Atheism is not a recent phenomenon; despite the tendency before Darwin and modern science to believe in supernatural forces and a creator—not to mention the penalties for challenging the doctrine of the Catholic Church—freethinkers throughout history have noticed the circularity of the god argument. (god created the universe because the universe can’t exist without god.)

Rupert Sheldrake

New research is zeroing in on a biochemical basis for the placebo effect — possibly opening a Pandora’s box for Western medicine.

A potential medical breakthrough that could put an end to the daily insulin injections endured by people living with diabetes has been unveiled by Dutch scientists. By destroying the mucous membrane in the small intestine and causing a new one to develop, scientists stabilised the blood sugar levels of people with type 2 diabetes. The results have been described as “spectacular” – albeit unexpected – by the chief researchers involved.

A painstaking investigation of Europe’s cave art has revealed 32 shapes and lines that crop up again and again and could be the world’s oldest code

Compose beautifully formatted text in your web application. Trix is an editor for writing messages, comments, articles, and lists—the simple documents most web apps are made of. It features a sophisticated document model, support for embedded attachments, and outputs terse and consistent HTML.

The true story of how the City of London invented offshore banking – and set the rich free

People love to party! Well, at least some of them do. For the rest of us, parties bring on waves of feelings, good and bad, much like the events themselves. Here's everything you've ever wanted to know about being the hit of the party.

On Amazon, you can shell out about $15 to buy pills made of cellulose, titanium dioxide, gelatin, and dye. None of these ingredients have any medical effect, but customers report taking these pills for pain relief, to reduce excessive sweating, and even to quit smoking. It’s not surprising, really. Medical quackery has a long and proud history, and so long as there’s gullible people, there will be somebody selling snake oil. But here’s the rub: Right on the bottle, in big, blue letters is the word “placebo.” The only claim the manufacturer makes about these pills is that they are guaranteed not to contain any kind of medicine.

Alterations in gut microbiota are postulated to be an etiologic factor in the pathogenesis of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). To determine whether IBS patients in China exhibited differences in their gut microbial composition, fecal samples were collected from diarrhea-predominant IBS (IBS-D) and healthy controls

Finding your everyday reason for living, or ikigai, could lead to a longer and better life.

Recent Tesla Autopilot crashes hold a lesson for the whole industry.

Xi Jinping wants to wrest control of global cyber governance from the market economies of the west.

MSU scientists have identified an early cause of intestinal inflammation, one of the first stages of inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome, which afflict around 11 percent of the world’s population.

We take a fair look at some of the best counter arguments for legalization and see how they hold up in review.

There’s a host of reasons why we won’t see 5G roll out in production anytime soon.

Explains how Bitcoin works for general audiences without skipping the key technical insight. Covers money, value, gold, blockchain & proof of work.

Groundbreaking assessment of all life on Earth reveals humanity’s surprisingly tiny part in it as well as our disproportionate impact

From a childhood hallucination to the halls of theoretical physics. By Alan Lightman.

Exploring human diets in a different way.

Cloudflare is only the latest company to provide free, fast, and secure Domain Name System services. Here's how the major DNS resolvers perform on the internet race track.

 A new site jam packed with all manner of interesting tidbits on the human GI tract.

The disinformation campaign—and massive radiation increase—behind the 5G rollout.

In this extract from his new book, Johann Hari, who took antidepressants for 14 years, calls for a new approach

I have been using the open source Twitter competitor for almost a year, and I love it.

‘The Mists of Avalon’ changed my life—how do I reconcile that with what I now know about its author? By Jessica Jernigan.

Mathematics is full of weird number systems that most people have never heard of and would have trouble even conceptualizing. But rational numbers are familiar. They’re the counting numbers and the fractions—all the numbers you’ve known since elementary school. But in mathematics, the simplest things are often the hardest to understand. They’re simple like a sheer wall, without crannies or ledges or obvious properties you can grab ahold of.

Anyone who's ever bought a new electronic device or pair of shoes will be all too familiar with those little "DO NOT EAT" sachets that come in the box. These free sachets can be really useful.