Coffee and Provocation

Time To Turn Off the Dog?
From an article on the science of suspended animation in Nautilus: "The bags are packed, the car is loaded, and the neighbor will pick up the mail. Now there’s just one last thing to do before heading out the door for vacation: It’s time to turn off the dog. You lead Sparky to his fluffy bed inside a small chamber filled with a continuous stream of hydrogen sulfide gas. While you’re away, he’ll stay—completely still. No breath. No pulse. But Sparky’s neither sleeping, nor dead. He is in a state of suspended animation, as if you simply put his body on pause. And when you return home, he’ll reboot back to normal in the fresh air."

No More Elephants at Ringling Bros Circus
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus says it will no longer be using elephants in their shows due to a “a mood shift among our consumers” as well as “anti-elephant” ordinances in cities which make it difficult for the circus to perform there. Ringling Bros. has 43 elephants, with 29 living at an elephant conservatory in Florida and another 14 on the road or on loan to zoos for breeding. By 2018 they will all be on the 200-acre farm in Florida.

Thinner, Happier, and Healthier?
The future may be in hacking humans by manipulating our internal microbiomes.

The Deer Ate the Birds?
What's eating the birds? In parts of the U.S., at least, it's deer. Yes, deer will eat baby birds if they can. So too will squirrels, chipmunks, crows, raccoon, possums, feral cats, fox, and coyote.

A Darwinian Response to Arsenic Poisoning
High up in remote northern Argentina, there's a town called San Antonio de los Cobres where the population has, for a thousand years, been drinking water with elevated levels of natural arsenic pulled from the ground. The result? The population's genes have responded, and their bodies have adopted to speedily flush the toxin from their system.

Smoking Kills 2/3 of Its Customer Base
A new longitudinal study of smokers, published by BMC Medicine says two-thirds of all smokers will eventually die from conditions associated with their smoking.

The Rise of the Electric Car
Tesla now has 2,000 chargers located in 400 supercharger stations across the U.S.  A year ago, Tesla had only 100 supercharger stations.

Cheaper Cell Phone Service Soon Thanks to Google
We are paying a lot of money for an old relay system that we are increasingly not using. Google gets it, and is building the Next Big Thing.