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Our bodies don’t recognize them as food – While we’re making our New Year’s resolutions, maybe one of the things we should change in ’09 is our soda habit. Some researchers think that they’re the main cause of obesity in the US and there’s a reason for this that goes beyond the sugar (or high fructose corn syrup) that’s in them!

In the December 17th edition of the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof quotes nutritionist Barry Popkin as saying, “Soft drinks are linked to diabetes and obesity in the way that tobacco is to lung cancer.” A new study shows that over the past two decades, the number of adults consuming sugar-sweetened beverages such as soft drinks, fruit drinks and punches has increased dramatically.
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Wind power is nothing new?archeologists in Iran have discovered that people living there over 5,000 years ago used it to run their kilns.

PressTV.com quotes archeologist Omran Garajian as saying, “Being located near Lut Desert, where wind blows constantly and in fixed directions, had caused the prehistoric inhabitants of the area to use wind as a reliable source of energy. Exerts have identified a kiln, which has been constructed in the same direction as the local winds blow.” (Wind power helped increase the temperature in the kilns used for melting metals). “They have also found a fireplace, which seems to have worked with wind power. The structures date back to about 3500 to 3300 BCE.”

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
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Last Thursday night I woke up some time after midnight and saw that the living room was filled with a blue light. I thought to get up but could not, and fell back asleep almost at once.

I dreamed of friends and relatives, very peculiar dreams, as if I was searching for something among them that I could not quite find.

When I woke up the next morning, my left ear was hurting terribly. The object that was put in it in May of 1989 had migrated from the top of the ear down nearly to the lobe, leaving the whole ear terrifically sore.
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Researchers used to think that male dinosaurs couldn’t get enough sex, but now they think they had harems of females!

They base this conclusion on studies of emus, which are their closest relatives, which are polygamous, but are also devoted dads. Paleobiologist Gregory M. Erickson noticed that the ancient dinosaur nests he found suggested that “multiple females contributed the eggs and the male guarded them.” So a dinosaur Dad may have had lots of “wives,” but that didn’t mean he had it easy!

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk

Does what happened in the past tell us what will happen in the future? Only if we have the right interpreter!

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