Get ready for the sexapocalypse

Get ready for the sexapocalypse – some say it’s already here We are living through the golden years of apocalyptic storytelling, and nothing is immune from dystopia fever – even sex. In fact, the sexapocalypse has been with us since at least the days of Hieronymous Bosch, a 15th century Dutch painter famous for depicting the end of days in vast canvasses packed with tiny figures enjoying bizarre sexual scenarios. More recently, novels like The Handmaids Tale and comic Y the Last Man suggest that horrific gender scenarios will play a major role in our dark future.

But is the sexapocalypse really something to fear? Or could it actually usher in a new era without the old sexual hangups and oppression that many of us struggle with today? We asked a group of brave scientists and science fiction writers what they think the coming sexapocalypse will bring.

A sexapocalypse can be many things, from a scenario where one gender is wiped out or humans can no longer reproduce, to stories about dystopian sexual hedonism (think Logan’s Run or Brave New World). No matter what, the sexapocalypse is sure to usher in a strange new world where sex is changed forever.

Get ready for the sexapocalypse – some say it’s already here In the early 1980s, cyberpunk author Rudy Rucker published a bizarre novel about math and alien invasion called The Sex Sphere. In it, humanity is nearly destroyed when the planet is invaded by aliens who are made of nothing but sex organs, and seemingly exist entirely to latch onto humans and have constant sex with us. Eventually there’s a showdown with a giant vagina dentata, and everything returns to normal. So naturally, I turned to Rucker for a sense of what a sexapocalypse might look like. Inspired by Bosch’s work, which he said “didn’t look like much fun,” he wrote this hallucinatory description:

A simple idea is that any part of your body can sprout a penis or open up into a vagina. “We just shook hands.” Telepathy could be a kind of sexual thing, too—-after all, a big part of sex is getting into a deep feeling of synch with your partner. The synch aspect is one reason why music can seem so sexual. So on sexapocalypse day the Big Beat starts up and everyone’s rocking it. We melt into gouts of sperm and roly-poly eggs. We wriggle into the ground. Ma Earth swells up like a milkweed pod. She splits open and our star-children drift to the stars. Here we come!

So this sexapocalypse, which doesn’t sound too bad, offers us Earth and the stars instead of spirituality and Heaven.

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Inside the Brain: An Interactive Tour “What happens in the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease? This tour explains how the brain works and how Alzheimer’s affects it. Taking the tour: There are 16 interactive slides. Move forward or back one slide at a time by clicking on the arrows. You can also jump to any slide by clicking on its number at the top of each page. As you view each slide, roll your mouse over any colored text that appears on each page to highlight special features of each image.”

U.S. colleges with the most transfer students are University of Phoenix online campus (35,515); Excelsior College in Albany, NY (16,541); Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ (5,446); University of South Florida in Tampa, FL (4,623); and University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL (4,455). – Provided by RandomHistory.com

Generation of children are becoming zombies because of late-night gaming sessions, claims charity.

Iran unveils new laser-guided missiles and warns response to any hostile action will be ‘regretful but destructive’.

Volcanic origin for Little Ice Age.

Life of crime is in the genes, study claims – .

Ultrasound zap to stop sperm production .

Skin transformed into brain cells.

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10 Foreign Remakes of American TV Shows Very Different Than the Original

The U.S. is known (and probably not in a good way) for taking other countries’ popular shows and turning them into something much less palatable for American audiences. There have been several successes, including some that you probably don’t realize weren’t ours to begin with, but a large percentage of the foreign shows are ruined when we import them. Have you ever wondered which U.S. TV shows have been botched in a similar way — or at the very least, turned into a weird, localized version of the program we knew? Many of our shows are just dubbed for foreign viewers, but some lucky series got recreated or edited beyond recognition.

Happy Together

When you think of your favorite U.S. sitcoms in the last few decades, Married … With Children probably isn’t at the top of your list. But this show has been remade all around the world: Argentina to Armenia, Germany to the UK. The Russian version, called Happy Together, was an incredible success, probably even more liked than the original was in its home country.

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Martha’s Vineyard’s signature apparel retailer Vineyard Vines pokes fun at the Occupy Movement with a $35 White Cap ribbed-collar imported cotton tee that features a typical Vineyard “beach baron” protesting in favor of “more time on the water.”

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Magic Mushrooms Could be Key to Treating Depression

Studies of the effects of psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, show that rather than increase brain activity, as was previously believed, the drug actually suppresses activity in areas of the brain associated with depression. Some antidepressants also target activity in these brain regions, leading researchers to wonder whether psilocybin could someday be used therapeutically to treat depression. The studies also show that psilocybin may relieve cluster headache symptoms by reducing blood flow in the hypothalamus. More …

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The U.S. military already has a kennel-load of bomb-sniffing dogs. But getting those four-legged weapons-hunters ready for war requires a ton of time and patience from a human trainer. No more, the Army hopes. They want an automated system that can prep dogs and rodents to spot bombs. Good call, Pentagon! As they surely learned on the internets, dogs love computers.In the military’s latest round of small business research awards, the Army doled out three contracts to create computerized animal coaches. Their plan is to come up with “a rugged automated trainer system” that would prep “large quantities of animals” to seek out explosives and landmines.The initiative, Rugged Automated Training System, or, yes, RATS, is the latest in a series of Pentagon-backed ventures to turn furry mammals into mine hunters. Dogs remain the military’s best explosives detector – boasting an 80 percent success rate – much to the chagrin of top brass who’ve doled out more than $19 billion for high-tech bomb-detection research since 2004. Rodents, including giant African pouched rats, have sniffed out land mines across Africa and are undergoing military-funded study for their potential to track down mines in warzones.

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As the Sabbath evening approached on Jan. 13, Ehud Barak paced the wide living-room floor of his home high above a street in north Tel Aviv, its walls lined with thousands of books on subjects ranging from philosophy and poetry to military strategy. Barak, the Israeli defense minister, is the most decorated soldier in the country’s history and one of its most experienced and controversial politicians. He has served as chief of the general staff for the Israel Defense Forces, interior minister, foreign minister and prime minister. He now faces, along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 12 other members of Israel’s inner security cabinet, the most important decision of his life — whether to launch a pre-emptive attack against Iran. We met in the late afternoon, and our conversation — the first of several over the next week — lasted for two and a half hours, long past nightfall. “This is not about some abstract concept,” Barak said as he gazed out at the lights of Tel Aviv, “but a genuine concern. The Iranians are, after all, a nation whose leaders have set themselves a strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map.”

When I mentioned to Barak the opinion voiced by the former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and the former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi — that the Iranian threat was not as imminent as he and Netanyahu have suggested and that a military strike would be catastrophic (and that they, Barak and Netanyahu, were cynically looking to score populist points at the expense of national security), Barak reacted with uncharacteristic anger. He and Netanyahu, he said, are responsible “in a very direct and concrete way for the existence of the State of Israel — indeed, for the future of the Jewish people.” As for the top-ranking military personnel with whom I’ve spoken who argued that an attack on Iran was either unnecessary or would be ineffective at this stage, Barak said: “It’s good to have diversity in thinking and for people to voice their opinions. But at the end of the day, when the military command looks up, it sees us — the minister of defense and the prime minister. When we look up, we see nothing but the sky above us.”

Netanyahu and Barak have both repeatedly stressed that a decision has not yet been made and that a deadline for making one has not been set. As we spoke, however, Barak laid out three categories of questions, which he characterized as “Israel’s ability to act,” “international legitimacy” and “necessity,” all of which require affirmative responses before a decision is made to attack:

1. Does Israel have the ability to cause severe damage to Iran’s nuclear sites and bring about a major delay in the Iranian nuclear project? And can the military and the Israeli people withstand the inevitable counterattack?

2. Does Israel have overt or tacit support, particularly from America, for carrying out an attack?

3. Have all other possibilities for the containment of Iran’s nuclear threat been exhausted, bringing Israel to the point of last resort? If so, is this the last opportunity for an attack?

For the first time since the Iranian nuclear threat emerged in the mid-1990s, at least some of Israel’s most powerful leaders believe that the response to all of these questions is yes.

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One of the most enduring epithets for Hamas, right up there with “terrorist,” is “proxy.” If you Google “Hamas Iran proxy,” you get 1,750,000 hits. The idea that the relationship between Sunni Hamas, the Gaza affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Shia Iran was merely a marriage of convenience and not a true love match is rejected by those who forget that most enduring maxim of Middle East politics: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” And implicit in that maxim are two more words: “for now.”

This conventional wisdom is due for a makeover. On January 17, a Ha’aretz headline announced “Hamas brutally assaults Shi’a worshippers in Gaza.” The article reported that Hamas fears “growing Iranian influence in Gaza.” But for years, we have been told that it is Hamas itself that represents Iranian influence in Gaza. What gives?

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United States Launches Explorer I (This Day in 1958)

Explorer I was the first American satellite. It was launched four months after the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, was put into orbit by the Soviet Union, beginning the so-called space race. Although it carried a number of instruments, Explorer I was relatively small, weighing just 30 lbs (13 kg). It stopped transmission of data later in 1958, when its batteries died, but remained in orbit for more than 12 years. Where did it make its fiery reentry? More…

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In a recent essay in The Times, Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard University, wrote about preparing American students for the future. In the essay, he said that international experience was essential, arguing that English’s emergence as the global language makes the investment in other languages less essential.

Does he have a point? Even though Americans aren’t as monolingual as you might think, is learning a language other than English a worthwhile investment?

READ IN FULL.

I frequently get asked in America why India’s caste system, a pre-feudalistic division of labor that assigns one’s line of work at birth, has persisted into the 21st century. I typically answer: the need of the privileged upper castes for cheap labor. But there is an even more tragic explanation, as I discovered during a recent visit to New Delhi while talking to Maya, the dalit or untouchable — the lowest of the four castes — who has serviced my family for 35 years. Maya herself clings to her caste because it still offers her the best possible life in India.

What’s puzzling about the caste system is that it endures without legal force. Unlike slavery, where whites actively relied on authorities to maintain their slave holdings, the caste system is an informal, self-perpetuating institution.

How? Consider Maya’s story.

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FEMEN Protests at World Economic Forum

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ISAF, Afghan forces capture al Qaeda ‘facilitator’ in east

Afghan and Coalition special operations forces captured an al Qaeda facilitator during a raid in the eastern province of Paktia today.

The al Qaeda facilitator “coordinated insurgent activity throughout the area and provided reports to senior al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan,” the International Security Assistance Force stated in a press release. The name and country of origin of the al Qaeda facilitator was not disclosed by ISAF.

This the first ISAF press release noting the capture or death of an al Qaeda operative since Nov. 29, 2011, when another facilitator was detained during a raid in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

Similarly, there has been a gap in recent ISAF reporting on operations against the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has a strong presence in the Afghan east; no such operations were reported between Dec. 8, 2011, and Jan. 29. Just yesterday, however, ISAF reported on the killing of an IMU leader who directed suicide attacks in Takhar province.

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Google Collaborates with Foreign Governments and Courts to provide Private Information


There has been much speculation, conjecture, outrage, and confusion over an announcement by Google, the famed Internet search engine, over the consolidation of its various services. In a message to Internet users who use Google’s services, the U.S. based company told customers in an email, “We’re getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.” The change is set for March 1.

Besides the change in its privacy policy, Google continues to garner attention for what critics fear is a form of collaboration with governments that has implications not only for customers’ privacy but human rights as well. Member of Congress have requested that Google answer a series of questions about the new policy before March 1. Members of the Energy and Commerce committee, including ranking minority member Henry Waxman (D) and subcommittee chairman Cliff Stearns (R), signed the letter that demands that Google describe “describe all information that Google collects from its consumers now.”

The letter also asked, “How will this information change after the new privacy policy has been implemented?” in addition to requesting clarification about how the company will use the new information it collects. The letter also asked “Please explain if consumers will have the option to op-out of any data collection, usage practices, and infromation sharing between Google’s many services, including Gmail, Google Search, and YouTube. If so, how can a consumer make this request successfully? If not, why not?” A blog entry for Google provided an intial response to public concerns:

You still have choice and control. You don’t need to log in to use many of our services, including Search, Maps and YouTube. If you are logged in, you can still edit or turn off your Search history, switch Gmail chat to “off the record,” control the way Google tailors ads to your interests, use Incognito mode on Chrome, or use any of the other privacy tools we offer.
We’re not collecting more data about you. Our new policy simply makes it clear that we use data to refine and improve your experience on Google — whichever products or services you use. This is something we have already been doing for a long time.

Apparently seeking to allay customer concerns over privacy, Google declared on a webpage dedicated to privacy concerns, “Our goal is to provide you with as much transparency and choice as possible, through products like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager, alongside other tools. Our privacy principles remain unchanged.” Google promises that it will not sell customers’ information to third parties; “And we’ll never sell your personal information or share it without your permission (other than rare circumstances like valid legal requests).”

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ScienceDaily: Latest Science Articles “Breaking science news and articles on global warming, extrasolar planets, stem cells, bird flu, autism, nanotechnology, dinosaurs, evolution — the latest discoveries in astronomy, anthropology, biology, chemistry, climate, environment, computers, engineering, health, medicine, math, physics, psychology, technology, and more – from the world’s leading universities and research organizations.”

With no large moon like Earth’s to stabilize it, Mars periodically tilts much more toward the sun, creating warmer summers on Mars than it otherwise would have. – Provided by RandomHistory.com

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The 2012 Winter X Games came to a close tonight with two back-to-back moments of historical significance.

27-year-old Heath Frisby earned himself a gold medal in the Snowmobile Best Trick Final by performing the first ever in-competition Snowmobile Front Flip.

His accomplishment was slightly overshadowed a short while later when pro-snowboarder Shaun White picked up his latest gold medal along with the first-ever perfect score in SuperPipe.

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Death of a Washing Machine

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“Extinct” Galápagos Tortoise Still Exists

The giant Galápagos tortoise Chelonoidis elephantopus, long thought to be extinct, likely still exists and was producing offspring as recently as 15 years ago. These tortoises can go for months without food and can grow to be a half a ton, and for hundreds of years, they were heavily hunted by whalers who considered them an ideal source of fresh meat on long voyages. For 150 years, experts believed that C. elephantopus was extinct. Now, however, researchers have found 84 tortoises, 30 of which are under 15 years old, that appear to have a pure-bred C. elephantopus as a parent. More

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Genetic or Not, Gay Won’t Go Away

That has long been one of the rallying cries of a movement, and sometimes the gist of its argument. Across decades of widespread ostracism, followed by years of patchwork acceptance and, most recently, moments of heady triumph, gay people invoked that phrase to explain why homophobia was unwarranted and discrimination senseless.

Lady Gaga even spun an anthem from it.

But is it the right mantra to cling to? The best tack to take?

Not for the actress Cynthia Nixon, 45, whose comments in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday raised those very questions.

For 15 years, until 2003, she was in a relationship with a man. They had two children together. She then formed a new family with a woman, to whom she’s engaged. And she told The Times’s Alex Witchel that homosexuality for her “is a choice.”

“For many people it’s not,” she conceded, but added that they “don’t get to define my gayness for me.”

They do get to fume, though. Last week some did. They complained that she represented a minority of those in same-sex relationships and that she had furthermore handed a cudgel to our opponents, who might now cite her professed malleability as they make their case that incentives to change, not equal rights, are what we need.

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Medical Marijuana: the Best and Safest Pain Killer
Compared to Oxycontin, et cetera
Dr. Phil Leveque Salem-News.com

I had 5,000 or so patients with 70% complaining of severe pain, who found relief with Mairjuana.

Marijuana treats pain and has never caused a death…

(PORTLAND, Ore.) – I presume that a few people will disagree with my thesis. I will admit to a few exceptions and I will address them later.

For my own review, I pulled up the standard doses of the opiates, (from opium) and the opioids, not from opium but totally synthetic. I’m going to dismiss Codeine, an opiate which is lightly used any more in doses from 15 to 120mg but which is severely constipating and has many other intolerable side effects.

I will base my discussion on Morphine which is the standard pain killer with a usual dose of 10mg sometimes lower. The big “daddies” are Hydrocodone dose of about 20mg but soon to be long acting at about 40mg per dose; Oxycodone dose is about 15mg but has a long acting dose from around 40mg; Heroin dose is around 4.0mg but Heroin addicts frequently take 10 times more; Hydromorphone is not common with a dose of about 2.0mg.

All of these cause severe constipation and addiction and many other adverse side effects but some are much worse than others.

The Opioids, those not from Opium but totally synthetic are Meperidine or Demerol with a dose of about 50mg which is presumed to be about equal to Morphine in the dose of 10mg; Methadone has a dose of about 3.0mg; Fentanyl in a dose of about 0.2mg compared to Morphine.

It is important to note that with long term use all of the above drugs cause tolerance or the requirement for increasing doses for the same relief. I have left out some of both classes, Opiate and Opioid because they seem to be rarely used.

We will soon be having more long acting, more addicting, more lethal drugs like Oxycontin. Drug overdoses and deaths mostly from this later type of drug approached 37,000 deaths in 2009.

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Jan 27, 2012 – If Peyton Manning isn’t the greatest quarterback of all time, he’s one of only three or four guys in the conversation, and that speaks volumes. We know this. He’s an 11-time Pro Bowler with an NFL-record four MVPs — there’s no drama about how he’ll be remembered. If anything we’ve taken it all for granted.

Which brings us to this week, where Indianapolis is getting ready to host Tom Brady and Peyton’s little brother on the biggest stage in sports, while Peyton Manning’s career quietly fades away in the background. On Tuesday, an article ran in the Indianapolis Star in which Peyton talked about watching some his close professional friends get fired.

“I guess it’s the reality of the football world,” he told Bob Kravitz. “Just not something I’ve had to deal with very often. This is so … sudden. Their keys didn’t work the next day. There’s no other way to do it? I don’t know. That’s hard to see, all these people leaving. And I may be behind them. Who knows?” This a new Peyton Manning: Frustrated, uncertain, vulnerable.

It’s no small twist.

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BOB WILLS: DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS

The 11 Special Forces soldiers were speeding along in three Humvees. The call for help had come from an Iraqi army scout.

The Iraqis had moved a little after dawn to arrest what they thought were about 30 potential troublemakers.

The SF team members had no clue they were racing into a 24-hour battle, vastly outnumbered and outgunned by a heavily armed militia of about 800 cult-like Shiite warriors.

See More Video From Military Times

The “Soldiers of Heaven” were dug in to fight to the death in their quest to take over the city of Najaf and its holy shrine.

The fighting that erupted Jan. 28, 2007, turned out to be some of the fiercest of the Iraq war. U.S. and Iraqi soldiers killed 373 enemy fighters, and more than 400 surrendered. The U.S. Army awarded more than 100 combat decorations for bravery that day, including at least eight Silver Stars and a Distinguished Flying Cross.

The battle has since been reconstructed in some media accounts ,but the fight against the Soldiers of Heaven remains little known outside the circles of those who were there.

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Simple Ideas That Are Borderline Genius

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How do you design a utopia? In 1972, John B. Calhoun detailed the specifications of his Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice: a practical utopia built in the laboratory. Every aspect of Universe 25—as this particular model was called—was pitched to cater for the well-being of its rodent residents and increase their lifespan. The Universe took the form of a tank, 101 inches square, enclosed by walls 54 inches high. The first 37 inches of wall was structured so the mice could climb up, but they were prevented from escaping by 17 inches of bare wall above. Each wall had sixteen vertical mesh tunnels—call them stairwells—soldered to it. Four horizontal corridors opened off each stairwell, each leading to four nesting boxes. That means 256 boxes in total, each capable of housing fifteen mice. There was abundant clean food, water, and nesting material. The Universe was cleaned every four to eight weeks. There were no predators, the temperature was kept at a steady 68°F, and the mice were a disease-free elite selected from the National Institutes of Health’s breeding colony. Heaven.

Four breeding pairs of mice were moved in on day one. After 104 days of upheaval as they familiarized themselves with their new world, they started to reproduce. In their fully catered paradise, the population increased exponentially, doubling every fifty-five days. Those were the good times, as the mice feasted on the fruited plain. To its members, the mouse civilization of Universe 25 must have seemed prosperous indeed. But its downfall was already certain—not just stagnation, but total and inevitable destruction.

Calhoun’s concern was the problem of abundance: overpopulation.

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A tiny number of ideas can go a long way, as we’ve seen. And the Internet makes that more and more likely. What’s happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we’re being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet. We’re being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by. And so, in the cold calculus of evolution by natural selection, at no greater time in history than ever before, copiers are probably doing better than innovators. Because innovation is extraordinarily hard. My worry is that we could be moving in that direction, towards becoming more and more sort of docile copiers.

MARK D. PAGEL is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Evolutionary Biology; Head of the Evolution Laboratory at the University of Reading; Author Oxford Encyclopaedia of Evolution; co-author of The Comparative Method in Evolutionary Biology. His forthcoming book is Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind.

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50 Most Influential Books of the Last 50 (or so) Years

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Is there anything better than cold beer? Homer Simpson didn’t think so, and on this point a lot of Americans would agree with him. So no surprise that some fine pieces have been written about the beverage.

Abigail Tucker profiled a beer archaeologist. “Dr. Pat is the world’s foremost expert on ancient fermented beverages, and he cracks long-forgotten recipes with chemistry, scouring ancient kegs and bottles for residue samples to scrutinize in the lab. He has identified the world’s oldest known barley beer (from Iran’s Zagros Mountains, dating to 3400 B.C.), the oldest grape wine (also from the Zagros, circa 5400 B.C.) and the earliest known booze of any kind, a Neolithic grog from China’s Yellow River Valley brewed some 9,000 years ago,” she wrote. “Widely published in academic journals and books, McGovern’s research has shed light on agriculture, medicine and trade routes during the pre-biblical era. But it’s also inspired a couple of Dogfish Head’s offerings, including Midas Touch, a beer based on decrepit refreshments recovered from King Midas’ 700 B.C. tomb, which has received more medals than any other Dogfish creation.”

The Fix interviewed the creators of America’s most hated beverage. “Before it was banned nationwide, Four Loko, the popular energy beer denounced by the White House as ‘liquid cocaine,’ was blamed for a surge in underage binge drinking, scores of date rapes, and a vicious gay bashing,” the magazine wrote. “Stunned by the criticism, the company’s young founders dodged the press for almost a year. But last month The Fix convinced them to tell their story for the first time. And they’re not apologizing for anything.”

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A fast and cheap optical version of Wi-Fi is coming

AMONG the many new gadgets unveiled at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a pair of smartphones able to exchange data using light. These phones, as yet only prototypes from Casio, a Japanese firm, transmit digital signals by varying the intensity of the light given off from their screens. The flickering is so slight that it is imperceptible to the human eye, but the camera on another phone can detect it at a distance of up to ten metres. In an age of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, flashing lights might seem like going back to sending messages with an Aldis lamp. In fact, they are the beginning of a fast and cheap wireless-communication system that some have labelled Li-Fi.

The data being exchanged by Casio’s phones were trifles: message balloons to be added to pictures on social-networking sites. But the firm sees bigger applications, such as pointing a smartphone at an illuminated shop sign to read information being transmitted by the light: opening times, for example, or the latest bargains.

Yet that is still only a flicker of what is possible. Last October a number of companies and industry groups formed the Li-Fi Consortium, to promote high-speed optical wireless systems. The idea is that light can help with a looming capacity problem. As radio-based wireless becomes ubiquitous, more and more devices transmitting more and more data are able to connect to the internet, either through the mobile-phone network or through Wi-Fi. But there is only a limited amount of radio spectrum available. Using light offers the possibility of breaking out of this conundrum by exploiting a completely different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, one that is already ubiquitous because it is used for another purpose: illumination.

Lighten the darkness

To turn a light into a Li-Fi router involves modulating its output, to carry a message, and linking it with a network cable to a modem that is connected to a telephone or cable-broadband service, just like a Wi-Fi router. Incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent tubes are not really suitable for modulation, but they are yesterday’s lighting technology. Tomorrow’s is the light-emitting diode. LEDs are rapidly replacing bulbs and tubes because they are more efficient. And because they are semiconductor devices, tinkering with their electronics to produce the flickering signals required for data transmission is pretty straightforward, according to Gordon Povey, who is working on light communication with Harald Haas and his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, in Britain.

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How much BACON do you see in this picture?

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Real-life optical illusion: Tollbooth appears to be warping the road…

From HERE.

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GetHuman “Phone numbers, customer service contact information, reviews, tips, and other tools, time-savers and details for thousands of companies worldwide. Get faster and better technical support or general customer service by checking the contact information, ratings, phone number listings and chat options from GetHuman.com.”

The cells of every living organism contain deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a nucleic acid that holds the genetic instructions for the development and functioning of a life form. It is this substance that allows a living thing to grow and reproduce. – Provided by RandomHistory.com

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Underground Leaves Used to Trap Prey

Scientists have long wondered why flowering plants of the genus Philcoxia grow leaves underground, and now they finally have an answer. It turns out that the leaves act as traps for tiny roundworms, which the plants then digest. This adaptation is vital to the survival of these plants, as they are native to the nutrient-poor savannas of central Brazil. Only a few hundred plant species are known to be carnivorous, but this finding suggests that there may be many more that have developed less obvious trapping mechanisms. More …

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Just so we could have pineapple! hahahahhahaha……

Liliuokalani Becomes Hawaii’s Last Monarch (This Day in 1891)

Liliuokalani ascended the throne in 1891 upon the death of her brother, King Kalakaua. Her refusal to recognize the constitutional changes inaugurated in 1887 precipitated a revolt, fostered largely by sugar planters—mostly American residents of Hawaii—that led to her dethronement early in 1893 and the establishment of a provisional government. Failing in an attempt to regain the throne in 1895, she formally renounced her royal claims. What well-known song was composed by Liliuokalani? More…

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Announcing Baconfest Chicago’s 2012 Exhibiting Restaurants  Nothing but bacon???? Let me in for sure….

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A stone age temple 800 years older than Stonehenge:

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