It’s the dead of night on a chilly October evening.
You drive down a deserted street in Wasco, California — the isolation of it all sending shivers up your spine.
Then you see him: a white mask, unruly bright-red hair, eyes like black pools of death staring coldly at you. His yellow jumpsuit shines with light from the only lamp nearby, the multicolored balloons he holds floating lazily above his creepy face. MORE
We mentioned how Paul Offit wants mandatory vaccines for every single child in the United States, and he feels his voice in the matter should over-rule parental choice. MORE
Newsweek, Oct. 2, 2014: A grisly horror show is playing out along the West Coast… millions of dead and dying sea stars… victims of a swift and brutal illness… organs rupture… arms fall off. Ultimately, the sea star dissolves, as if melted by acid… This summer, the outbreak morphed into a full-scale epidemic… so bad that researchers have lost count of how many stars are lost. They estimate millions… food webs are being upended… (Have we forgotten we are merely a strand within the web of life?) MORE
Brittany Maynard carries a prescription in her wallet. It was written by a doctor in Oregon, one of five states with legal protections for terminally ill patients who want to end their suffering. And in three weeks, she plans to use it to die. MORE
The long-term shift in the public’s views about same-sex marriage is unambiguous. Polling conducted in 2003 found most Americans (58%) opposed to allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, and just a third (33%) in favor. The new survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted March 13-17, 2013 among 1,501 adults nationwide, confirms that these figures have crossed, with 49% supporting same-sex marriage, and 44% opposed. MORE
UPDATE, Oct. 7, 3:40 p.m. ET: Super Typhoon Vongfong has intensified further, with maximum sustained winds of about 180 miles per hour and gusts higher than 200 miles per hour. This puts it among the strongest storms on record, based on a satellite estimate.
Super Typhoon Vongfong is now equivalent to a high-end Category 5 storm, MORE
Russia’s finance minister said on Tuesday the country could no longer afford a multi-billion-dollar revamp of the armed forces approved by President Vladimir Putin, stepping up a campaign to trim spending as sanctions over the Ukraine crisis bite. MORE
Among Christian religions, the Roman Catholics have done the most thinking about the possibility of life on other worlds, the astronomer discovered. In fact, they have had an on-again, off-again theological debate that has gone on for a thousand years. The crux of the matter is original sin. If intelligent aliens are not descended from Adam and Eve, do they suffer from original sin? Do they need to be saved? MORE
The Supreme Court turned away appeals Monday from five states seeking to prohibit same-sex marriages, paving the way for an immediate expansion of gay and lesbian unions.
The justices on Monday did not comment in rejecting appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. No other state cases were currently pending with the high court, but the justices stopped short of resolving for now the question of same-sex marriage nationwide. MORE VIDEO: MORE
Louisiana, the most common way to visualize the state’s existential crisis is through the metaphor of football fields. The formulation, repeated in nearly every local newspaper article about the subject, goes like this: Each hour, Louisiana loses about a football field’s worth of land. Each day, the state loses nearly the accumulated acreage of every football stadium in the N.F.L. Were this rate of land loss applied to New York, Central Park would disappear in a month. MORE
Kim Jong Un may be removed from power or toppled in North Korea as Hwang Pyong So is now the number 2 man in the nation. His god like powers may have failed him and no longer can reconcile with his peers. Hopefully good news. MORE
Diabolical?
Microbially-unsafe water is still a major concern in most developing countries. Although many water-purification methods exist, these are expensive and beyond the reach of many people, especially in rural areas. Ayurveda recommends the use of copper for storing drinking-water MORE
This plant is a common vegetable from Asia called “bitter melon.” It is popular among the long-lived population of Okinawa, Japan.
Bitter melon juice diluted to just 5% in water showed remarkable potency in severely damaging all four pancreatic cancer cell lines researchers tested. The bitter melon reduced the viability of two cancer cell lines by 90%, while it knocked off the other two lines by a staggering 98%. And it did so after just 72 hours of treatment! MORE
