Alan Turing, the computer science legend best known for his part in breaking the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park in World War II, may have died of an accident rather than suicide, according to a new claim.Accidental cyanide poisoning?  Do go on.Professor Jack Copeland, director of the The Turing Archive for the History of Computing, claims in a new book that Turing may have died due to inhalation in amateur experiments rather than in a deliberate attempt to kill himself. 

The Utopian vision society has always dreamed about was a world where people could eat so much for so little money, that it wasn't just rich people who could afford to be fat; anyone could.Well, we have that. America is more self-loathing about its obesity issues than most countries but Italian kids are fat, everyone in Britain is fat, and even the French are closing in on a weight crisis.

Two of the great feel-good fallacies promoted by vegetarians and vegans today is that eating less meat will stop climate change and that ancient man did it their way.In reality, ancient man loved meat, it was just hard to kill.  So ancient scientists domesticated livestock - and then they found more uses for it, like milk, butter and cheese. It wasn't just Europeans, researchers have identified the chemical signature of dairy fats inside the surfaces of pottery from 7,200 years ago in North Africa.

A few days away from a Supreme Court ruling on the the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act(Obamacare to detractors) comes some sobering claims from Britain, which already has nationalized health care.Professor Patrick Pullicino, a consulting neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent, says National Health Service (NHS) doctors in the UK are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds.

Things are not great in America but Spain may have the USA beat - even cherries are being stolen.Last year, more than 20,000 thefts were reported at Spanish farms.  Is that more or less than in previous years?  No one is sure, it was never a problem before so they have few records.  Now, thieves steal food from farmers and resell them in ad hoc markets.  Welcome to the 14th century. All those people who think the past was better get to see it first hand.

Joan Gonzalvo of the Ionian Dolphin Project, who studies dolphins off western Greece for the Tethys Research Institute, captured an incredible sequence of images showing a leaping bottlenose dolphin with a large octopus clinging to its belly.Well, more specifically the dolphin's genital slit. Yikes.

Advances in medical and surgical care are hard-won, requiring rigorous, carefully interpreted research and development. There is painstaking clinical work to translate basic discoveries into useful diagnostics, drugs, and devices. Despite the obastacles, the achievements made in the past half century are unmistakable: a 50 percent reduction in cardiovascular mortality despite an epidemic of obesity; a dramatically decreased cancer mortality rate; and the conversion of AIDS from a death sentence to survival with good life quality.

It's a nightmare for Whole Foods shoppers; what if genetically modified crops produced by evil scientists who only care about profits for their employers (i.e., the same as every employee of Whole Foods and its organic Mega-Farm suppliers) are actually good for the ecosystem?We already know that genetically modified foods are as good for people as organic foods - or better if you'd prefer not to get E. coli from your food. We also know that, despite the silly claims, organic food is incapable of feeding poor people while genetically modified foods have brought prosperity and nutrition to a billion people worldwide in the last decade, and they have done it without using more land and with less harmful pesticides.

Chimpanzees, you are not alone.  The distinction of being our closest living relative in the animal kingdom is now a tie with the bonobo. An international team of researchers has sequenced the genome of the bonobo for the first time, confirming that it shares the same percentage of its DNA (about 99.6%) with us as chimps do.

Bank of America was recently so crushed by its risky derivatives investments it needed $45 billion in bailout money from taxpayers - and then proceeded to engage in questionable practices to cover its losses, much like it engaged in questionable practices to acquire the losses.  Things are so much better now they can afford to fix global warming and are devoting $50 billion to the cause.