We Interrupt Your 21st Century To Bring You A Lil’ Bit O’ Science

We interrupt your cushy,twenty-first century lifestyle to bring you a little science. Some of the modernconveniences we take for granted were happy accidents while in the pursuit of oh-so-sexyscientific truth. Mess up your job, you get fired. Scientist messes up his job, he invents Viagra! Everybody wins?

 Edwardo Jackson
10.17.12

En route to the TV, we got x-rays. And they say nothing good ever comes from TV.


You can thank a clumsy French scientist for keeping your forehead from the curb.


From radars to heat rays? Lazy, single men all over the world salute you, Raytheon.



science and technology
Heroes

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are making a serious push to expunge people's pot convictions

National Expungement Week is Spetember 21 to 28.

Courtesy of Houseplant.

In America, one dumb mistake can hang over your head forever.

Nearly 30% of the American adult population — about 70 million people — have at least one criminal conviction that can prevent them from being treated equally when it comes to everything from job and housing opportunities to child custody.

Twenty million of these Americans have felony convictions that can destroy their chances of making a comfortable living and prevents them from voting out the lawmakers who imprisoned them.

Many of these convictions are drug-related and stem from the War on Drugs that began in the U.S. '80s. This war has unfairly targeted the minority community, especially African-Americans.

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Culture

Breaking down the conspiracy theory mindset at the heart of climate change denial

Becker1999/Flickr

Climate change is happening because the earth is warming at an accelerated rate, a significant portion of that acceleration is due to human activity, and not taking measures to mitigate it will have disastrous consequences for life as we know it.

In other words: Earth is heating up, it's kinda our fault, and if we don't fix it, we're screwed.

This is the consensus of the vast majority of the world's scientists who study such things for a living. Case closed. End of story.

How do we know this to be true? Because pretty much every reputable scientific organization on the planet has examined and endorsed these conclusions. Thousands of climate studies have been done, and multiple peer-reviewed studies have been done on those studies, showing that somewhere between 84 and 97 percent of active climate science experts support these conclusions. In fact, the majority of those studies put the consensus well above 90%.

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Nature

After going viral for helping a 91-year-old, this humble plumber now exclusively serves the elderly and disabled

via James Anderson

Two years ago, a tweet featuring the invoice for a fixed boiler went viral because the customer, a 91-year-old woman with leukemia, received the services for free.

"No charge for this lady under any circumstances," the invoice read. "We will be available 24 hours to help her and keep her as comfortable as possible."

The repair was done by James Anderson, 52, a father-of-five from Burnley, England. "James is an absolute star, it was overwhelming to see that it cost nothing," the woman's daughter told CNN.

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Heroes

A mother's viral plea for kids with life-or-death food allergies is one we all need to hear

HR Mom/Facebook

I live in a family with various food intolerances. Thankfully, none of them are super serious, but we are familiar with the challenges of finding alternatives to certain foods, constantly checking labels, and asking restaurants about their ingredients.

In our family, if someone accidentally eats something they shouldn't, it's mainly a bit of inconvenient discomfort. For those with truly life-threatening food allergies, the stakes are much higher.

I can't imagine the ongoing stress of deadly allergy, especially for parents trying to keep their little ones safe.

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