Why do we have eyebrows?

When humans evolved and shed our extra hair, our eyebrows managed to stay behind. Why? Scientists aren't exactly sure but can offer a few reasons.

The arch shape of our eyebrows absorbs sweat and rain that would enter our eyes, keeping our eyes somewhat dry. The slant of the hairs divert the water sideways. This is good, of course, because the salt in our sweat stings the eyes and water in general impairs our vision.

But how did that happen? Well, our early ancestors either hunted or were being hunted almost everyday. Imagine all that sweat dripping down your forehead and into your eyes, eventually leading you to death (animal ate you) or starvation (you missed the damn animal, which would probably lead you to death, anyway). Nature has a way of selecting the humans who have eyebrows over the ones who don't.

Most scientists, however, believe that if we didn't have eyebrows then evolution would have compensated us with other possibilities. Extra thick eyelashes or protruding skulls that form a ledge above our eyes could have been feasible solutions. Let's just be thankful for what we received.

Quiet car

The train company Amtrak has a section called the Quiet Car. It is intended for patrons who want people around them to shut the fuck up and put their beeping devices away. The Quiet Car was created about a decade ago when a group of Philly to D.C. travelers begged Amtrak for a car where their headaches don't get augmented by yammering businessmen on their Blackberrys. The idea has become a hit ever since.

First rule of the Quiet Car: you do not talk in the Quiet Car.

Albania

Albania was the world's first officially atheist country. Religion was banned there in 1967; anyone caught worshipping, publicly or privately, suffered severe penalties. But religion recrudesced as communism collapsed in the early 1990s. Now mosques and churches are being built across the country as other countries, including the United States, infuse the tiny Balkan nation with money.

About 70% of Albanians are Muslim, 20% Albanian Orthodox, and 10% Catholic - but it is thought that only a quarter of the population actually worships. There, religion is more of a cultural symbol than a spiritual belief, which explains why Albanians like to think of themselves as religiously tolerant. Marriage between people of different faiths are common and people of one religion often celebrate the holidays of others.

But as with just about any religion, the crazies have to screw it up. Although still a rarity, the beards and garb of Muslim fundamentalists can be seen on some of the streets and more than 600 Albanians have gone abroad to study Islam before coming home to teach. The Albanian constitution guarantees freedom of religion and some important leaders stand firm in their belief and opposition against religious extremism.

Hasty Pudding Club

The Hasty Pudding Club is an exclusive club at Harvard University. It was formed in 1790 and is named after the food that the group ate at their first meeting. It brings together undergraduates in friendship, conversation, and enjoyment. Presidents John and J.Q. Adams, both Roosevelts, and Kennedy were all members.

The Hasty Pudding Theatricals, Radcliffe Pitches, and Harvard Krokodiloes were founded at the Hasty Pudding Club.

Houseflies

During her two month lifetime, the female housefly lays about 600-1,000 eggs, most of which mature in 10-12 days. That counts up to as many as 12 generations a year.

So start killin' 'em. That's a lot of maggots.

A deeper look at the story of Jesus (part 2)

Yesterday I wrote about the facts of Jesus' life and what Roman historians and Christians living at the time thought about the idea of a person who died for people's sins. It occured to me that the website ReligiousTolerance might not be enough and that some may need more resources to prove the points.

Unfortunately, there are few sites that delve into the issue as objectively and fairly as the aforementioned RT. The rest are either conspiracy theory Atheists or Bible-thumping reactionaries. I did find the story of Titus taking over Jerusalem in 70 AD interesting. Maybe that explains why there are no references to Jesus during his lifetime -- everything was burned down. But every other source I read that supports the existence of Jesus tries to make the fact that articles written about him centuries after the crucifixion maintain his being.

But today, as I promised, I am taking a look at other deities whose lives may correspond to the events in Jesus' life.

Horus, Egyptian god
This site compares the Horus story with that of Jesus then offers a Christian rebuttal.

Making the case that Horus and Jesus were similar:
- Horus is the Father seen in the son. Jesus said he was the way, the truth and the life.
- Horus said that he was the way, the truth, the life. Jesus said he was the way, the truth and the life.
- Horus The good shepherd with the crook on his shoulders. Jesus The good shepherd with a lamb on his shoulders.
- Horus the manifesting son of God. Jesus the manifesting son of God.
- Horus As Har-Khutti has twelve followers. Jesus has twelve disciples.
- And the list goes on.

Making the case agianst:
- You can make similar comparisons between Horus and Hitler.
- Horus is the father seen in the son. Hitler’s superior qualities reflected in many sons of Germany.
- Horus the Trinity. Hitler, Goebels and Himler.
- Horus Child of a virgin. Hitler’s mother a virgin prior to being mistress of H’s father.
- Horus has 12 followers. Hitler had 12.
- Horus the good shepherd. Hitler at first like a good shepherd.
- Horus taken by Set to the summit of Mount Hetep. Hitler’s retreat at Berchtesgarten.

Mithra, Zoroastrian god
I did the research and it looks like the story of Mithra was copied from Horus.

Dozens of others
And there are also many other gods whose lives parallel that of Jesus: Krishna, Quetzalcoatl, etc.

So did Jesus exist?
I'm spent from all the research. Anyone who writes anything down on the Internet writes it out of bias. So you have two sides battling each other while other people are truly trying to find real and direct answers. It's kind of like cable news channels. But I'll leave you with this quote from ReligiousTolerance:

The personal hunch of B.A. Robinson, this website's main author, is that there were many Jewish teachers wandering in Galilee during the interval 20 to 30 CE. At least one may have been called Yeshua (Hebrew for Joshua). One developed a devoted following of fellow Jews, committed aggravated assault in the Jerusalem temple, and was arrested by the occupying Roman Army. He was crucified as an insurrectionist as one of perhaps ten thousand other Jews who suffered the same fate during the first century CE.

The beliefs of two or three of these Galilean teachers were subsequently amalgamated and recorded in the early gospels that explained the life of a single individual: Yeshua of Nazareth as a single individual:

- One was an itinerant Greek cynic philosopher who lived a life of poverty and challenged the public on philosophic, ethical and religious matters. The closest example to a cynic philosopher today would be a combination of stand-up comic and political cartoonist.
- A second was a apocalyptic teacher who preached about the imminent end of the world in his immediate future -- much like John the Baptizer.
- There might even have been a third teacher who was a follower of Hillel. The latter was a 1st century CE Jewish liberal theologian and one-time president of the Sanhedrin.
- There is`some evidence of this merger. The Gospel of Q, appears to be the oldest surviving gospel. It was written in sections over time. The first section describes the sayings of a Greek cynic philosopher; the second section describes sayings of an apocalyptic teacher. Meanwhile, many of Yeshua's teachings, as found in the synoptic Gospels, closely match those of Hillel except on matters of divorce where Hillel was more liberal. Between 30 CE and 100 CE, when the Gospel of Q, the three synoptic canonic Gospels, and the Gospel of Thomas were first written, the teachings of these multiple teachers were merged and attributed to a single individual: Yeshua of Nazareth. The rest is history.

I stress that these are my personal hunches. They are shared by few if any theologians.

A deeper look at the story of Jesus

I was surfing the Huffington Post one day until I clicked on this article. It was a video of Bill Maher on The View talking to Sherri Shepherd about religion.

...but the god who was born of a virgin, died, was resurrected three days later, died for everybody's sins -- that was an old story going around the Mediterranean for a thousand years. Horus is an Egyptian god, exact same story. He raised somebody named Lazarus from the dead. Mithra, a Persian god. Krishna the Indian god.

I was stunned. But I didn't really look into it until today, Christmas. What better day to research whether Jesus really existed than on the day of his "birth"? Of course, I'm only going to go to objective sites for information.

One site I found is called ReligiousTolerance.org. It's different than most other religious websites in that it doesn't try to proselytize the reader. They are a multi-faith group whose staff includes Christians, Buddhists, Wiccans, and Atheists. They try to be as unbiased and objective as possible and even have a page which they use to record the errors they make for the 4,500 essays and menus they've written. Here are the indisputable FACTS about Jesus from one of these articles:

- There are ZERO documents written during 7 BC to 33 AD about Jesus.
- The Gospel of Q is a collection of moral stories and anecdotes that had been transmitted orally and believed to have been first written down around 50 AD. However, it doesn't include dates for Jesus' life. If Jesus was crucified 33 AD "then many who saw and heard him preach would still have been alive and could have verified that the gospel was accurate." But it also might have been gathered together in the first or second centuries AD.
- Gnostic Christians, Jewish Christians, and Pauline Christians comprised the early Christian movement. They rejected the notion that God could ever present Himself in human form and some didn't believe in Jesus' existence.
- Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian born in the year 37 AD, wrote in his book Antiquities of the Jews that Jesus was a wise man crucified by Pilate. "Most historians believe that the paragraph in which he describes Jesus is partly or completely a forgery that was inserted into the text by an unknown Christian. The passage 'appears out of context, thereby breaking the flow of the narrative.'" A second passage which mentions Jesus' brother James being stoned to death has no consensus.
- Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman historian who wrote Annals (112 AD), a book which states Jesus' existence in the first century AD. But it also might have been based on Christian writings and sayings in the early second century.
- Suetonius wrote The Lives of the Caesars around 120 AD. In it he says "since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Emperor Claudius in 49 CE] expelled them from Rome." This is used to support Jesus' existence but Chrestus was also a common Greek name at the time. "It is likely that the reference is to a Jewish agitator in Rome by that name."
- None of the roughly 40 ancient Roman historians who wrote during the first two centuries, with the exception of Suetonius, mentioned that Jesus existed in the first century.
- The Talmud states that Jesus lived in the second century BC but the passage itself dates from that time period. The authors may have based it on the Christian material at the time.

Tomorrow I'll investigate the parallels, or perhaps lack of parallels, between the life of Jesus and the lives of other deities.

Merry Christmas.

Sugar does NOT make kids hyperactive

A holiday myth debunked...a report in the British Medical Journal states that 12 experimental trials have deflated the heretofore accepted fact that sugar causes hyperactivity in children. Not one of these studies could prove any discrepancies in behavior between kids with no sugar intake and kids who did have sugar, even with those who suffer from ADD/ADHD and the ones who are considered sensitive to sugar.

The main culprit: parents. Children were given a sugar-free drink that was purported as containing sugar. Their parents rated their kids' activities as more hyperactive, making it obvious that it was all in the grown-ups' minds.

"Elitist" liberals

Television played a huge role in the 1952 presidential race between Democrat Adlai Stevenson and Republican Dwight Eisenhower. For the first time, voters saw an intellectual governor of Illinois who attended Princeton University, Harvard Law School, and Northwestern University, and who eliminated needless spending from payrolls, brought mobsters to court, increased aid to education, and constructed new roads. The fact that Stevenson was smart and eloquent made him appear aloof to Republicans and working-class Democrats.

On the other side Americans saw a great war hero. Although he had zero political experience and finished school with average grades, he was the folksy one of the two candidates because he smiled a lot and didn't appear as formal as his opponent. Eisenhower was the guy with the easily digestible campaign slogan ("I Like Ike") and the vague promises of ending corruption in Washington.

It was also the first time that a liberal was labeled an "egghead." Stewart Alsop, a powerful Connecticut Republican, made the term popular in a column he penned weeks before the election. It pretty much sealed the deal as Eisenhower pummeled Stevenson in 1952 and again in 1956.

Why do my teeth hurt when I drink cold water?

Apparently, I may have receding gums. The tooth roots are exposed which causes the sensitivity to hot and cold foods.

The causes include:
- overaggressive brushing (guilty)
- inadequate brushing or flossing (I'm good with that)
- gingivitis (hmmm...maybe)
- dipping snuff (NOOO)
- inadequate placing of lip or tongue piercings (don't have any)
- bruxism, which is the grinding of teeth (no)

Of course, regular dental checkups help. So my problem is exacerbated even further given that I haven't been to the dentist in (I'll never tell you the number) years.

Wahoo!

Male baboons make very loud testosterone laden calls that sound like a "Wahoo!" They do this, not necessarily as a desire for a physical fight, although the wahoos might escalate to that point, but as a means of posturing and positioning in their hierarchy. The male baboons display their lung capacities as they're rapidly swinging through branches, which shows off their strength and stamina. At the end the winner might become the alpha male and get the ladies.

Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins was the first woman cabinet officer in the U.S. She was appointed Secretary of Labor in 1933 by Franklin Roosevelt and served until 1945. Perkins played a key role in the establishment of the Social Security system and also rooted out corruption in the Immigration Bureau.

Helper's high

Helper's high is a term made famous by Allan Luks and Peggy Payne in their book The Healing Power of Doing Good. The term describes "a feeling of exhilaration and a burst of energy similar to that experienced after intense exercise, followed by a period of calmness and serenity." It releases the endorphins in the body and can contribute to an overall state of emotional well-being.

Among other things, helping mitigates both the intensity and the awareness of physical pain, reduces chronic hostility, and decreases the constriction within the lungs that leads to asthma attacks.

A study at Harvard University examined the Mother Teresa effect:

Researchers showed 132 Harvard students a film about Mother Teresa's work among the Calcutta's poor, and then measured the level of immunoglobin A present in their saliva. The test revealed markedly increased levels of Immunoglobin A, which is the body's first defense against the common cold virus -- all after simply witnessing somebody else involved in charity work.

Where does fat go when you lose weight?

Your body stores fat until you consume fewer calories than is needed, at which point your body turns to the fat for energy. Triglycerides, or fat cells, provide just that. They are broken down into glycerol and fatty acids which your kidney, liver, and muscle keep, then are broken down even further for the final steps necessary to supply the energy. The heat produced by all this helps to preserve your body temperature. Water, one of the two waste products, is discharged by urinating and sweating. The other waste product, carbon dioxide, is exhaled from your lungs.

And that, kids, is how and where fat goes.

Christmas

Christmas was actually illegal to celebrate in England. In the 1640s the Puritan dominated Parliament considered the holiday to be of pagan influence and, in the 1640s, outlawed its celebration. It was rescinded two decades later but Christmas still harbored the stigma of being an unholy holiday.

In the 1620s the Puritan pilgrims who came to America were even more conservative in their beliefs. From 1659 to 1681 you could not celebrate the festive day in Boston. Either that or face a fine of 5 shillings.

It wasn't until renowned 19th century authors reinvented Christmas. At that time, many people were out of jobs and lower class gangs rioted on the streets during the season. This caused some in the upper class to start brainstorming for ways to reduce the violence and more importantly prevent the poorer people from harming them.

So in 1819 Washington Irving wrote a series of stories about the celebration of Christmas in an English manor house. The tales headlined a squire who invited peasants to his home for the holiday. Unlike what was happening in society, the wealthy squire spent his time joyously with the impoverished peasants. Mind you, the book was created out of Irving's imagination; he didn't pen it based on any festivals he attended. He only implied that the relationship between the rich and poor highlighted in his work was the true meaning of Christmas.

Across the pond 24 years later, Charles Dickens published the classic holiday tale A Christmas Carol. The story's theme of charity and goodwill towards all of humankind resonated well within all classes in the United States and England.

As the celebration of Christmas evolved over the next century, Americans introduced the now common traditions of tree decorating, sending holiday cards, and gift-giving. And even though many of us believe that we are celebrating the way people have always been celebrating for ages, we actually reinvented a holiday given the social milieu of the moment.

Deja vu

One report states that the more open-minded or politically liberal a person is, the more likely they are to experience deja vu.

Check out everything you need to know about deja vu and why it occurs to about 60% of us.

Why do Asians change their Asian names to American ones?

Read:

For [Asian Pacific Americans] that are second generation and on, growing up in America isn’t so different from their immigrant predecessors’ experiences. Sometimes it means a new name for a new identity, but many still believe a name carries the burden of a fractured identity.

....

For the most part, changing your name is increasingly popular because it makes it easier for other people to pronounce and it provides opportunity to better assimilate, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in New York.

Elaine Kim, professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley sees a different pattern in the naming phenomenon. Immigrant parents used to pick out patriotic names for their children — like Jefferson and Lincoln — but these days she sees a return to cultural roots. Parents are naming their children “pure” Asian names that sound more Western. For example, the Korean name Soo Jin is currently very popular and sounds like Sue Jean.

Immigrants are also more conscious when it comes to names and their unintentional English connotations, said Kim. Although she personally knows someone named “Fuk Yu” and “Won Suk,” she said these inconveniences are becoming few and far between.

’Fuk’ is actually a very pretty Korean name. It mean ‘virtue’ … can you imagine?” said Kim laughing.

But even those who experienced butchered pronunciations and teasing because of their names said they would still give their children Asian names.

Blago

The last time Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and his lieutenant governor Pat Quinn said more than a sentence or two to each other was August 2, 2007.

Leap second

2008 will be a second longer, according to the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service. It is due to the tidal friction between the earth and the moon. The last leap second occurred on December 31, 2005. This year the extra second will happen at 6:59:60 PM on December 31.

Carlton Pearson

Carlton Pearson is a minister at the New Dimensions Church, the United Church of Christ denomination in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After a run-in with reality in which he watched the suffering of Rwandans on TV, he began to doubt the traditional concept of hell. "How can a just god do this?" he thought. He then came up with the Gospel of Inclusion, the doctrine that states that everyone is destined to heaven and that hell actually exists on earth. For this he was formally recognized as a heretic by the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops in March 2004. Pearson is now the senior pastor at the New Dimensions Church despite witnessing the mass exodus from his congregation.

Must-hear radio: Pearson on This American Life in December 2005.

Bidet

A bidet is a type of sink used specifically to wash the genitals and posterior parts of the body. They are usually found separate of toilets but its nozzle may be attached to an existing toilet to make an all-in-one fixture. Bidets are popular in southern Europe, some Latin American countries, the Middle East, and some parts of Asia.

A toilet on the left and a bidet on the right

Fat Americans and energy usage

From Mother Jones:

Nineteen percent of US energy usage—about as much as is used to fuel our cars—is spent growing and delivering food to the average American who consumes 2,200 pounds of food a year. That's a whopping 3,747 calories a day—or 1,200 to 1,700 more than needed for personal or planetary health. The skinny truth is that as much as 7.6 percent of total energy in the United States today is used to grow human fat, fat that translates to 3,300 pounds of carbon per person.

....

For starters, half of our food energy use comes from producing and delivering meat and dairy. If we gave up just meat, we could maintain that hefty 3,747-calorie intake but consume 33 percent less in fossil fuels doing it. If Americans cut just one serving of meat a week, it would equal taking 5 million cars off the road.

One-third of those 3,747 daily calories comes from junk food—potato chips, soda, etc. We can save on fossil fuel costs in this area by installing more efficient lighting, heating, and cooling in the plants that make the stuff and by using less packaging materials. But we'd save a lot more if you and I simply bought less of it. A can of diet soda, for instance, delivers only 1 calorie of food energy at a cost of 2,100 calories to make the drink and the can. Transporting the components and the finished product costs even more, and shipping processed food and its packaging accounts for much of the problem of America's food averaging 1,500 travel miles before it's eaten.

What would happen if you dived into a cumulus cloud?

It would probably look like falling in a fog bank. Unless it was a cumulonimbus cloud of epic proportions, the updraft wouldn't be strong enough to keep you aloft as you were diving through it. But it wouldn't look or feel like cotton candy.

Clip starts at 41:06.

Text messaging

The number of text messages sent and received everyday exceeds the total population of the planet.

Prince Randian

Prince Randian was a side show performer in the 1930s who was born without limbs.

Can you really survive on nothing but potatoes and milk?

Yes, but then you'd die of molybdenum deficiency:

[I]f you're an active male between 19 and 30, of average height and weight, then one gallon of milk and eight pounds of potatoes will supply the RDA of most nutrients, falling a little short on the iron, folate, and niacin fronts, missing a lot of vitamin E, and striking out completely on molybdenum. Chug two gallons of milk with your spuds and all you're missing is about two-thirds of your vitamin E and, of course, your molybdenum. Not so nuts about milk? Fine, cut it down to a quart and choke down 14 pounds of potatoes instead. Now you're short on zinc, folate, niacin, vitamin E, and way low on vitamin A. And alas, still no molybdenum.

So what happens if you starve yourself of molybdenum? According to one nutritional reference book, "signs of molybdenum deficiency . . . are headache, rapid breathing and heart rate, nausea and vomiting, acute asthma attacks, visual problems, disorientation, and, finally, coma."

Most corrupt countries in the world

According to Transparency International, the most corrupt countries in the world are Myanmar and Somalia. The least corrupt: New Zealand, Denmark and Finland.

Healthiest and unhealthiest U.S. states

Louisiana is now considered the unhealthiest state while Vermont ranks as the healthiest.

Double negatives

English is one of the few languages in the world where it is improper to use a double negative in a sentence.

God and the Kentucky government

Enough of this nonsense:

Under state law, God is Kentucky's first line of defense against terrorism.

The 2006 law organizing the state Office of Homeland Security lists its initial duty as "stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."

Specifically, Homeland Security is ordered to publicize God's benevolent protection in its reports, and it must post a plaque at the entrance to the state Emergency Operations Center with an 88-word statement that begins, "The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God."

Kakapo

The Kakapo is the world's only flightless and heaviest parrot. It is a native of New Zealand.