On Exercising

“The need for exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about.”

– George Santayana

Double Marketing Standards

[The typical commercial directed at women.]

Generic woman: Ouch, my stomach!

Male voice over: Do you suffer from gut agony?

Generic woman: And my head!

Male voice over: Tension head? Got that bloated feeling? Inevitable wrinkles? The beginnings of lady moustache? And now you’ve pissed yourself again? Women, you’re leaking, ageing, hairy, overweight, and everything hurts. And your children’s clothes are filthy. No wonder men long for other less clammy women. For god’s sake sort yourself out!

Generic woman: Now I’m free to live my own life, my way!

[The typical commercial directed at men.]

Male voice over: Men, shave and get drunk! Because you’re already brilliant!

– That Mitchell and Webb Look (2006-2010)

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The third President of Kenya was called Mwai Kibaki (pronounced wacky backy).

From 1934 to 1948, the motto of the BBC was Quaecunque, Latin for “Whatever”.

There are no rivers in Saudi Arabia.

A male capuchin monkey will have sex with any female that throws a stone at him.

In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for ‘curing’ masturbation was performed in 1948, on a five year old girl.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

On Obedience

“Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.”

– Henry Louis Mencken

Stymie [Verb.]

To thwart; to cause confusion.

The Great Oxidation Event

Breathable air
2.4 billion years ago

For the first half of Earth’s history, there was hardly any oxygen in the air. But then some bacteria began harnessing sunlight to make sugar from carbon dioxide and water, just like green plants today. These microbes pumped out oxygen as a waste product, creating the oxygen-rich atmosphere we have today. But the first oxygen may have caused the entire planet to freeze over into a ‘Snowball Earth’, by stripping the greenhouse gas methane from the air.

See other: History of Life

Conversations: Abortion Agenda

Galene
Shouldn’t we be worried that some people seem to be promoting something that could be described as a pro-abortion agenda?

Sappho
No. When you read up on some of the papers, essays and comments that have been published about abortion over the past twenty or thirty years, you will find that many liberal scientists, philosophers and journalists have expressed great concerns on the ethical problems related to abortion. And rightly so.

On Indistinguishable Embryos

“No other explanation has ever been given of the marvellous fact that the embryos of a man, dog, seal, bat, reptile, etc., can at first hardly be distinguished from each other.”

– Charles Darwin