Does Eating Celery Really Result in Negative Calories?
Snake oil salesmen all over the web would have you believe that, for a few easy payments, they'll reveal to you a diet focused on “negative calorie” foods.
Snake oil salesmen all over the web would have you believe that, for a few easy payments, they'll reveal to you a diet focused on “negative calorie” foods.
One of the most persistent myths in American history is that European explorers really got one over on the Native Americans by purchasing the entire island of Manhattan—where property has averaged $1000+ per square foot over the last few years—for a measl
When I was a kid, my parents often tried to sell me on the idea that carrots were good for my eyes—and if I wanted to avoid vision correction in the future, I would eat them now. But after I was fitted for my first pair of glasses in fourth grade, they dr
Though fingerprints are handy for identifying perps, biologically, scientists still aren't quite sure what our fingerprints are for. But as they test different hypotheses, they're getting closer to the answer—and learning some pretty cool stuff in the pro
Image credit: Duke.eduThere was a time when almost every university student was a sophomore. Well, a sophister, to be exact, but that’s where the word “sophomore” originated. A sophist was a wise man (derived from the Greek word sophos), so when Henry VI
Before a ship slides from its berth into the water, it must first get hit on—by a bottle of booze, usually champagne. Here’s the lowdown on the history and physics of smashing some bubbly and launching a ship
Taking your laptop out of your bag is the second most annoying thing travelers have to do at airport security (number one, of course, is being forced to remove your shoes and put your bare feet on the undoubtedly filthy floor). Some electronic gadgets, li
In the wild, giant panda mating occurs just as nature specials would have you believe. There’s intense competition for each female, and the dominant male will mate with her several times to ensure success. And that strategy works: Wild female pandas gener
When I was a kid with a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), sometimes my games wouldn't load. But I, like all kids, knew the secret: take out the game cartridge, blow on the contacts, and put it back in. And it seemed to work. (When it failed, I'd ju
Technically speaking, naked implies that a person is unprotected or vulnerable. It also describes something that is unadorned or without embellishment, as in the oft-mentioned naked truth. Nude, on the other hand, means one thing: unclothed.Think of it
Christopher Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, was killed last night along with three other Americans when an Islamist mob stormed the American Consulate in Benghazi. With the tragic story all over the news today, reader Kimberly wrote to ask what, ex
A friend of mine recently got pinkeye. Whenever she put in her eye drops, she noticed a distinct and very unpleasant taste on the back of her tongue.
Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp? Who put the -stan in Afghanistan? I don’t know about the former, but we can thank the Proto-Indo-Europeans for the latter.
Readers Meg, Wayne, and Rajiv all wrote in to ask about the tune that clock chimes typically play. What’s it called? Where did it come from? How’d it get so popular? Here’s the story.http://youtu.be/2mfBkd7MAdMIn 1793, a new clock was installed at St Mary
Reader Jen wrote in to ask, “Why do old injuries ache during crummy ache during crummy weather?" The idea that certain aches and pains correspond with, and can even predict, the weather is widespread, and has been around since at least the days of ancient
Everyone wants dibs (such as “I’ve got dibs on that last piece of pizza!”) but do we know what they are or why we call them? Chances are you first started calling dibs back when you were a kid on the playground. Coincidentally, the playground is exactly
It’s not that the machines have slight security glitches. It’s more that they’re almost comically hacker-friendly. Take the touchscreen Diebold Accuvote system. In 2012, nearly one-quarter of Americans are expected to use them to cast ballots. But the mac
Tomatoes contain two pigments for photosynthesis—chlorophyll, which is green, and lycopene, which is red. When tomatoes start to grow, they contain much less lycopene than chlorophyll, which gives them their green color. But when harvest season arrives, t
They don’t, technically. It’s actually their larvae, or caterpillars, that eat clothes, not the adult moths.It’s only a relatively small group of moths, the family Tineidae, that have any interest in your clothing. Throughout much of the US, you’ll only f
While they might be bright red when they hit your dinner plate, crabs and lobsters are usually brown, olive-green or gray when alive and in the wild (at least in the mid-Atlantic U.S.; crustaceans farther south come in a variety of vibrant colors).
Sure, his coloring makes him look good against a red background, but it turns out that in the early days of firefighting, the Dalmatian served an important
Biologists used to think that purrs were the sound of blood surging through cats’ inferior vena cava, the large vein that carries blood from the lower half of the body into the heart. More recent research suggests that the sound is actually produced by la
There are probably blackout periods you can’t remember at all from your childhood, and the memories you do have are likely hazy and garbled. Although pretty much everyone experiences this phenomenon known as childhood amnesia, its causes are still somewha
The heart is the most important muscle in the body, so it seems like something of a marketing ploy by the folks at Bayer to suggest that something so simple as a humble aspirin tablet can be of any use when this life-sustaining organ goes into epic fail m