Mar 23, 2023 | Salon.com
Infertility is every hopeful parent’s worst nightmare. Defined as the inability of an individual to conceive within 12 months of engaging in regular unprotected intercourse, infertility impacts at least 186 million people in the world today. It is also on the rise — a fact that, as a recent study demonstrates, may be linked to the increasing prevalence of a class of chemicals so common, they are definitely in your body right now....
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 22, 2023 | Salon.com
Venus is sometimes called Earth’s twin, as it is roughly the same size as Earth, occupies the orbital lane adjacent to ours, and has a problem with greenhouse gases (namely carbon dioxide) in its atmosphere. Yet the similarities between the two worlds end quickly: The greenhouse effect spiraled out of control on Venus, meaning it is a toasty 900 degrees Fahrenheit at the surface — hot enough to melt lead....
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 19, 2023 | Salon.com
In suburbanized, car-centric parts of the world, including most of the United States, those who cannot drive are often cut off from fully participating in their community. Walking, bicycles and ride-sharing services can only pick up so much slack in communities without real public transit.
“The poorest are cut off from job opportunities, schools, and other services especially in places where transit service quality is poor.”
Mar 18, 2023 | Mental Illness, Salon.com
When Richard Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, he correctly suspected that he had been robbed. In Texas, Kennedy’s vice presidential running mate Lyndon Johnson used a network of rural bosses to stuff ballot boxes; 1,000 miles to the north, mob bosses and crooked pols in Chicago were similarly rigging the results....
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 14, 2023 | Salon.com
The human-dog bond is ancient: we have co-evolved together since before writing even existed. Our long cohabitation with dogs has granted both species a unique insight into the other’s feelings: dogs, for instance, know when you are looking into their eyes, unlike wolves and other animals. And, dogs can understand human language to some extent: one “Guiness”-worthy dog knows over 1,000 nouns. ...
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 11, 2023 | Salon.com
Joe Biden is not the first president to have a secret cancer surgery.
At the time of this writing, the only confirmed facts are that a small lesion was discovered on President Biden’s skin — and that it was later found to have been cancerous. Specifically, it was a basal cell carcinoma (BCC), a common type of skin cancer with an excellent prognosis for recovery....
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 8, 2023 | Salon.com
As an agrarian civilization, almost all of what humans eat is farmed — with the notable exception of seafood. Aside from some farmed fish, most seafood we consume is still caught in the wild. Yet while it might seem that there is something more pure and traditional about consuming “wild” food as opposed to farmed food, the seafood that we eat soaks in a sea contaminated by plastic — and it turns out that a lot of that pollution may be making its way into our bodies via seafood. ...
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 5, 2023 | Salon.com
President Zachary Taylor had spent most of his career in the military, and it was obvious to the trio of Southern politicians as they confronted him. They were warning their fellow Whig that he needed to abandon his support for America’s growing anti-slavery movement. The year was 1850: Taylor, in office for a mere sixteen months, staunchly opposed allowing slavery to spread into the new territories America had wrested from Mexico; and Taylor was equally adamant that the pro-slavery Texas government, which lacked a valid claim to disputed land in eastern New Mexico, should not be allowed to use armed force to seize that territory....
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 4, 2023 | Pennsylvania, Salon.com
Twelve-year-old Todd Domboski was intrigued by the thin wisps of smoke. They seemed to coil out of the ground from a grassy patch near a tree by his house in the rural town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Domboski wandered over to investigate — and without warning, the ground gave way beneath his feet....
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 3, 2023 | Salon.com
Almost as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic went global in early 2020, a public debate over its origins erupted. No one doubted then, or doubts now, that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in China before spreading all over the world. Yet since the first humans were infected, the mainstream scientific narrative has been that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was passed from an animal to humans at a wet market....
Originally posted on salon.com