Margret Atwood.

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Margret Atwood, the author of books such as The Handmaids Tale, Alias Grace, and Oryx and Crake. She's a popular author, whose talent has spanned from around 1985 to here and now. And, she's quite comedic if she sets her mind to it. I had the pleasure to attend a talk by her called 'A night with Margret Atwood', where she talked about the arts and how important they are to not end up like in a case of The Handmaids Tale. She had some great points, and she is quite comedic when it comes down to it. She talked about things like the #AHandbagsTale, which circulated after she took her purse with her onto the Emmys, and despite the fact that many people are stating the Hulu film was politically motivated, there were basically no digs or jokes involving politics in the slightest.

She talked about how the Humanities, things like art, history, and music are being cut out of the picture for STEM, and how that's not a good thing. A healthy balance is what we need to create humans, STEM is what we need to create a work force. That's not saying that we should only do Humanities, but it does mean we shouldn't cut any one part out of the picture. She made several points talking about how Gilead, from her book The Handmaids Tale, was the result of completely cutting out the Humanities, and focusing solely on creating a working class that couldn't question. She made a very compelling argument to keep the art in schools.

Adventure Van, writing away.

Standing.

Hey guys, Adventure Van here with a blog about standing. Standing is the act of using your legs to balance your body without the need for using your arms to hold yourself up. Many of us learned this at a very young age, but what you probably haven't read are the benefits of standing. The health benefits, that is. Standing for an average of 6 hours a day shed around 54 extra calories a day. In a year, this could be a total of 5.5 pounds lost. If you continue to do long term standing and walking, without too much effort, in 3 years you could lose up to 22 pounds! So, if you end up sitting for long periods of time, then try to stand up for a bit every now and again. It might end up helping you in more ways then one.

Adventure Van, standing... here?

Evil Rats, or nah?

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about the rats who spread the Black Death. Or did they? Recent studies state that in fact, rats just brought it, and we, as humans, spread it like wildfire. Over the past couple hundreds of years blaming the rats for the Black Death, which took over 10 million lives, we've done more and more research into it, and now, in the technology age, we've managed to do simulations of the ways we've commonly believed the infection to spread, and a Human&Flea combo more closely matches how it spread then a Rat/Flea combo. Guess we need to find a new reason to look down on them, but there's a ton more to do so.

Adventure Van, crawling away.

Buffalo Museum of Science Astronomy Symposium.

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about the Buffalo Museum of Science Astronomy Symposium. Unfortunetly, I got there around 2 hours late to it, and didn't really catch the whole thing, just the ending of the Key-Note speaker, Brother Guy Consolmagno, and the QNA at the end. However, from what I was there for, it was full of good information, a varied panel of experts, and good points in the speech. I can't give a full opinion as I wasn't there for the whole thing, but it had several good pointers about astronomy.

Adventure Van, looking up.

Giant Penguins of the Past!

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Kumimanu Biceae, the giant penguin. Larger then an emperor penguin, this penguin beast was 5.5 feet tall, or 1.7 meters. Fortunately, it's 60 million years old, and extinct, so this large penguin isn't something  you'll be encountering any more. We just discovered its existence in  2017,  and it's pretty big. In fact, it's the biggest discovered penguin of all time! It's quite cool to see these ice blasts from the past showing of quite impressive creatures!

Adventure Van, signing out.

(Source: here!)