Synesthesia is the name of a condition in which your senses get crossed up and you see colors when listening to music or taste things while viewing shapes or words. It sounds like a problem you’d want solved, but many people with this condition wouldn’t trade it for anything.

In LiveScience.com, Ker Than quotes UK researcher Julia Simner as saying, “I think if you took a straw poll of 100 synesthetes, 96 would say they would never ever lose their synesthesia, that they like it and are glad to have it. Some say it is like having a nose or a little finger: It’s just there.”
read more

We’ve asked this question before: why don’t we make more effort to break our bad habits? A new study of 154 smokers who had surgery to remove early stage lung cancer shows that half of them STARTED SMOKING AGAIN within 12 months of their operation, and more than one-third were smoking again after a year. 60% of the patients who started smoking again picked up a cigarette within two months of surgery.

Researcher Mark S. Walker says, “These patients are all addicted, so you cannot assume they will easily change their behavior simply because they have dodged this particular bullet. Their choices are driven by insidious cravings for nicotine.”
read more

The recent retreat of Arctic sea ice is likely to accelerate so rapidly that in a little over 20 years, as early as 2040, the Arctic Ocean could become nearly devoid of ice during the summer, as a result of global warming.

Scenarios run on supercomputers by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) show that the amount of sea ice each September could be reduced so abruptly that, within about 20 years, it may begin retreating four times faster than at any time in the past that we’re aware of. NCAR researcher Marika Holland says, “?Our research suggests that the decrease over the next few decades could be far more dramatic than anything that has happened so far. These changes are surprisingly rapid.
read more

A new British investigation into the the August 31st, 1997 death of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed reveals that the National Security Agency (NSA) was secretly bugging Diana’s phone when their car crashed in a tunnel in Paris while they were being chased by photographers. The crash killed them both.
read more