The End Is Nigh! Time to Go Shopping
December 19th, 2012 |
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“Why did the government make an announcement not to worry about 2012?… Is this a conspiracy? And if NASA is not worried about Dec 21, why did the head of NASA make a video warning NASA employees to prepare for disaster?” — question on NASA’s Ask an Astrobiologist Being a lazy person at heart, I [...]
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Psychology Reveals the Comforts of the Apocalypse
December 18th, 2012 |
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December 21, according to much-hyped misreadings of the Mayan calendar, will mark the end of the world. It’s not the first “end is nigh” proclamation—and it’s unlikely to be the last. That’s because, deep down for various reasons, there’s something appealing—at least to some of us—about the end of the world. Enjoy the Self-Fulfilling [...]
Keep reading »Why We’re Suckers for Stories of the Apocalypse
May 20th, 2011 |
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For rational people, dismissing the silliness around the supposed end of the world on May 21 is all too easy. In case you haven’t heard, Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping has done some questionable math based on Biblical writing to determine that the faithful will be "raptured" tomorrow and that nonbelievers will be left behind [...]
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![Figure 1. Plot of the locations of the languages in the sample. Dark circles represent languages with ejectives, clear circles represent those without ejectives. Clusters of languages with ejectives are highlighted with white rectangles. For illustrative purposes only. Inset: Lat-long plot of polygons exceeding 1500 m in elevation. Adapted from Figure 4 in [8]. The six major inhabitable areas of high elevation are highlighted via ellipses: (1) North American cordillera (2) Andes (3) Southern African plateau (4) East African rift (5) Caucasus and Javakheti plateau (6) Tibetan plateau and adjacent regions. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0065275.g001](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/wp-content/blogs.dir/8/files/2013/06/journal.pone_.0065275.g0011.png "journal.pone.0065275.g001")
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