Skeptics Weekly Newsletter - Thursday, January 29, 2015

Top new questions this week: Do police issue more citations near the end of each month? A related question about police quotas suggests there are quotas (some openly, some not) in some jurisdictions. This Venture Beat Article strongly suggests that more tickets are issued at the end of ... [ government-policy ] [ police ]   asked by user2813274 9 votes Do individual heart cells "beat" when isolated? In his book The Third Ear, author Chris Lonsdale makes the following claim in chapter 14: Some years ago, scientists did a very interesting experiment. They placed a single, live, heart cell into ... [ biology ] [ anatomy ]   asked by Flimzy 6 votes answered by March Ho 6 votes Did Gandhi say this anti-vaccine quote? While searching for a different image on Google, I came across this: The text in the image reads: Vaccination is a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in ... [ quotes ] [ vaccines ] [ gandhi ]   asked by fredsbend 6 votes answered by ChrisW 13 votes Can thunderstorms curdle milk? When I was 13, my sister and I spent the summer on a dairy farm. We worked in the creamery, where (twice a day) we bottled fresh raw milk, as well as cleaned all the equipment. It was really a fun ... [ biology ] [ chemistry ]   asked by medica 6 votes Did Lars Andersen perform the stunts in "A new level of archery"? So lately i've discovered a Video which went incredibly viral (20 mil views in a week). It's an amateurish filmed video called "A new level of archery" about the Danish archer Lars Andersen. Now I ... [ video ] [ archery ]   asked by Jutschge 5 votes Does blending food to "break down the cell walls" make it healthier? A popular blender brand, Vitamix, claims that The 5200's powerful blades pulverize the cell walls of whole fruits and vegetables, releasing the full nutrients found in the seeds and skin They stop ... [ nutrition ]   asked by Johnny 5 votes Is this "Remove child before washing" clothes label real? The image below went somewhat viral: It shows a clothes label with the text "Remove child before washing". Is this an actual clothes label of an actual commercially available piece of clothing? ... [ consumer-products ] [ photography ]   asked by gerrit 5 votes Greatest hits from previous weeks: Has the cure to cancer been hidden by pharmaceutical companies? I've heard a theory that given the widespread incidence of cancer, a cancer cure probably already exists but has been hidden by major pharmaceutical companies to maximise revenue from expensive cancer ... [ medical-science ] [ cancer ]   asked by Huey 83 votes answered by Michael Borgwardt 150 votes Has Stack Overflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity? John Carmack is a renowned developer and CTO. His Twitter account has over 100,000 followers. On the occasion of Stack Exchange's 5th anniversary, he quipped on Twitter: [... Stack Overflow] has ... [ economics ] [ quotes ] [ programming-productivity ]   asked by Sklivvz 164 votes Can you answer these? Do smartphones and computers cause skin to age via "tech neck"? I was watching a health program on TV last night that was looking at skin aging, and they flashed up a panel showing various causes of skin aging. Along with the usual culprits of sunlight, smoking ... [ mobile-phones ] [ dermatology ]   asked by Ken Y-N 2 votes Will the richest 1% soon have more wealth than everyone else? The charity Oxfam recently launched a media campaign about global inequality with the startling statistic (this page on their website): ...inequality is rising: the combined wealth of the richest ... [ economics ] [ wealth ] [ poverty ]   asked by matt_black 2 votes

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