s obvious from his music. I don’t know *why* so many people are amazed that Wagner didn’t go to music school. In fact, I don’t even know if it’s true. But every so often someone brings it up again.
Continue readingA New York Times article reports that more of our soldiers are dying as a result of suicide than from enemy fire.
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Piltdown Man
Piltdown Man Skull
In 1908, a worker at a gravel pit in Piltdown, England, found pieces of a skull. The discovery attracted the attention of a collector named Charles Dawson, and paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward. These men found additional pieces of the skull at the site, as well as a jawbone apparently belonging to the same creature. The creature seemed to have a brain around two thirds the size of a human’s, while its jaw was similar to that of a chimpanzee’s. It was called “Piltdown Man.”
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