The Pragmatic Lair

Surely you've heard the phrase: "the poles are melting." Well, first there is a lot to talk about here. On one hand, in the South Pole, we have an icy continent, Antarctica, which does not melt . On the other hand, at the North Pole, we have the Arctic Ocean, where a huge piece of ice is floating. Currents from around the world affect this ice particularly, because it’s not sheltered on the mainland like the ice in Antarctica. This is one of the reasons why Arctic ice changes so much. In summer part of it melts, and in winter it grows. However, in recent decades it has been observed that the amount of ice that remains unmelted, after summer is less and less. It's the heat. These changes are not only happening in the Arctic. In most of the world, the minimum temperature in the cold zones, and the maximum temperature in the heat zones, is expected to continue to increase, especially in the north. The calcullations indicate that if we keep the 1.5 degrees of increas...

Today we are going to clarify some misconceptions about the mind. Surely you know someone who boasts of having a photographic memory. So the next time you see that person, put your hand on his or her shoulder and say, "No, you don't". For someone to have a photographic memory, the memory of that person would have to be like a photograph. They would have to be able to recover that memory at will and examine it in detail. Zooming in on different parts. But it has never been proven that a true photographic memory exists in that way. Surely somebody is already going to say to you: "I meant that I can remember faces easily." Well that isn't photographic memory, that is remembering faces easily. But some people can have eidetic memory. That it sometimes confused with photographic but they are not the same. A person who has eidetic memory can vividly recover images after a few moments of exposure for a short period afterwards without using m...

Today we're clarifying some misconceptions we have about some things we often hear. Some people get a cold and the flu at the same time and they sure don't have a good time, it's possible. This depends on the combination of viruses you have. If you got infected with 2 rhinoviruses, for example, you may not feel much of a difference since the symptoms are similar. But if you got infected with a flu virus, when you already had a cold, then you may feel the consecuences, since the symptoms are different and you may feel even worse. When the cold weather comes, people tends to be more locked up in their homes and in their offices because they have the air conditioning there. So they are more likely to get this type of virus. Now, it is not that the virus is spread by the cold, it is not due to the cold that we get sick. Yes, it can affect our immune system and, beacause of it, it can take us longer to recover, but we actually get sick from viruses. The cold itsel...

Let's clarify some things that are not being said well. There’s a lot of misinformation in every viral news and I didn't want to hurry. You have to be very careful with what you find in the networks. One cannot make articles with true and reliable information every day without a whole production team behind. Doing it alone is impossible. That can only be done by entertainment media and, if so, it should not be taken seriously because its main objective is to entertain, even if they show news. Now to the point, the news about The Amazon began badly, full of misinformation, even from important companies. Barbarities were said from the beginning, like it is burning due to climate change, and it is not that forest fires cannot happen due to this phenomenon. The climate crisis manifests with hurricanes, floods, heat waves and forest fires, but this is not the case and you should already know. To understand this you must first have one thing clear. Forest ...

When you look at a plant your first thought is probably not "that thing's going to kill me". But in some cases, that thing is going to kill you. Plants have evolved with all kinds of compounds inside them. Sometimes those compounds don't play well with human biology. Dumbcane -  Dieffenbachia A common houseplant, it's easy to grow and nice to look at, but if you eat any of this stuff, you'll end up with blisters and swelling in your mouth and throat that can make it difficult to breathe or speak, hence the name. The main problem comes from tiny crystals of calcium oxalate and acid that's a major component of kidney stones. The crystals are shaped like needles and they'll easily stabbed through the tissues in your digestive system or eyes like some kind of poisonous acupuncture. Botanists think the needles might also contain enzymes that mess with the proteins in your cells, which help make the swelling and burning worse. The effects can last for u...

Imagine you’re the president of a great nation. That means you are responsible for the welfare of millions of people. On the "dangers to watch" board, it’s been written about greenhouse gases. We have been releasing them in the atmosphere for so many decades that they are beginning to alter the climate. Now, how big these changes will be is something you don't know, and a quick check in the internet doesn't solve it. The variety of answers you find is crazy. While on the one side they tell you that every living being is going to die in twenty years, on the other side they tell you that it is all a lie. In both cases, nothing smells quite right. The first group seems to be exaggerating a bit and those opposing seem to be very defensive: But, hey, you wouldn't know who is right either. After all, it is you who are looking for answers. So, in a world in which we have democratized to spread both the truths and the lies, where the false and...