Apr 28, 2023 | Salon.com
The red planet Mars, fourth from Earth’s sun, has two little moons: Phobos and Deimos. Neither is anything like Earth’s moon: small and irregularly shaped, astronomers have long believed that they are more likely captured asteroids, pulled into the Martian orbit by the red planet’s gravity and then kept there indefinitely as makeshift moons....
Originally posted on salon.com
Apr 26, 2023 | Salon.com
Though dogs are so close genetically close to wolves that many taxonomists consider them to be a subspecies, most people wouldn’t let a wolf lick their hand as readily as a Shih Tzu. When animals are domesticated, as the dog was, their traits change; an artificial selection occurs over many generations, which, in the case of the dog, probably happened through unconscious selection bias among ancient humans and their canid hangers-on....
Originally posted on salon.com
Apr 23, 2023 | Salon.com
Tolstoy used to be a formidable elephant: Massive in size, revered by the young bulls, and with tusks so long they touched the ground. When he was alive, Tolstoy had been more than just some random animal. He was a beloved member of a close-knit community filled with colorful personalities.
That is why when he died – the victim of a spear wound inflicted while he had been innocently searching for food — other elephants visited his body to pay their respects. ...
Originally posted on salon.com
Apr 22, 2023 | Salon.com
A 50-year-old spoiler alert: At the end of “Soylent Green” — a classic 1973 science fiction movie directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young and Edward G. Robinson — the protagonist learns that human beings are being tricked by an evil corporation into eating human flesh....
Originally posted on salon.com
Apr 22, 2023 | Pennsylvania, Salon.com
On maps, rivers are typically depicted as blue lines — with a starting point, usually near a mountain where rainwater collects; and an endpoint, usually in a lake or ocean. With the advent of satellite imagery, tracing the path of a river is typically a simple exercise; no more hacking through brush and scaling mountains to map geography....
Originally posted on salon.com
Apr 21, 2023 | Abortion, Salon.com
The abortion pill will remain legal in the United States.
On Friday, the Supreme Court issued an order halting a federal judge’s previous ruling that effectively banned mifepristone, a medication that is used in combination with misoprostol to induce medical abortions. The highest court’s order did not offer a written majority opinion, only a dissenting one from Justice Alito, meaning at least five of the nine justices agreed with the opinion....
Originally posted on salon.com
Apr 21, 2023 | Salon.com
Speaking from experience, having ADHD is a bit like reading a book outside during a windy day. Despite your best attempts to concentrate, an elemental force beyond your control keeps flipping the pages. Instead of focusing on what you want to read, you struggle just to get back to the “right” page — and stay there long enough to absorb it....
Originally posted on salon.com
Apr 21, 2023 | Mental Illness, Salon.com
In the hit HBO series “The Last of Us,” humanity must battle a malevolent fungus that arises due to climate change and turns people into zombies. While “The Last of Us” is a science fiction thriller and its fungus could actually save the world rather than destroy it, the notion that climate change might cause pandemics or epidemics is hardly limited to fiction....
Originally posted on salon.com
Apr 19, 2023 | Abortion, Salon.com
On Tuesday the Supreme Court announced that it might need until the end of this week to decide the fate of mifepristone, a drug that comes in the form of a pill used by millions to terminate early pregnancies. Their ruling could result in the ban of the drug, which would mean that medication abortions would be de facto outlawed in the United States....
Originally posted on salon.com
Apr 19, 2023 | Salon.com
When the first residential electrical grids came to life, the world saw it as a utopian project. The miracle of science had brought an invisible force through a wire to their homes — one that could light rooms and make un-living objects move. Much as “AI” has become a buzzword to advertise consumer software nowadays, consumer products of that era advertised that they were superior because they were produced through electricity; Triscuit crackers, for instance, whose name was a portmanteau of “electricity biscuits” and which were produced in electric ovens, were so-named to heighten their appeal....
Originally posted on salon.com