Friday Delights
I scour the Internet every week to bring you the best articles I can find
There has always been a lot of controversy around GMO, mainly focused on whether or not it is a good idea to genetically modified crops. While that’s a fun discussion to have, the state of Florida has moved beyond having discussions and into action. Officials have announced that in order to combat the Zika virus and other mosquito-transmitted diseases, 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes will be released in the wild, in an effort to reduce population sizes. The modified mosquitoes carry a special gene that makes any female offspring die before reaching biting age. The male ones will live on to pass the genes. Of course, there are a lot of people unhappy with this idea but it seems like the plan will be executed anyway. It would certainly be interesting to see the results in the next few years.
In completely unrelated news, Oranges Are Orange, Salmon Are Salmon. I am not sure if I can call this article informative, but it was certainly fun to read. A brief story of how the word orange originated plus a brief summary of how salmon get that specific, salmon colour. What more can you want?
A lot of people are baffled by the anti-vaxxer community. After all, who in their right mind would knowingly risk the life of their own child, based on bad science? Here is a short history of how the movement started, sparked by fabricated data and bad science. The British doctor Andrew Wakefield who created this whole fiasco has been since expelled and is not allowed to practice anymore in the UK. However, such an article being allowed in a journal like the Lancet in the first place is enough reason to raise some doubts about how much we can trust peer-reviewed scientific articles as a whole.
It is terrible when life kicks you in the teeth. It is even worse when you are hurt by someone close to you. Pain, combined with a betrayal of trust can lead to trauma that takes more than just time to heal. You can find tones of articles about forgiveness on the Internet, but this one goes a bit deeper. The author is a professor in psychology who (like all of us) has had to deal with his own trauma. What he proposes after years of research is the following: forgiveness and reconciliation are two separate things. We tend to think that just because we forgive someone we have to reconcile as well. But that is not the only way to think about it — you can forgive the person who hurt you, thereby giving yourself closure, while at the same time resolving to never speak to them again. And that’s perfectly fine.
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As a bonus this week here is a video of people dancing on a rotating platform
