Humm… Shouldn’t the CIA’s motto read ‘And the truth will keep you free’?
- New evidence suggests human migration out of Africa may have been spurred by a prolonged continent-wide drought 70,000 years ago. Great satellite photo of Lake Bosumtwi.
- Five untouched Roman sarcophagi have been found in a burial vault outside Rome. With photo.
- Egyptologists believe Helwan necropolis could reveal much about the transformation of ancient societies from villages to kingdoms, but they’re worried that the necropolis may soon disappear.
- Hatshepsut: The Woman Who Would Be King.
- Endangered languages such as Chol, which is descended from and uses the narrative style of Classic Maya, are helping archaeologists decipher Maya hieroglyphs and other ancient inscriptions.
- Shades of Beckett: In his Nobel acceptance speech, Harold Pinter excoriates a ‘brutal, scornful and ruthless’ United States (full text). The great American hypnosis (extract).
- An interview with acclaimed social anthropologist and outspoken anarchist and anti-globalist, David Graeber,
who has been given the boot by Yale. - Earth’s north magnetic pole is drifting so fast Santa could end up living in Siberia within 50 years.
- What happens when science is made in China?
- Scientists figure out our place in the Milky Way.
- Nobel Laureate admits string theory is in trouble.
- Researchers find that lack of trust, anxiety in social situations, and depression are all related to low oxytocin levels in the brain (scroll down). Impaired production of the hormone has recently been linked to emotional deprivation in early childhood. An oxytocin pill may soon be developed, but in the mean time, meditation may also help.
- Electric Humans have weird experiences. In case you missed this in January, UK Scientists are serious about ‘electricity sickness’.
- The Matrix comes closer to reality as scientists hack away at the brain’s computer code.
- Yawn and monkeys empathically yawn with you.
- Disembodied rat brains may soon fly fighter jets. Yikes.
- A Star for all Ages: ancient monuments and myths record knowledge of a cosmos that is inexplicable by our current theories of time and space.
- A strange UFO encounter: Voice from above says ‘contact us on the hydrogen waves’.
- Court filing cites classified Pentagon memo on torture-motivated transfers.
- Israel approves mechanical euthanasia.
- Face It: Privacy Is Endangered.
- US Supreme Court rules that low-income disabled and elderly must surrender 15% of their Social Security benefits to pay off old government-backed student loans. Meanwhile…
- Feeling old? Supplemental leucine found to prevent – and fully restore – age-related muscle loss.
- Lion’s arthritic joints now good as gold. Is this treatment approved for humans?
- If you can hardly wait for the 2006 PBS movie on the French and Indian War, Fred Anderson’s Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 may be right up your alley. Amazon US & UK.
- Public database sheds light on spy satellites.
- In remembrance: Rolling Stone‘s biography of and 1970 interview with John Lennon, whose family name was originally O’Leannain, says Bob Spitz, author of The Beatles: The Biography. Amazon US & UK. Log-in for book review: dailygrail, Password: article.
Thanks to Rico and Greg.
Quote of the Day:
The majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.
Harold Pinter, Nobel laureate