The story of Santa and his flying reindeer, which we have come to associate with Christmas, may actually have its roots in Siberian shamanism and the consumption of the hallucinogenic mushroom, Amanita muscaria (also known as fly agaric). This is the easily recognisable toadstool mushroom, with its white stem and red cap dotted with white…
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Elves, aliens, imps, pixies, faeries, angels, demons, gods, goddesses, and ‘spirits’. These are all entities that have featured heavily in human culture. The earliest description of elves can be found in Norse mythology, Skaldic poetry, Norse legends and the Poetic Edda, a collection of Old Norse poems. Elves are also common in Germanic and Scandinavian…
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On Monday the world’s first lab-grown, in vitro burger was cooked and eaten in London. Professor Mark Post from Maastricht University, along with his colleagues, took adult stem cells from a cow and then turned them into strips of muscle, which they combined to make a beef patty. Some have dubbed the patty, the ‘Frankenburger’.…
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Allen J. Frances is an American psychiatrist who has become famous for his critique of the DSM-5, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Mental Disorders. He was also the former chair of the task force that published the DSM-IV, the fourth edition of the DSM. The DSM is published by the American…
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Julian Jaynes (1920 – 1997) was an American psychologist and is best known for his 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. ‘Bicameral’ means having two chambers. The theory of the bicameral mind says that the two hemispheres of our ancestors’ brains – the left and right – carried…
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