Weekend Reads 9/2/17

Should we read the Bible literally?

This is particularly evident in reading the Book of Revelation, which some interpret as a prediction of ‘end-times’ political and military conflict—which is an allegorical, not literal interpretation. The literal meaning of the crowned scorpions with women’s hair and breastplates of iron is…crowned scorpions with women’s hair and breastplates of iron. To interpret these as armoured attack helicopters (as some do) is allegorical.

Dubious stem cell clinic got hold of smallpox vaccine. FDA just took it away

The clinics, run by StemImmune Inc., were said to be mixing the dangerous vaccine with stem cells for an unproven, unapproved, and potentially harmful cancer treatment that was injected intravenously into patients or directly into their tumors.…The vaccine contains a live poxvirus, similar but less harmful than smallpox.

The promissory note first, then you can talk about the dream

Over the past 54 years, this speech has become like American scripture. By that I mean that it is frequently and selectively quoted while the weightier matters of it are studiously ignored and avoided. Everybody quotes the dreamy bit at the end. Nobody quotes the beginning.

Neanderthals were distilling tar 200 thousand years ago in Europe

Scientists have discovered ancient beads of tar in Italy, Germany, and several other European sites dating back as much as 200 thousand years, which is about 150 thousand years before modern Homo sapiens arrived in Western Europe. That means the people who distilled that tar had to be Neanderthals.