When customers step in for a cup of coffee at Ritual Coffee Roasters on Valencia Street, a sign informs them that cash is no longer welcome. The coffee shop wants customers to use contactless forms of payments to pick up their cups of joe, in an effort to curb the spread of the new coronavirus. More and more businesses are turning…
Tag: ritual
Mental Health Tips for the COVID-19 Outbreak
Dr. Steve Joordens, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, regularly connects psychology to world events. Below, listen to the conversation or read the transcript, and hear Dr. Steve Joordens’s thoughts on: Tips to manage anxiety and fear around the new coronavirus pandemic How often you should check the news How parents […]
The post Mental Health Tips for…
New Neanderthal bones found at famous Shanidar Cave
The newly found bones were close to the site of the famous ‘flower burial’ in Shanidar Cave, which overturned notions of Neanderthals as brutish subhumans and suggested they buried their dead. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/new_neanderthal_bones_shanidar_cave…
Coronavirus Cases Soar in Italy and Iran; 48 Countries Now Report Infections
The fight to contain the coronavirus entered an alarming new phase on Thursday as caseloads soared in Europe and the Middle East, and health officials in the United States and Germany dealt with patients with no known connection to others with the infection. From a report: The German and American cases raised the possibility that the virus could have begun to…
New timeline rewrites history of Easter Island collapse
Easter Island society did not collapse prior to European contact, and its people continued to build its iconic moai statues for much longer than previously believed, according to a team of researchers. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/new-timeline-easter-island-collapse…
Will Punxsutawney Phil get it right in 2020?
Every February 2nd, a weather-prognosticating groundhog in Pennsylvania tells us if we should expect six more weeks of winter or an early spring. Should we believe him? Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/groundhog-day-punxsutawney-phil-accuracy…
Trove of Jewish artifacts discovered beneath a synagogue destroyed by Nazis during WWII
In a historic Polish synagogue dating to the 18th century, restorers found a secret stash of Jewish ritual objects, concealed under the floor. Source: https://www.livescience.com/judaica-buried-artifacts-polish-synagogue.html
Some Hospitals Are Ditching Lead Aprons During X-Rays
pgmrdlm shares a report from ABC News: Some hospitals are ditching the ritual of covering reproductive organs and fetuses during imaging exams after prominent medical and scientific groups have said it’s a feel-good measure that can impair the quality of diagnostic tests and sometimes inadvertently increase a patient’s radiation exposure. The about-face is intended to improve care, but it will require…
How Is Computer Programming Different Today Than 20 Years Ago?
This week a former engineer for the Microsoft Windows Core OS Division shared an insightful (and very entertaining) list with “some changes I have noticed over the last 20 years” in the computer programming world. Some excerpts: – Some programming concepts that were mostly theoretical 20 years ago have since made it to mainstream including many functional programming paradigms like immutability,…
70% of Americans Dislike Daylight Savings Time
An anonymous reader quotes a Yahoo News 360 report on Americans who hate Daylight Savings Time: A push to end the semiannual clock shift, which has been shown to correlate with negative health and productivity outcomes, is gaining steam throughout the country. Most of the momentum is behind a movement to make daylight saving time permanent so the “spring forward” lasts…