If you like your science saucy, be sure to check out this review of Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation. The book is Olivia Judson’s fun look at the love lives of animals, insects, and other creatures — from a very human perspective.

Vampires and werewolves are real! I want to believe.

And a Happy Halloween, y’all.

A 600-pound, 1200 year-old Mayan altar has been recovered from looters by the Guatemalan police and some “archeologists turned detective”. Neat.

That’s the argument made by the Michigan Freethought group. As evidence, one member pointed out this article about recent work restoring a palimpsest to its original form. Seems the scrolls held copies of a bunch of Archimedes’ treatises and calculations originally, but some monks saw fit to rub and scrape those out and replace them with prayers in Greek. But with modern imaging techniques, we’re getting it all back now… Yay!

Disturbing news from a New Scientist article:

Babies given antibiotics during the first six months of their lives are far more likely to develop asthma, according to a US study. Why is not clear, but the team claims antibiotics might be partly responsible for the steady rise in asthma cases in western countries.