Quickies
Skepchick Quickies 4.6
- Cooking: The 1 million year old technology – And as Jezebel points out, take that all you raw foodists who use cavemen as your reasoning. From Sarah. (Original paper.)
- Death anxiety increases atheists' unconscious belief in god – From Kyle.
- Sitting for just a couple hours has a measurable and negative health impact – I will now be that weirdo taking a brisk stroll around the library every so often during study marathons. Especially post-vending machine meal.
- The anthropology of searching for aliens – From Ryan.
- Cute Animal Friday! From Paul, a herd of St Bernards out for a walk (look at all those wagging tails!). From Brian, cute things exploding (but not in a bad way, promise!). And the cutest photobomb ever, the sloth bomb, from nowoo.
Death anxiety also makes me crave a cigarette despite having quit that too, lol.
Is the sitting study really about sitting or about innactivity in general? It seems the breaks didn't consist of just standing up but in going for a 2 minute walk every 22 minutes. That's translated to walking little less than 10% of the time, thus a 20% improvement is not that big of a surprise. I wonder if a comparison between sitting and just standing up for 2 minutes every 20 would yield similar results.
I'm not anxious about death. Well, I am. But it's pretty specific. I'm not anxious or afraid of dying when I'm old. Maybe I'll have a heart attack in my sleep. That would be nice.
But I am anxious about dying horrifically, especially in a car crash. It has far less to do with the actual dying, though, and more to do with the suffering before death. Who wants to suffer, all the while knowing you're going to die?
I'm also a little anxious about dying young, before I'm able to accomplish anything worth-while. That bugs me when I'm having a moment of anxiety. But then I realize I probably won't care once I am dead, so what's the point of worrying about it?
But the actual death or what comes after? Nah. That part seems easy. Poof! You're gone.
A couple years ago I had a pulmonary embolism. Not yet knowing what was going on, I called an ambulence and on the ride to the hospital wondered if I might be about to die. Then I wondered if I'd have a death bed conversion. Then I laughed. I didn't know if I'd be okay but I felt good about not slipping into superstition when I needed to keep my wits and place my care into the hands of professionals.
I have been face to face with my own mortality off and on throughout my life, and my lack of belief has not wavered.
We have to remember that there's a difference between being a Skeptic that's an Atheist due to an understanding of evidence, logic, psychology, neurology, etc., and an Atheist that's an Atheist due to any number of reasons.