The UK (well okay, Britain; let’s leave Northern Ireland out of this statement) is a relatively secular place to live, with religion kept as largely a personal matter. School children don’t have to swear loyalty to a beard in the sky, and churches aren’t the local-business hub they seem to be in the US. Which makes this news all the stranger: the British General Medical Council (GMC) has decided to review its rules, which currently ban doctors from discussing their religious views with patients during consultations.
::::Ways This Could Go Wrong #1: a Jehovah’s Witness doctor advises his stabbing-victim patient against accepting a blood transfusion because “it would displease the Sky Beard”. :::: [click to continue…]
We at SlantedScience feel pretty confident in our arithmetic skills. We can easily keep mental track of grocery bills, bar tabs, and Kardashian sisters.
It is perhaps this which makes us so freaking annoyed by mathematical puzzles. You know, those simple-yet-impossible tricks which you simply CAN NOT understand. Well, here’s one of them: a lovely little mathemental fry-your-brain-with-its-simplicity sneak attack on your brain.
The iPhone and similar mobile devices have changed our lives with their apps. For the better: we can now see the progress of a house-moving storm headed in our direction. For the worse: we can now annoy the hell out of of movie theater patrons by checking on the progress of a house-moving storm headed in our direction every thirty seconds during Harry Potter.
But SlantedScience is here to help. Our new series will introduce you to the ways in which iPhone apps can assist you in living a healthy life.
If you want to be a dick and use them in a movie theater, that’s entirely up to you. [click to continue…]
That Usain Bolt, eh? Fastest human in the world, 100m in 9.58 seconds, and the first man ever to hold 100m and 200m records at the same time. This guy’s legs must move faster than a hummingbird’s wings, right?
Wrong. New research shows that “Lightning Bolt” Usain’s leg speed is actually not the determining factor in his unique speed. It’s all to do with force applied, and pressure, and other cool science stuff.
So cheer up, fatty: you could be the first human to break the 9.5 second 100m.* [click to continue…]
This story comes to you from The American Institute For Thieving Hypocrites. See, the town of Salem in Massachusetts has – because of its historical association with witches – become home to many people selling “psychic readings” and similar bullshit as a way of stealing money from gullible tourists.
Just as the Christians in Lourdes givedonate use little bits of wood and water to steal money from desperate people, so this colony of filth in Salem spend their days conning the cash from innocents.
Sadly, some of these greedy liars in Salem are now getting upset that there are too many psychics setting up shop in the city, taking a share of their hard-earned income. Oh, how we weep. Read on for details of ways in which you can help these poor people in their desperate campaign for proper regulation of psychics cold, hard cash.[click to continue…]
There are three areas of scientific research in which the tiniest discovery can be inflated into a huge press release: cures for obesity, cancer and old age.
Here’s an example of the third: scientists in Boston have published a paper which shows that – within a specific mouse model of aging – switching on our old friend telomerase gave anti-aging (even aging-reversal) benefits.
Sadly, everybody reporting this has gone with a Benjamin Button reference.
Cracked concrete is a big problem, being both unsightly and dangerous. We’ve done a few scratch calculations and have come up with a fairly definitive figure for the amount spent worldwide on the problem each year: “A shitload”. Well holes in concrete may soon be a distant memory, as English scientists are reporting the creation [...]
This is not a problem which has ever affected us, thank the gods. But apparently, some people are allergic to wine. Can you imagine it? The absolute horror of getting an allergic reaction to wine? Of being at a dinner party or wedding, with the booze flowing free, and having to decline because it would [...]
In December’s GQ, the magazine introduces this year’s “Rock Stars Of Science”, a campaign funded by the Geoffrey Beene Foundation in order to bring scientists to the public’s attention. The theory is that kids are losing interest in science, and their parents aren’t encouraging them much any more. So, because we all know that scientists [...]
You might expect Christmas tree science would come from labs in Norway, or Finland, or Canada. This, though, is from North Carolina State University. Scientists there have been looking at the problem of deer eating or otherwise damaging fields of commercial Christmas trees, and discovered a new (less costly) method of doing the job. This [...]
The UK (well okay, Britain; let’s leave Northern Ireland out of this statement) is a relatively secular place to live, with religion kept as largely a personal matter. School children don’t have to swear loyalty to a beard in the sky, and churches aren’t the local-business hub they seem to be in the US. Which makes this news all the stranger: the British General Medical Council (GMC) has decided to review its rules, which currently ban doctors from discussing their religious views with patients during consultations.
