"The common curse of mankind - folly and ignorance." - Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

"And of all plagues with which mankind are cursed, ecclesiastical tyranny's the worst." - Daniel Defoe, Jure divino: a satyr

As if Mondays aren't bad enough, I found out today courtesy of my Wall Street Journal RSS feed that perhaps researchers have been mistaken in their calculations of calorie consumption and weight loss. So all of the little steps I was taking really don't add up to the ultimate diet equation?

Well, sort of. The problem is that the formula used for "diet math" - 3,500 calories equals one pound - isn't really all that simple.¹ This rule of thumb works well in the short term, WSJ says, and with small shifts in weight, but the rule breaks down over long periods, because as a person's weight changes, so does the body's energy needs.

What does it mean to be human? In the six million years or so since our ancestors first stood upright, we still don't have the perfect answer. In an effort to help the public appreciate our own unique development as human beings and explore the question for themselves, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History opened the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins.

The exhibit hall "offers visitors an immersive, interactive journey through 6 million years of scientific evidence for human origins and the stories of survival and extinction in our family tree during times of dramatic climate instability," the Smithsonian says. I had the fortune to visit the exhibit this weekend; if you're in D.C.¹ in the future, I strongly recommend you check it out.