Erhm, except we don't actually, as a gender, need mechanical assistance to masturbate?

Good question - now I'm wracking my brain for examples...

This kind of antibiotic use - intense, over a relatively short period of time by a relatively small segment of the population - isn't where our antibiotic resistance problem is stemming from though. Chronic and frequent punctual use to treat (not fully) ongoing or recurring ailments, missing doses during long-term…

That diet connection is really interesting. I always thought it was odd that something so potentially deadly would be so (naturally) prevalent in the population - you would thing that bad appendix shapes would become rarer over the generations. If it's become more common because we eat differently, I guess that it's a…

While I agree that grain consumption definitely caused serious health problems in early agricultural communities (the prevalence of diseases like anemia is well attested there), those situations are slightly different. For one thing, there is no evidence of autoimmune diseases in the past (not because there weren't…

There are many places where education is even less accessible now than it will become in Québec after planned tuition hikes (which by the way, though incremental, will result in a doubling of average costs over a period of four years - that's pretty dramatic by my books). That doesn't mean that people there need to…

As a person who is not fat, I also enjoy any excuse not to be told what to eat. I'm not an idiot, and can look up current research and make decisions about what to eat (healthy or not, fattening or not, pleasurable or not) for myself. My observations suggest that many of my fellow not-fat people feel the same way.…

Yeah. I'm pretty pro-barefoot (I have yet to find shoes that are actually comfortable for long distances. One day!), but my few attempts at urban barefooting have resulted in bad burns and cuts. I'll do it in the forest, but it just doesn't work in cities.

Thanks for the insight!

Yup un-pasteurized milk. And paleopathologists can see the traces of TB, rheumatic fever, and other infectious diseases many thus caught on their deformed bones. I'm not saying you shouldn't drink the stuff - it can be relatively safe if you know the cow and her health-status very well - but historically-speaking,…

Indeed, this is why I live off cheese, wine, and elaborate pastries. It's hard, but it is a choice informed by science.

Hah, I also have a hard time not being (in my case, genuinely) snarky about the Paleo-diet. They don't understand what paleolithic diets were actually like (people actually ate lots of fruit, grains and starchy roots, not just bacon), and they don't acknowledge the fact that the world is completely different than it…

Thanks for the interesting link, I will have to look that study up! I might have an inflated idea of Paleolithic life expectancies based on high life-expectancies in some more recent non-agricultural societies (e.g. [onlinelibrary.wiley.com]).

True, childhood mortality would skew life-expectancy averages down, and that women faced particular dangers that would definitely affect their life-expectancy negatively.

1- Because most alternatives involve forced removal and are much more traumatic for the kids, which is morally wrong and ultimately bad for civil society (it's a lot harder for traumatized adults to be good citizens)

Exactly. Are you feeling happy? Healthy? Pretty? Otherwise good, for whatever reason? That's awesome! I'm happy for you, but I don't want you to sell me your diet.

As much as I hate the paleo-diet, there's no evidence that life expectancy was lower in prehistoric societies. Overall, it varied dramatically from one society to the next and could be very high.

There's no evidence that life expectancy was lower in prehistoric societies. Overall, it varied dramatically from one society to the next and could be very high.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the plus side, it's probably a sign that the schools are at least trying to give opportunities to more students from groups that are, for various structural/historical reasons, kept out of these schools. So, success!

I think that the problem may be that while many colleges try to encourage first-generation attendees, people who have no college-educated relatives may not have access to the same support and advice that people surrounded by relatives familiar with the system have, and so end up not having anyone to tell them that…