(And, John? I swear I started this Collection post days before you stopped by and commented!)
We do not want to make public health recommendations based on five sponges from Germany
Who else loves to read the latest science or health/medicine headlines while indulging in many grains of salt? Have you ever joked about how eggs are healthy now, but used to be vicious little cholesterol time bombs? Or fat is good, but bad, but what'll it be next week? Welp, here's the latest - on "regularly cleaning" your kitchen sponge ... or not. Thanks go to NPR for actually looking at the science without taking too long a trip into the deep weeds.
Prayer where the gods moved the Earth. In another blow to the myth of The Dirty, Stupid Past, we find that ancient Greeks not only could identify tectonic zones, but may actually have sought this real estate as a sort of direct conduit to the worship. To caveat the point: this is another one of those may have done theories. I encourage anyone reading the link to do so critically (and not just because it's Newsweek), because correlation is not causality.
... and just a little more of the not-so-dirty, not-so-stupid past - a map drawn in the 1500s, which turns out to be accurate to modern satellite mapping. So, nearly half a millennium ago, we were not utter morons. Only our tools have changed. GO SCIENCE!
Still. It's an intriguing theory, and I am sometimes more interested in intriguing ideas than empirical proof, when it comes to history. Even those ideas I tend to dismiss, I can still enjoy thinking about. Even writing about. I mean: how irresistible, for a writer? To contemplate the characters, the place, the time - where earthquakes and the fear they engendered were manifestations of the divine? And this, fella babies, is why I say I am not an historian. It gives me the out to indulge creativity ...
3 comments:
Great links! Great post!
Thank you, Paul! It's hard to tell sometimes whether my short-attention-span theater collections are worthwhile, but I enjoy putting them together. :) Thanks for coming by.
And isn't that what matters most anyway, Diane--that you enjoy putting them together. The fact that people stop by and enjoy reading them is a bonus, of course. A cherry on top. But it still tastes good even before that shows up.
Thanks for the shout out, by the way. I had a lotta fun with Schrodinger's cat! And I'm not even a science guy. I'm mostly a well-that-wasn't-one-of-my-better-ideas kinda guys. Sigh.
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