Odd Lots
- Twitter has apparently decided to roll out the long-rumored 280-character tweet limit to everyone. I got the upgrade a couple of days ago. Some of my friends say they still don’t have it. Keep checking. There’s no reason for them to be specifically giving me any gifts.
- I hate politics and rarely talk about it, but given that this is the 100th anniversary of Soviet Communism, it’s time to reflect on the fact that Marxism is the greatest generator of mass murder in the history of the planet. Marxism killed at least 94,000,000 people in the 20th century alone, and is still killing them. Why do people keep falling for it? My theory: It’s in our genes, as an unintended consequence of tribalism. I’d write more about this if it weren’t so damned depressing.
- I was told 25 years ago that oral health is somehow connected to heart health. My dentist at the time couldn’t explain it, but the correlation had been seen. Some new research suggests that fats generated by a mouth bacterium may cause or aggravate atherosclerosis.
- Sugar feeds cancer cells. I’m pretty sure we knew this…but there is some new research clarifying the affinity between sugars and tumors.
- Pertinent to the above: A deeper explanation of aerobic glycolysis, also called the Warburg Effect, which governs how cancer cells generate energy.
- Massive CO2 take-up by cooling oceans during ice ages has come dangerously close to starving forests and other plant ecosystems of this essential gas. Our last ice age damned near killed us all by dropping CO2 levels to 180 ppm, close to the bare minimum required to sustain plant life.
- I’m not kidding, and in this case the Grauniad is speaking sooth: Facebook is telling us we can help them prevent revenge porn…by sending them nude pictures of ourselves. They’re going to generate hashes from them and then scan their bazillion posts per hour for matches. That sound you hear in the background is the world’s hackers sharpening up their server exploits.
- From the Can’t-Win-For-Losing Department: The Boys Scouts are opening up some of their programs to girls, and the Girl Scouts are screaming bloody murder.
- For am epic textbook example of a fisk of a hokey story, check out Danger Onion’s dissection of the recent tale of two women who were adrift for several months in the Pacific.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: health · history · science · social media · weirdness
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“I was told 25 years ago that oral health is somehow connected to heart health…”
I saw a cover blurb on a women’s magazine: “Floss for fertility!” I’d guess that the low-level inflammation associated with gum disease can affect body chemistry in a way that impacts conception. Or at least that there some claim to that effect.
“For am epic textbook example of a fisk of a hokey story…” For aN epic textbook example.
See? I see sh…tuff like this. Yeah, I’m probably to the right of “normal” on the autism-Asperger’s scale. That’s why you want me as a copy editor. 🙂