Weekend Reads

Not a Drill: SETI Is Investigating a Possible Extraterrestrial Signal From Deep Space

You Have Never Actually Eaten Mexican Food

In other words, the very foods that have come to characterize contemporary Mexican-American fare—cheese, flour tortillas, beef, cane sugar—didn't exist in America before the Europeans. And unfortunately those foods are linked to the obesity, diabetes, and cancer epidemics plaguing Mexican-American communities today.

If Bigfoot Were Real

I’d like to play a game and ponder things pertaining to the Bigfoot evidence, such as it is. It is, after all, great fun to wonder what the existence of Bigfoot would mean for field biology and ecology in North America, for conservation and wildlife management, for our understanding of primate evolution and diversity, and for the relationship we have with the rest of the natural world.

Why Isn’t Native American Food Hip?

"Just a Theory": 7 Misused Science Words

Most people tend to use mental shortcuts to make sense of the cacophony of information they're presented with every day. One of those tendencies is to make a "binary distinction between something that is true in an absolute sense and something that's false or a lie," Kruger said. "With science, it's more of a continuum. We're continually building our understanding."

The Big Read: The devil inside Pastor Olivier

And then, the pastor asked: "Are you suggesting I give away some of [my wealth]?" Well, yes. Many of us do, it is expected from Christians to do exactly that and it would have a powerful, conciliatory meaning if a white man did that in a poor and unequal country after apartheid.

Why the GOP is trying to stop the Pentagon's climate plan

DOD officials have been warning for years that climate change could have dire consequences on U.S. national security. Increased refugee flows, which are already straining Europe, are likely to accelerate as the climate heats up and have the potential to destabilize large swaths of the world, including the Middle East and South Pacific.

Why Gun Nuts Lie – I Know From Experience

Some have said to me; the point is for the citizens to be “as armed as well as the government.”

For starters, today, the military has fully automatic M-16s. Citizens can’t buy that. You have to get a tamer version: AR-15.

200,000 year old soil found at mysterious crater, a 'gate to the subterranean world'

Batagaika started to form in 1960s after a chunk of forest was cleared: the land sunk, and has continued to do so, evidently speeded by recent warmer temperatures melting the permafrost, so unbinding the layers on the surface and below. Major flooding in 2008 increased the size of the depression which grows at up to 15 metres per year.

The Families That Can't Afford Summer

A real investment in affordable summer learning programs could improve children’s success in school, while relieving their parents of a stress that shouldn’t be part of the season we still refer to as “vacation.”

There is a model for the new politics we need. It’s in Spain