scientists apparently finally figured out how the pyramids were built
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Cocaine … Cardinals?
Cocaine-Filled Condoms Intercepted On Way To Vatican
German customs officials intercepted a shipment of cocaine destined for the Vatican inJanuary, weekly Bild am Sonntag reported Sunday.Officers at Leipzig airport found 340 grams (12 ounces) of the drug packed into 14 condoms inside a shipment of cushions coming from South America, the paper, reported citing a German customs report. It said the package was simply addressed to the Vatican postal office, meaning any of the Catholic mini-state’s 800 residents could have picked it up…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-24/cocaine-filled-condoms-intercepted-way-vatican
800 residents of Vatican City … can’t be that hard to figure out whodunnit can it?
Mesh Networking – Potential to change internet connectivity in a big way?
A curious download hit Apple’s app store this week: a messaging app called FireChat.
It’s a new kind of app because it uses an iOS feature unavailable until version 7: the Multipeer Connectivity Framework. The app was developed by the crowdsourced connectivity provider Open Garden and this is their first iOS app.
The Multipeer Connectivity Framework enables users to flexibly use WiFi and Bluetooth peer-to-peer connections to chat and share photos even without an Internet connection. Big deal, right?
But here’s the really big deal — it can enable two users to chat not only without an Internet connection, but also when they are far beyond WiFi and Bluetooth range from each other — connected with a chain of peer-to-peer users between one user and a far-away Internet connection…
This is big news in light of recent events where governments found it fit to shut down services (and in some cases internet connectivity itself) to limit or altogether eliminate information exchange between common citizens. E.G. BART shutdown in SF, the recent Turkey twitter blockage, Egypt kill-switch, etc.
It seems to me that mesh networking , especially with the addition of self healing nodes, will be one of the main tools empowering people against tyrannical and oppressive forces, political or otherwise, who seek to take action and stem the free flow of communication for their own nefarious purposes.
Genetic Mugshot Recreates faces from nothing but DNA
A MURDER has been committed, and all the cops have to go on is a trace of DNA left at the scene. It doesn’t match any profile in databases of known criminals, and the trail goes cold. But what if the police could issue a wanted poster based on a realistic “photofit” likeness built from that DNA?
Not if, but when, claim researchers who have developed a method for determining how our genes influence facial shape. One day, the technique may even allow us to gaze into the faces of extinct human-like species that interbred with our own ancestors…
Below is an example of a New Scientist editor’s mug and the computer generated ‘best guess’ based on a DNA sample.
Wild stuff!
Let’s begin at the beginning
The Big Bang. Quite the catchy conundrum, eh? Every Tom, Dick and Harry knows about the Big Bang. It’s where it all started!
Or is it?
Against all intuition, scientific theory and observable phenomena in this universe, this theory posits in simplest terms: that something (everything) arose out of nothing (nothing).
Now let’s say you quizzed Joe Six Pack. Joe Six Pack hates quizzes, he wants to go back to drinking his King of Beers and watching Faux News.
But you promise it’ll be multiple choice!
Joe’s eyes begin to glaze over. His belly tenses, then relaxes, and an aroma of malty goodness permeates your surroundings.
Taking this as a sign of acquiescence, you pop your crafty question:
Who came up with the Big Bang Theory?
A) Edwin Hubble
B) Albert Einstein
C) Carl Sagan
D) A Jesuit Priest
E) Albert Hoffman
I would be surprised if 1/10 students at City Tech could answer this question correctly, even though they might be able to describe the theory itself with some range of understanding. Curiously, the fact that the BBT was introduced by a D) Jesuit priest seems to escape the common consciousness in a way that is markedly different from the actual theory on the origins of life.
We must always consider our sources when considering our information.
As the late Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, (17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Université catholique de Louvain.[1] After a classical education at a Jesuit secondary school (Collège du Sacré-Coeur, Charleroi)… He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble.[2][3] He was also the first to derive what is now known as Hubble’s law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble’s article.[4][5][6][7] Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his ‘hypothesis of the primeval atom‘.[8]
