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Mexican doctors, writers, cooks and anthropologists explain the origins behind eating the a bolillo, or roll, after one is scared. There's science to back it up.

How much will Joe Biden's economic record help in his shot at a second US presidency?

LONDON: One day, in late February 1986, a young man from Jubail in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province decided to put his new 4WD through its paces on the sand dunes west of the coastal city. Before very long, however, he made two startling discoveries. The first was that neither he nor his new car were well suited to dune-bashing, as both man and machine soon found themselves

– John S.Stokes Jr. Queen of the Missions, March 1955. Paradoxically, the very literature and book learning which destroyed the oral religious traditions of the Christian countrysides during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took it upon themselves to record the disappearing externals of those same traditions in the nineteenth. It is thus secular lexicographers, not religious tradition, that we are to thank for the preservation of many of the centuries-old popular "Mary" nam...

As many of you will know, I’m not much of a believer in the claims that the U.S. government (or, in fact, any government) has in its hands the remains of dead aliens. Certainly, when I was in my twenties, I most definitely was a believer in the “secretly pickled aliens” scenario. As time went along, though, I came to the conclusion that such stories were created – by the world of intelligence – to camouflage far more disturbing issues. Namely, top secret, high-altitude experiments u...

Ancient Remedies: Hueseros Provide Alternative Healing Methods Ancient Remedies: Hueseros Provide Alternative Healing Methods The  sobadores  (bonesetters) are an integral and deeply rooted part of Mexican and Latin American culture and identity. However, despite the cultural ties, not everyone has gone to a huesero, and those that have don’t always recommend them. Hueseros carry out a “special” type of healing, a cheaper alternative to conventional medicine. For many Mexicans, they fu...

sobadores  (bonesetters) are an integral and deeply rooted part of Mexican and Latin American culture and identity. However, despite the cultural ties, not everyone has gone to a huesero, and those that have don’t always recommend them. Hueseros carry out a “special” type of healing, a cheaper alternative to conventional medicine. For many Mexicans, they fulfill the role of “general practitioner” for a lower price, while maintaining questionable methods. The gift of healing In almos...

by Eric Felten Print this article Encyclopaedia Britannica, Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary, and Cram’s Popular Atlas of the World were having trouble keeping up. It was the war, you see. Cram’s atlas (was there ever a less mellifluous brand name?) is new to my shelves, a manifestation of my mania for books that attempt to organize all that was known about the world at a given moment. But in 1941, the facts to be known about the world were alarmingly fluid. Cra...