While the reasons for the Fall of the Western Roman Empire are quite complex, a popular theory that has since been disproven suggested that high lead levels in the water supply due to the use of lead pipes was a contributing factor.

A trial with an experimental vaccine targeting the Dengue fever virus has gone very well.

An anti-Trump protester with the last name of "Gonzalez" gets transferred to ICE custody. You can probably draw your own conclusions.

The simplistic answer is that certain religions are inherently violent, but this is not that useful of a response, because in truth, every religion can be fashioned into a weapon which people can wield to justify murder and conquest.

Fascinating how we're all Brussels now but we were never all Istanbul.

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So I used to have an array of external hard drives attached to my Mac Mini by Firewire. Most of the hard drives were encased in Venus DS3s. Like many Firewire 400/IEEE 1394a hard drive enclosures, it's based on the venerable but reliable Oxford Semiconductor 911 chipset.

It is interesting that Arthur C Clarke recognized that physicians are more likely to be atheist. The first story of his that I ever read was "The Star" which describes a Jesuit astronaut coming upon the blasted remains of a civilization that once orbited the star that supposedly went nova in order to announce Jesus' birth. In other words, the Christmas Star. The question asked is, how could God destroy an entire civilization just so that the shepherds and the Magi would know where Jesus was born?

His opponents on both sides of the aisle are trying to make hay with Obama's comment about the "typical white person" who is afraid of black men. But they miss the point entirely. He's not throwing his grandmother under the bus, as some are wont to say. He's not trying to insult white people. He's merely illustrating an unfortunate truism about American culture, which Chris Rock touched upon a long time ago:

My memories seem to be indexed by pop songs.

No business as usual, but life still needs to be lived, I suppose.

Who needs illegal drugs? Thinking with my sacral nerves again. (God, this med school thing is just encouraging my already warped personality) The maganda magazine archive. Journey to the End of the Night (Would it be translated as Paglalakbay Magdamag? I am just obsessed with that word now….)