Usain Bolt runs faster than you. He makes it look easy but he certainly works hard at it. He also has an advantage you don't - the right genes.Is that random? Maybe. Mutation and genetic drift and random walks are all aspects of how we got to where we are but we may be on the road to creating better athletes too. Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans writing in Nature News...
read moreWhile any number of cultural mullahs tries to re-stoke a controversy over guns (is Switzerland safe? Males are required to own guns there) and doesn’t seem to understand that calling everything ‘an assault rifle’ just makes them look uninformed, the US Army wants to create a real assault rife. Except smaller. And semi-automatic. Sniper rifles are behemoths and, if you are not...
read moreMedical science has done miraculous things - namely saving billions of lives. But anti-science activists are driving workers who develop new drugs out of research, by attacking them and and smearing them as pedophiles to introduce a 'chilling effect'.One female Harlan Laboratories worker told the Observer: "When you arrived in the morning, you would have to queue for up to five minutes to...
read moreThe Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has criticized Pepsi for an ad that is ‘irresponsible’ because it shows teens engaging in questionable conduct? What were they doing, eating at Chick-fil-a without knowing if they were supposed to bring a lesbian? Injecting heroin? Quoting ‘jobs saved or gain’ numbers as real? No, they were on a snowboard off the...
read moreThe Vatican may have Swiss guards but that doesn’t mean it isn’t gloves off when it comes to criticizing Swiss multi-national food conglomerates. L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, charges that Nestlé, in a “notoriously and in a cunning and improper manner” supplied women in Africa with free dry milk packages, designed to last until new mothers lost their own ability...
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