Society

In 1972, animal behaviorist John Calhoun built a mouse paradise with beautiful buildings and limitless food. He introduced eight mice to the population. Two years later, the mice had created their own apocalypse. Here’s why. Universe 25 was a giant box designed to be a rodent utopia. The trouble was, this utopia did not have a…
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A 21-year-old computer-science student has won a global contest to read the first text inside a carbonized scroll from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum, which had been unreadable since a volcanic eruption in AD 79 — the same one that buried nearby Pompeii. The breakthrough could open up hundreds of texts from the only intact library…
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A recent report revealed that nearly 70%, or more than two-thirds, of active-duty soldiers in the United States are within the overweight or obese ranges of the body mass index (BMI). This is according to Courtney Manning, a national security research fellow at the American Security Project (ASP) think tank, which released a report on…
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Global food supplies just keep getting even tighter, and global hunger has risen to extremely alarming levels. People on the other side of the world are literally starving to death, but most of us in the western world simply do not care about the millions that are deeply suffering because the mainstream media hardly ever talks about what…
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During the last three years, politicians and advisers decreed that the elderly should be denied medical care, and thousands who did find themselves in institutions were treated without compassion, caring or proper, decent care. The elderly were denied contact with relatives or friends and were kept in isolation for many months and in some…
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Many Americans spend too much time on their smartphones. You're probably reading this article on a smartphone, and you are likely pausing frequently to check other apps if you're feeling bored. If you're worried that you're spending a lot of time staring at your phone, it may be time to learn how to manage your smartphone use before it…
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Doom loops have been in the lexicon for a long time. The basic idea is the decline of one of the inputs holding up the status quo weakens the other inputs. This weakness feeds back on itself, accelerating the decline until a critical support level breaks and the system collapses. Doom loops are being used to describe big-city…
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Pharmaceutical companies have enjoyed unprecedented direct to consumer (DTC) advertising in the US and New Zealand for decades, and now they are taking these tactics to a whole new level. Big Pharma is shifting their deceptive marketing campaigns to virtual communication networks, and specifically targeting influencers to get their…
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Many people spend more time staring at screens than interacting with the real world. Hour after hour, day after day, it is only eyes and ears that serve as input, and mouth and fingers that act as output. In the words of author Matthew Walker, we are a population whose “thoughts are somewhere else than our bodies and conscience”.…
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Imagine you could quickly see if someone is lying or telling the truth, at your job, in investments, dates, buying a car or hiring a building contractor. According to Susan Carnicero, a person lies on average 10 times a day, and she has to know. As a former CIA officer who has conducted interrogations, interviews and lie detector tests…
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