Children's television is 'problematic', according to a new paper in the Journal of Communication.

While there is no physical bullying in these shows, what the authors consider an 'alarming' amount contain behaviors like cruel gossiping and manipulation of friendship.  There aren't many ways for shows to be funny in 2012, it seems.

Dentistry has been around for almost long as people have had teeth go bad but evidence for dentistry is another matter entirely. We don't pull off an arm when it is sore so the first human to figure out that pulling something attached to the skull would help keep people alive was taking nearly as big a chance as the first patient.

Ancient evidence of prehistoric dentistry has been discovered in a Neolithic graveyard in Pakistan and other findings in a Neolithic graveyard near Parma have detailed creative tooth work. An artificial tooth from the cemetery of Gebel Ramlah, Egypt, dates back 5,500 years.

No matter where in the world you live, chances are you've eaten "pulses" some time in the last week. These foods, otherwise known as "food legumes" or "grain legumes," have been a part of the human diet since at least 11,000 BC; they were first collected by hunter-gatherers and were then domesticated and cultivated by early farmers.

Popular pulses include peas, field beans, lentils, and chickpeas; their relatives bitter vetch and grass pea were also once commonly eaten. These foods provide nutrition not only to humans, but also to livestock and even depleted soils; they can be used as feed, forage, silage, haylage, and "green manure."

In a long-term marriage,  men tend to drink less than they did while single. That's good.  But women drink more, say sociologists. 

British women no longer feel inferior next to sassy siren Spaniards or chic French women. They are taller - in heels, anyway. Brits sport a towering 3.3 inch heel on average.

 3,792 women across five European countries (France, Germany, Spain, Denmark and the UK) were questioned in a survey by footcare company COMPEED.  Spanish women were second at an average 3.2 inches, the Danish were at 3, Germans at 2.7 and French women at 2.4 inches. 25% of British women said that they often wear heels over 4 inches and 3% are adding on 6 inches of height. 

Modern feminists pooh-pooh their ancestors and assume because they didn't dress in bulky pantsuits, women were somehow meek and timid.

Not at all. A three-year study of the manuscripts compiled and written by one of Britain’s earliest known feminist figures, Lady Anne Clifford, shows that women challenged male authority plenty in the 17th century.  Basically, women of the Renaissance were not one-dimensional stereotypes, and neither were men - for allowing it. Clifford’s 600,000-word "Great Books of Record" documents the family dynasty over six centuries and her bitter battle to inherit castles and villages across northern England.

There are calls in some quarters that we need to be more like people in the past; war, pestilence, disease, early death, it's all good as long as we use no pesticides.

And clear cutting forests is what ancient man did too.

During the Neolithic Age, 10,000 B.C., early man changed from being hunter-gatherers to farmers - ancient scientists told that the food supply was running low and listening to calls for mitigation and rationing instead invented domesticated livestock and agriculture. As a result, we got larger, permanent settlements with a variety of domesticated animals and plant life. and that transition brought about significant changes in terms of culture, economics, architecture, etc,

Medieval clerics did not like the prospect of giving up sex - heck, every man getting getting married dreads the part about giving up sex  - so even when they had to do so by Papal decree there was resistance to it. You think changing from a Latin to local language Mass was controversial? Genitalia are a lot more personal. 

Priests, of course, used to be married but that changed hundreds of years later after the foundation of Christianity. The justifications were that a priest should imitate Christ, who was celibate (unmarried), and still later there was an argument and decree that priests who were handling the sacraments had to also be unpolluted by sexual activity - chaste.

Modern lifestyles are quite different from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. That seems obvious. People looking to apply blame for the obesity rise focus on their own agendas, be it lobbying against GMOs, high fructose corn syrup or video games. Or contend it is because we don't spend our days picking berries.

But what does science say?  There's no way to know but anthropologists are at least taking a shot at it. A new analysis, of modern hunter-gatherers anyway, found that there is no difference between their energy expenditure and Westerners, casting doubt on 'we don spend all day picking berries' hypothesis for obesity.

A contaminated river and a polluted sky are proof that environmentalism isn't just for the rich any more, say sociologists.

Obviously it never was, in many countries.  In the developed world, people in the country actually care more about the environment than rich urbanites, but in the developing world the practical takes precedence over policy.  The poor can't afford to protect the environment.

A new survey says that may be true in the country but in the city it is another matter. People living in China's cities who say they've been exposed to environmental harm are more likely to be green, recycling or reusing grocery bag.  It also says the poor would sacrifice economic gain to protect their environment.