The antioxidant myth is too easy to swallow (www.guardian.co.uk) – despite the advertising ploys of the dietary supplement market: “Large studies have repeatedly shown that, with the possible exception of vitamin D, antioxidant supplements have negligible positive effect on healthy people, at least in terms of important things such as preventing people getting cancer or dying prematurely. And some supplements – notably vitamins A, E and beta-carotene – even seem to slightly raise the risk of disease and early death.” Cochrane Summary of some available research.

Study: 89 percent of parents believe game violence a problem (www.gamespot.com) – Link to the full survey results here: http://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/full_cap-csm_report_results_1-7-13.pdf.  It’s not especially surprising, and although much research has been done on the subject, the Supreme Court has continually rejected studies that show a correlation between violence and video games because the link has never been proven to be causal (first page here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10964-012-9803-6?LI=true).  Also, there might be a reverse correlation between per capita video game spending and per capita gun murders – with the U.S. as a huge outlier (relatively low per capita game spending, but overwhelmingly high gun murders).

Portraits of Albanian Women Who Have Lived Their Lives As Men (http://www.petapixel.com) – an interesting series of pictures, perhaps lacking the appropriate cultural context as mentioned in the top comment: “…often the primary reason these women make this change is because there is no son in the family there is no one who can go out and work to care for the family as their parents age. They take on this role often out of service to their family rather than out of any lifestyle choice.”

“Mildly to extremely interesting internet stuff” is a semi-regular series of posts about stuff I find interesting on the web. Generally, the topics relate to my interests: music, science, history, health, gaming, and philosophy.