SpaceNeedle
iPhones Cost Less Than $30 To Make?
Eric Mack writes on cNet News:
Recent Foxconn revelations hint at higher costs than previous estimates that are still staggeringly low by Western standards. An unprecedented peek behind the curtain of Foxconn’s factories in China may have revealed new hints to how much it actually costs to make each iPhone.
ABC’s “Nightline” was recently given access to the factory floor, and the resulting reporting has provided some new insights into exactly how iPhones are built, a part of the gadget’s gestation process that’s typically been a very closely guarded trade secret.
Horace Dediu, blogger, analyst, and former business development manager for Nokia, tried to parse some of the clues and came to some interesting conclusions …
Icelanders Avoid Inbreeding Through Online Incest Database
So says Samantha Grossman in TIME:
Nowadays, some light Internet stalking is as common a pre-date ritual as showering or putting on a clean shirt. But for Icelanders, that online screening process can include running a date’s name through an incest database.
Sound ridiculous? Consider this: when you live in an isolated nation with a population roughly the size of Pittsburgh, accidentally lusting after a cousin is an all-too-real possibility. But a search engine called Íslendingabók (the Book of Icelanders) allows users to plug in their own name alongside that of a prospective mate, determining any familial overlap. The site claims to track 1,200 years of genealogical information about the island’s inhabitants. Anyone with an Icelandic ID number — that is, citizens and legal residents — is accounted for, the New York Daily News reports.
Not only can the site rule out courtships that might be a bit too close for comfort, but also it…
Mysterious White-Nose Syndrome Is Killing Bats Across The U.S.
Holy Fungus, Batman! Reports David Wrights and Jonann Brady of ABC NEWS:
A mysterious fungus is killing off thousands of bats around the country. Scientists are calling it white-nose syndrome, because of the distinctive white smudges on the noses and wings of infected bats.
White-nose itself doesn’t kill bats, but it disturbs their sleep so that they end their hibernation early. During the winter there are no insects to eat, so the bats literally starve to death.
Bats may be one of Mother Nature’s least cuddly creatures, but they are ecologically important, keeping mosquitos and insects that attack crops in check.
Researchers say the syndrome has killed upward of half a million bats from New England to Virginia.
Stupid People Freaking Out About the Great (Intended) Wikipedia Blackout of 2012
To be expected, and I think Gawker has found some of the best ones:
Youth is no excuse … I call the members of this generation (and their educators) who are so confused, the WikiStupid.
Oldest Known “Beds” Had Insect Repellent
Insects have bugged human beings for a long time. Via Discover:
In a South African cave, researchers have uncovered traces of the oldest known human bedding, 77,000-year-old mats made of grasses, leaves, and other plant material. While it’s not especially surprising that early humans would have found a way to improve the cold, generally unpleasant experience of sleeping on a cave floor, archaeologists know little about our ancestors’ sleeping habits and habitats.
Using scanning electron microscopy, the researchers identified several species of local rushes and grasses that made up the bulk of the mattress, as well as leaves of the Cryptocarya woodii tree. These leaves contain chemical compounds that repel mosquitoes, lice, and other insects, suggesting that the cave’s ancient residents protected their bedding with natural insecticide.
UFO Bubble Over Cinisello Balsamo, Italy (Video)
A television report about a translucent UFO in the sky above Cinisello Balsamo, Italy. This was recorded on November 13, 2011 by Antonio Urzi:
Used Cooking Oil: A Hot Property Black Market Item
Natt Garun writes in Gizmodo:
People resort to the black market for all sorts of stolen goods: cellphones, watches, cars, babies. But used cooking oil? According to the Washington Post, that’s a thing too.
Thieves are now moving into the green market by stealing used cooking oil from the back of restaurants. They sell the sludge to recyclers, who then process it into biodiesel. The oil can go for as much as $4 per gallon on the down low.
Since this is a pretty new criminal enterprise, police aren’t entirely sure what to do with the perps — or how to stop the theft from happening. In some states it’s a misdemeanor. Meanwhile in Virginia, two men caught greaselifting were charged with grand larceny. Serves you right for those sticky, err, slippery fingers.
Russian Woman Stores Alien Corpse in Fridge for Two Years?
Molly Fergus reports via Yahoo News:
Has a genuine alien corpse been discovered? One woman in Russia certainly thinks so. Marta Yegorovnam claims she salvaged an extraterrestrial body from the site of a UFO crash in 2009 and stored it in her fridge for two years before authorities took it away from her for examination, according to the Daily Mail.
The being is about 2 feet tall and looks suspiciously like stereotypical extraterrestrial beings: It’s skinny, sort of slimy looking, with a large, bobbly head, bulging eyes, and twiggy arms. The two men who confiscated the supposed body said they were from the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Of course, the odds are high that this could all be a hoax.
In April, an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old student set off an Internet frenzy by planting what looked like an otherworldly being’s remains in the snow in Irkutsk, Siberia, according…
Jack the Ripper’s Blade Found?
Via the Telegraph:
It was found among possessions belonging to Welsh surgeon Sir John Williams, a chief suspect in the Victorian murders. Sir John, known to his family at the time of the killings as “Uncle Jack” was the surgeon to Queen Victoria who lived in London at the time of the slayings.
He fled the capital after the murders and later founded the National Library for Wales in Aberystwyth. One of his distant relatives has now unearthed the old black-handled surgeon’s knife, which he used for operations, and believes it could be the murder weapon.
Tony Williams, 49, Sir John’s great-great-great-great nephew, has now published a book, which features the startling image of the knife, to expose his relative’s guilt.
No Alien Visits or UFO Coverups, According to The White House
Nice catch from Nancy Atkinson on Universe Today:
The White House has responded to two petitions asking the US government to formally acknowledge that aliens have visited Earth and to disclose to any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race,” said Phil Larson from the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, on the WhiteHouse.gov website. “In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.”
5,387 people had signed the petition for immediately disclosing the government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings, and 12,078 signed the request for a formal acknowledgement from the White House that extraterrestrials have been engaging the human race.
“Hundreds of military and government agency witnesses have come forward…
Parents Using Facebook to Trade Viruses In the Mail to Infect Their Children
Right, because you’re “afraid” of vaccines, let’s deliberately put pathogens in the mail. Reports KPHO CBS 5 News:
PHOENIX — Doctors and medical experts are concerned about a new trend taking place on Facebook.
Parents are trading live viruses through the mail in order to infect their children. The Facebook group is called “Find a Pox Party in Your Area.” According to the group’s page, it is geared toward “parents who want their children to obtain natural immunity for the chicken pox.”
On the page, parents post where they live and ask if anyone with a child who has the chicken pox would be willing to send saliva, infected lollipops or clothing through the mail. Parents also use the page to set up play dates with children who currently have chicken pox. Medical experts say the most troubling part of this is parents are taking pathogens from complete strangers and deliberately infecting their children.
How Did We Get to 7 Billion from 1 Billion People in Just 200 Years? (Video)
Via NPR:
It was just over two centuries ago that the global population was 1 billion — in 1804. But better medicine and improved agriculture resulted in higher life expectancy for children, dramatically increasing the world population, especially in the West. U.N. forecasts suggest the world population could hit a peak of 10.1 billion by 2100 before beginning to decline. But exact numbers are hard to come by — just small variations in fertility rates could mean a population of 15 billion by the end of the century.
Russian Historian Lived with 26 Female Corpses Dressed Up As Dolls
Via MSNBC:
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia — Police have discovered the remains of more than two dozen women who were dug up from their graves by a man some described as a “genius.” The bodies were found this week in the home of 45-year-old Anatoly Moskvina, who lives alone in the city of Nizhny Novgorod in western Russia. The discovery was made when Moskvina’s parents visited him after returning from a vacation.
Russian media reported that Moskvina kept at least 26 bodies in his small, three-room apartment. They all belong to females aged between 15 and 26 who died years ago. The bodies were “dried up,” Interfax reported.
Life News reported [translated link] that Moskvina, who is a historian and was also involved in journalism, visited hundreds of cemeteries at night and dug up the bodies with a shovel. He then put the remains in plastic bags and dragged them to his home. Once the bodies…
The (Unexplained) Death of Bats
Via New Times:
The abandoned iron mine at Mine Hill in Roxbury used to provide a winter home for 3,000 bats — the largest bat hibernaculum in the state. The last time Jennie Dickson, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, counted, there were about 100 bats there.
“That’s not good,” she said. For the past five years, the bats of the eastern United States have been dying in like numbers — one of the worst environmental catastrophes in recent years.
What biologists like Dickson knew was that the dying bats could be found with an off-white fungus on their nose and wings. What was causing the die-off was uncertain …
How Economic Inequality Harms Societies (Video)
Via TED Talks:
We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.
Mosquitoes That Are Genetically-Engineered to Self Destruct (To Prevent Disease) Are in the Air
Bijal P. Trivedi writes in Scientific American:
A new breed of genetically modified mosquitoes carries a gene that cripples its own offspring. They could crush native mosquito populations and block the spread of disease. And they are already in the air — though that’s been a secret.
Outside Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico — 10 miles from Guatemala. To reach the cages, we follow the main highway out of town, driving past soy, cocoa, banana and lustrous dark-green mango plantations thriving in the rich volcanic soil. Past the tiny village of Rio Florido the road degenerates into an undulating dirt tract. We bump along on waves of baked mud until we reach a security checkpoint, guard at the ready. A sign posted on the barbed wire–enclosed compound pictures a mosquito flanked by a man and woman: Estos mosquitos genéticamente modificados requieren un manejo especial, it reads. We play by the rules.
Inside, cashew trees frame…
