Coffee and Provocation

Coffee is Good for You
Discover magazine says the data is in: coffee is good for you. "Two umbrella reviews were published last year (here and here), and their findings flew in the face of centuries of coffee gossip. The verdict was that coffee drinking is linked to lowered risk of myriad diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, a few types of cancer, liver disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and depression—not too shabby. Above all, coffee drinkers were less likely to die early from any cause."

When Adding a Predator Helps

American Grey Squirrels have been displacing native Red Squirrels in the UK, but research shows that adding Pine Martens, a traditional predator of Red Squirrels helps improve their odds. The reason: Where Pine Marten activity is high, Grey Squirrel populations are far more heavily suppressed than Red Squirrel populations, giving a competitive advantage to Red Squirrels.

Penguin Poop 
Mega colonies of over 1.5 million Adélie Penguins were discovered in Antarctica with the use of poop stains visible on satellite images.

Stop Resisting! 
In New York, police officers can lie and brutally beat people and still keep their jobs and pensions.

Strange But True

France’s longest land border is with Brazil.

How to Buy a Gun in 15 CountriesAny question why we have the most gun violence? It might have something to do with the number of guns and the ease of acquisition.

More Than 40 Acres and a Mule
The Brazilian government has designated 220,000 hectares of Amazonian rainforest for the Cachoeira Porteira quilombo community of 500 people in Pará state who are the descendants of some of the the 4.5 million slaves who were brought to Brazil between 1600 and 1850 and who escaped. Portugal was responsible for shipping 4.9 million people from Western Africa to Brazil, by far the largest amount of human cargo transported during the Atlantic slave trade.

The Greater Siren
One of the largest amphibians in the world -- up to three feet -- is slinking around much of the swamps of the southeastern USA and I had never even heard of it.

One Year Ago Maryland Did What Was Needed
One year ago Maryland's ban on 45 kinds of assault weapons and a 10-round limit on gun magazines was upheld by a federal appeals court. "Put simply, we have no power to extend Second Amendment protections to weapons of war," Judge Robert King wrote for the court, adding that the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller explicitly excluded such coverage.

NRA Gun Nuts are Dangerous
Researchers found a stunning 20% drop in gun injuries nationwide during NRA conventions. The NRA, often asserts that education is key to keeping injury rates down — and that guns are totally safe when handled by people who know how to use them. If that were true, the gun injury rate should have held stable or even risen during NRA conventions when thousands of experienced and heavy gun users were at an NRA convention Instead, they found the opposite.

Time In the Barrel?
This is a phrase made popular by Trumpkins. They probably do not know the origins.