In honour of April 15th: If Companies Are People… why not tax corporations as if they were natural persons? Stiglitz sez the tax system is stacked against the 99 percent.
- Collection of 40 papyri from the 27th year of King Khufu’s reign, and the most ancient harbour ever found in Egypt, unearthed during excavation.
- Mid Wales was home to a ‘neolithic theme park’ used for rituals and feasts.
- Archaeological chemists use ancient Egyptian marriage certificate to authenticate the Gospel of Judas, which suggests that Jesus requested his friend, Judas, betray him to authorities. More.
- ‘Jungle Journals’ of WWII POW held captive on Java by Japanese found hidden in a suitcase.
- Primitive fish with ‘butt fins’ reveals evolution’s quirky path.
- Dinosaurs wiggled inside their eggs and grew faster than any birds or mammals living today.
- Mysteriously shrinking proton continues to puzzle physicists.
- Researcher at security conference simulates hijacking an airplane using just an Android app.
- Robotics forecast: cool with a chance of lost humanity.
- Birds, beeds, and aquatic life threatened by gross underestimate of toxicity of world’s most widely used pesticide.
- Ants living atop earthquake faults shift behavior before quakes hit.
- Feral pigs going hog-wild in US.
- Life on Earth… but not as we know it: Some scientists believe we may be sharing the planet with ‘weird’ lifeforms that are so different from our own they’re invisible to us.
- Many Americans assume that the chemicals in their shampoos, detergents and other consumer products have been thoroughly tested and proved to be safe. This assumption is wrong.
- Accumulation of DDT in Himalayas exceeds that seen in Arctic.
- The secret to a better memory may be as simple as listening to your own brain rhythms while you are snoozing.
- China temperature spikes linked to burning of fossil fuels.
- Magic trick transforms conservatives into liberals.
- How should the US respond to a nuclear disaster? With new Newspeak, apparently.
- Silicon Valley goes Hollywood: Top coders can now get agents.
- Secrets of FBI smartphone surveillance tool revealed in court fight.
- Bitcoin crashes, losing nearly half of its value in six hours.
- Google chairman Eric Schmidt worries (with unintended irony) about privacy risk posed by civilian drones.
Thanks, RPJ!
Quote of the Day:
Galileo, emphatically did not believe in magic. Galileo has no time for supernatural explanations of any kind – indeed, when he goes wrong, as he did when he rejected the idea that the Moon causes the tides, it’s because he resists the right explanation because it just sounds too strange or magical.
Adam Gopnik (with unintended irony) in Science, magic, and madness.
