Australopithecus sediba! Wildfire science! Real jetpacks! Persuasion methods! Solar properties Petrified forest! Heavenly metals! Anger cooperation! And Hummingbird mating techniques that drive lady hummingbirds bazonga! It's your Thursday Health Watch, where we watch your health—voodoo, doo doo, woo hoo!

  • What's your take on this Australopithecus sediba business? I tire of always hearing my own opinions; one way communication isn't how humanity evolved this far. So then, here I am, ears open, ready to listen: Australopithecus sediba and its implications. What say you? That's right, Mr. James, this is my elaborate little way of showing the class that you didn't do the reading. Sit down.
  • All those Texas wildfires: what do they mean scientifically? Fire is chemicals, when they interact with oxygen and molecules. The combustion leads to fire flames, burning any scientific instrument or scientist himself inside the "event horizon." Science. Texas.
  • Next year, you'll be able to write a check for $100K and purchase a real live jetpack that can fly for 30 minutes, in the sky. The future is... next year.
  • Want to get anyone to do anything? All you have to do is read a PsychologyToday.com blog entry, apparently. And guess what, it works. You read it, didn't you? No? Well you read this, which is all I care about.
  • A floating NASA telescope has observed a new property of solar flares. I'd tell you what that property is, but I fear there's a high likelihood of my collapsing and expiring from a lethal dose of boredom were I to do so, so I shall refrain.
  • America's largest petrified forest national park just got 26,000 acres larger. Yeah. So. Go check it out, I guess. It's like a bunch of tree-shaped rock, but more.
  • How did the earth get all of its silver, platinum, and other precious metals, hmmm? God? Well if by "god" you mean "they just miraculously dropped out of the sky borne upon meteors sent from heavens above," then yes.
  • "Could simple anger have taught people to cooperate?" Fuck you.
  • When hummingbirds get in the mood to mate, all they have to do is go dive-bombing through the air, which produces a mating-related chirping sound as the wind rushes through their feathers, and all the lady hummingbirds are like oh yeah, let's do some mating. Hummingbird life is in many ways much simpler than ours, like also in how they have less mandatory paperwork involved (in their lives, for anything from taxes to insurance purposes to what have you).

[Photo: David Woo/ Flickr]