Off-topic, but I can’t help myself… Russell Brand recently shredded MSNBC’s ‘talent’, reducing all three hosts to stammering. He then wrote about the interview, asking, “Why is our culture behaving like this? How has this become normal?” Russell is so sharp, I sometimes wonder if he’s secretly in possession of a sword he pulled from a stone.
- Chilean mummies reveal pre-Hispanic cultures regularly consumed nicotine and hallucinogens.
- Is cursive writing dead? Once a foundation of a good education, it’s almost forgotten.
- Fossil words.
- Social media images form a new language online.
- The anthropology of prestige explains why humans foolishly follow celebrities, and why quotes are so often misattributed.
- Hollywood and Hitler: Harvard scholar argues that US movie producers in the 1930s ‘collaborated’ with the Nazis.
- Russian meteor shockwave circled the globe twice.
- Star Trek deflector shield could protect Mars mission from cancer risk.
- The quantum secret to ‘impossible’ alcohol reactions in space.
- Mega-quakes cause distant volcanoes to sink.
- Tens of thousands of cattle with bovine tuberculosis (bTB) have been sold for human consumption in UK schools, hospitals and military.
- US researchers find leaky gas pipelines undermine the energy source’s emissions advantage over coal.
- Butterfly decline a worrying portent.
- Man raises, sells Monarch butterflies for ceremonies. Monarchs only lay their eggs on milkweed plants, which is also their sole source of food during the caterpillar stages.
- Brain-eating amoebas thrive in US lakes.
- The electrified brain: the power and promise of neural implants.
- Losing senses: What is life like if you can’t smell or taste?
- First bionic eye retinal chip for the blind will be available later this year.
- When two carcinogens are present at ‘safe’ levels, cancer risks double, epigenetics study finds.
- New NSA leaks show how US is bugging its European allies.
- Newly published top-secret documents detail how NSA interfaces with tech giants such as Google, Apple and Microsoft.
- NSA is still harvesting your online data, and plans to expand its metadata collection even further in Sept. 2013.
- The criminal NSA.
- Stealth wear: Ready to Update your wardrobe for the surveillance era?
- Outsmarting facial recognition software: Is computer vision camouflage worth looking like an idiot?
- H. G. Wells’ Things To Come (1936): The original liberal fascist World War Z movie — now restored and on Blu-Ray! Krugman says you can’t properly discuss this film without referencing George Orwell’s short essay Wells, Hitler, and the World State.
Quote of the Day:
A full 90% of all the data in the world has been generated over the last two years.
Big Data – for better or worse.