Weird Links

Savannah chimpanzees, which can make weapons to hunt other primates for meat, can also seek refuge in caves, much like our earliest human ancestors.

Interesting article summerising recent events that could be percieved as a build-up to the invasion of Iran (that isn't going to happen, y0 ).

The administration’s key charges against Iran are without basis. There is little evidence to support U.S. claims that predominantly Shiite Iran has been sparking the Sunni-led Iraq 'insurgency' and that Iran poses a reasonably imminent 'nuclear danger.'

Researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time.

...adaptations allowed us to relentlessly pursue game in the hottest part of the day when most animals rest ...humans likely practiced persistence hunting, chasing a game animal during the heat of the day, making it run faster than it could maintain, tracking and flushing it if it tried to rest, and repeating the process until the animal literally overheated and collapsed.

Russia is working on a space transport system that could eventually lead to the industrialization of the moon.

The Reuters news agency quoted a Russian space expert as saying: "...it is time to do this given the limits to natural reserves on Earth and the pace of civilization’s progress. Nor can we dismiss the idea of outsourcing harmful industries into space".

See also: New Russian Spaceship Will Be Able To Fly To The Moon.

A spy satellite image of Antarctica reveals an "anomaly" two miles beneath the ice that could be a man-made structure, according to Congressional investigators who are demanding release of the image from the Pentagon.

"If it's something the U.S. military has constructed down there, then they're violating the international Antarctic Treaty," said an aide to Nicole Fontaine, the European Parliament's French president who in the past has accused the U.S. of spying on European citizens. "If not, then it's something that's at least 12,000 years old, which is how long ice has covered Antarctica. That would make it the oldest man-made structure on the planet."

Except for the recently (1970's) discovered extremophiles that live way underground or underwater or in other extreme environments and for a few surface creatures that have adapted to cave-dwelling, most life on planet Earth lives now and has lived on the surface. Given the numerous catastrophes that have affected the surface and that will again affect life living on the surface, one has to wonder-is there a better place to set up human habitations?

[Scientists] are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

No gore but certainly disturbing: a cow chews up and swallows a chicken. Enjoy!

About 60 percent of Iran's oil income is currently in non-dollar currencies...demanding payment for Iranian oil in currencies other than the dollar is seen by many experts as a more direct attack on the dollar, especially if the Iranian decision backs a worldwide move away from using the dollar as the underpinning of world foreign exchange reserves.

The dollar has lost 9 percent of its value against the euro in the last year and is down 35 percent against the euro in the last five years.