The Magic Mushroom Experiment.

The "study involved 18 healthy adults, average age 46, who participated in five eight-hour drug sessions with either psilocybin — at varying doses — or placebo. Nearly all the volunteers were college graduates and 78% participated regularly in religious activities; all were interested in spiritual experience.

Fourteen months after participating in the study, 94% of those who received the drug said the experiment was one of the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives; 39% said it was the single most meaningful experience.

Critically, however, the participants themselves were not the only ones who saw the benefit from the insights they gained: their friends, family member and colleagues also reported that the psilocybin experience had made the participants calmer, happier and kinder."

The importance of touch in medical care.

See mom, video games CAN be useful. Gamers solve HIV enzyme puzzle.

Gamers playing the game Foldit figured out in 3 weeks what scientists have been working on for years. Read more about the science behind this HIV enzyme here.

Stunning electron microscope photos.

Check out photos of the ordinary and of things you never knew existed magnified hundreds of times...

Homophobic men most aroused by gay male porn.

Most gays didn't need a study to believe this, but experimental evidencenever hurts...

"One study asked heterosexal men how comfortable and anxious they are around gay men. Based on these scores, they then divided these men into two groups: men that are homophobic, and men who are not. These men were then shown three, four-minute videos. One video depicted straight sex, one depicted lesbian sex and one depicted gay male sex. While this was happening, a device was attached to each participant's penis. This device has been found to be triggered by sexual arousal, but not other types of arousal (such as nervousness, or fear - arousal often has a very different meaning in psychology than in popular usage).

When viewing lesbian sex and straight sex, both the homophobic and the non-homophobic men showed increased penis circumference. For gay male sex, however, only the homophobic men showed heightened penis arousal.

Heterosexual men with the most anti-gay attitudes, when asked, reported not being sexually aroused by gay male sex videos. But, their penises reported otherwise."

I love science!

Empowering with maps!

This is my bet of what the apocalypse looks like.

Photos from the volcano eruption in Chile this week.

Children of Immigrants Are America's Science Superstars.

Here's something to note the next time you get into a debate over U.S. immigration policy, "...70 percent of the finalists in the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search competition -- also known as the "Junior Nobel Prize" -- were the children of immigrants even though only 12 percent of the U.S. population is foreign-born". Just saying.

Read more about this here.

DIY: Make your own solar charger in an Altoids tin.

A fun project for tinkerers, or just buy one here to make it look like you made it yourself :)

Jet packs, for real.

Awesomely small living.

Houses made from plastic bottles.

Read more about houses built with unconventional materials on the Building Blog.

Argentina:

Mexico:

Serbia:

25 tips all Mac users should know.

Finally, a workaround to ditch the electoral college system.

Legislation that would change California's adherence to the electoral college system of national politics is making progress. AB459 would give California's 55 electoral college votes to whichever candidate won the national popular vote, instead of giving all 55 votes to the candidate that won a majority of California's districts. States that pass similar legislation would agree through a compact to do the same. The laws wouldn't go into effect until states representing 270 electoral votes, a majority and the number needed to elect a president, agree to the compact.

This approach avoids the nearly impossible process of amending the Constitution while still affecting the way we elect our nation's leader. Thus far Illinois, Hawaii, New Jersey and Maryland - with a total of 73 electoral votes - have passed the legislation proposed by National Popular Vote, a nonprofit based in Silicon Valley and founded by Stanford Professor John Koza, who came up with the idea. Adding California's 55 votes to that tally would go a long way to reaching the 270 needed to put the compact into action.

Read more about it here and here.

Hopeful study shows that it's not that hard to go BPA free.

Aside from drinking water out of glass or stainless steel containers instead of plastic bottles, there is a lot more we can do to eliminate BPA from our lives. The good news is that those efforts will be rewarded almost immediately. A recent study showed that after only three days of living BPA free, the level of BPA in the participants' systems dropped by more than 60%!

Read more on the study here and find examples of BPA free food storage products here.

Yet more super cool ideas for how to green our energy sources.

Ever feel down about how we've screwed our planet? Got green anxiety? I sure do sometimes, but reading about innovations to dig us out of this whole makes me feel much better. Check out the Earthtechling website for info on how these ideas (and more!) will be put into action to make our energy sources more renewable and less damaging to the environment.

Parakites

Container ship kites

Need to find a place to charge up your electric vehicle? There's an app for that.

Not only does PlugShare ease electric car owners "range anxiety", it also subverts the idea that we have to wait for charging infrastructure to be expanded before we hop onto the e-car bandwagon. It allows you to post your address if you wish to let people give you some pocket change to charge at their home in a pinch. Privacy issues aside, this is an excellent grass roots response to the lag in a support system for cleaner vehicles.

Download the FREE app here. Happy charging!



Find out more about electric cars in general.

No Impact Man.

I couldn't go this far, but it's amazing to see that it CAN be done. I love the evolution of mom in the story. Read the blog or watch the movie and get inspired to be better to the world!

Reduce, reuse, recycle, RETHINK. The zero waste home.

I read about this family in a magazine and loved their commitment to the cause of being greener. You can read Bea's blog here.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Coral reef inspired homes for Haiti.

I don't know if this is actually a plausible design, but it sure is cool.