A strange story to end a strange year: If you have chronic pain and have tried massage to no avail, there is one type of massage you may consider. Or not. A small spa in Cairo, Egypt uses snakes, real snakes, to slither over patients’ backs and faces. The treatment begins very conventionally, with background
The end of the year is always a good time for reflection, and it’s the perfect time to note milestones and measure progress. As such, I’ve found a very unusual milestone in the history of our planet. The year 2020 saw the total weight of man-made materials overtake the weight of biomass made by Mother
I have never understood hypnosis. Its use in numerous TV shows and movies over the years hasn’t really explained to me what actually happens. So a recent article entitled “Is Hypnosis Real? Here’s What Science Says” by Markham Heid caught my eye (https://time.com/5380312/is-hypnosis-real-science/?). “There are many myths about hypnosis, mostly coming from media presentations,” says
Have you ever read about someone’s accomplishments and think “I wish I’d done that!”? This can be doubly true if you’re a professional and you see how others in your field are surpassing you. One of the worst professions for envy is journalism. The stories your competitors found — and you missed — are on
First, the bad news — Ladakh, a plateau on the northern tip of India, has a major problem. With only four inches of rain a year, this area depends upon winter snow and mountain glaciers for most of its water. But due to climate change, the snow is melting earlier and the glaciers are receding.
What is the loudest noise you can imagine? The human ear’s pain threshold is near 130 decibels. For comparison, a jackhammer puts out about 100 decibels, and a jet engine comes in at about 150 decibels. Yet there was a sound that was measured at least 172 decibels 100 miles from the source. This source
The Pantone Color Institute has just announced the color of the year for 2021, and as befitting leaving the chaos of 2020, it has chosen two colors. This is only the second time in 22 years that two colors have been selected. As explained on the Pantone website (https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year-2021), their selections for next year are —
Along with pets, some nice plants really brighten a homestead. You may have heard that houseplants can also improve air quality. But is it really true? Well, maybe. Some supporting evidence comes from NASA, which was wondering if living greenery could help clean the air aboard a space station. A 1989 NASA experiment found that
If you have a child between four and fourteen that wonders what it’s like to be grown up, one solution is to take them to a KidZania theme park. Unlike your typical ride-oriented park, KidZania parks provide the opportunity for children to play adult roles in their own scaled-down city. The parks are completely enclosed
Have you ever watched a large flock of birds or a school of fish? Notice how they all tend to synchronize their movements? It can be mesmerizing to see how a large group of animals moves together. Scientists have a name for it — Swarm intelligence. Isn’t it unfortunate that we can’t do the same