Coffee and Provocation

Delivering Stimulation to the High Flyers 
A canteen worker hands over a cup of coffee or tea to the pilot of a Sikorsky R-4, the world’s first mass produced helicopter, RAF Helicopter School, Andover, UK, 1945.

Crows Doing a Smoking Good Job
Six crows have been trained to pick up cigarette butts and small piece of trash at French historical theme park.

The Big Business of Religious Fake News
Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and tenured professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind writes in The Guardian: "I am aware that many people might be upset by my equating religion with fake news, but that’s exactly the point. When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it fake news in order not to hurt the feelings of the faithful (or incur their wrath)."

Give That Clone a Bone
Vanity Fair has an article on The Very Big, Very Controversial Business of Dog Cloning.  Among the dubious achievements of the cloning world: making 49 clones of "Miracle Milly," the world’s smallest Chihuahua.

Foraging for Wolfsbane?
Rodale Books has discontinued publication and is giving a full refund to anyone who bought a copy of Johnna Holmgren's book "Tales From a Forager's Kitchen" as the preparation and cooking of recipes from the publication involving raw mushrooms and elderberries could result in poisoning.

Peer Review Means Very Little
You know why the FDA does not accept "peer review" as the standard for acceptable medicine? Because "peer review" is mostly garbage, as has been proven time and time again. As Forbes notes, “If peer review were a drug, it would never get on the market.” A large proportion of what gets published is either wrong or simply meaningless, and for a simple reason; no one is paid for peer review, the research is not duplicated, and the data sets are not checked.  As the folks at Vox note, Researchers who have examined peer review often find evidence that it works barely better than chance at keeping poor-quality studies out of journals.

Is Urbanization Making Fishing Cats Smarter?
Fishing cats  in Sro Lanka are adapting to urban landscapes just as red fox have adapted to life in London.

Potato Math
If you had 100 pounds of potatoes, and each potato was 99% water, and you dehydrated the potatoes so they were 98% water, how much would the potatoes weigh? Answer here.

Giant Geezer Fish
Whale sharks can live up to 130 years.

Nuking Mississippi
Two nuclear bombs were set off in Mississippi in the 1960s.