Lethal heat and humidity isn’t futuristic, it’s already here and no, I am not talking about the heat wave about to bake Israel this weekend. A new study identified thousands of brief but brutal bouts of weather approaching unsurvivability in all the continents except the Antarctic. And no, the Middle East won't be blessedly cooled by the breeze of El Niño storms predicted to revive in the Indian Ocean.
Apropos unsuspected new truths, exactly one tooth found in Bulgaria may change the paradigm regarding the prowess of the Neanderthal. Maybe we can retain our crown as the acme of the Homo line after all, though to be human is also to err, as we learn from the evolution of, and corrections to, biblical texts in antiquity. While on new insights, manuscripts from the Second Temple Period too brittle to even touch and gummy to boot (really) may be deciphered using cutting-edge physics.
This week Haaretz also dived through the stargate in the giant virus, and while you read all about it, a word of helpful advice: think twice about getting a pet squid. As an extraordinary fossil from 200 million years ago shows, they never did brim with bonhomie.
