If you earn the federal minimum wage, you'd need to work 24 hours a day just to earn enough money to pay taxes.
How dare they not work more than 24 hours a day every day!
via Marco
Was Jesus married? Scholars aren't sure but a piece of papyrus has reopened the debate:
The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, "she will be able to be my disciple."
Of course, people assume it was Mary Magdalene and this is not proof Jesus was married. All it does is put forth the idea that early Christianity might have considered a woman differently than the church does today. Some experts question the authenticity for reasons I'll let you read on your own. Nevertheless, I find the discovery fascinating.
via Kottke
Maggie Koerth-Baker actually called this thing “pretty” for some reason. It looks hideous to me. Probably for good reason, too, because this thing is poisonous. But it’s not born with venom:
You see all those pointy bits Glaucus atlanticus? According to the Natural History Museum, those are called cerata. They are the organs where G. atlanticus stores the stinging cells that it steals from the jellyfish it eats.
Because it eats jellyfish. And not just any jellyfish—but Portuguese Man o’ War jellyfish. G. atlanticus eats the jellyfish tentacles and, as part of the process of digestion, stores stinging cells from those tentacles in the tips of its cerata. Then G. atlanticus gets to be venomous, too.
Damn, Nature! You scary!
I just got around to reading about Cosmo, one of the hackers who took over Mat Honan's Gmail and iOS accounts – wiping his phone, tablet, and computer after doing so. It's a fantastic read. Good reporting and a nice human angle to the hacker – something Mat does consistently.
And that's the secret. When Cosmo calls a company pretending to be an employee, he doesn't wait for them to ask for details. He tells them all the person's data he has up front. If he knows three pieces of a puzzle and just needs the fourth, he gives them those first without waiting to be asked for them. That way he demonstrates a knowledge of the system, disarming the person on the other end of the line and making them less likely to question his authenticity.
In the end, it was a 15 year old social engineer turned hacker who out smarted the smartest and highlighted the web's biggest security flaws: us. Honan's ‘God Who Fell To Earth' highlights how complex security is. One company might guard against this type of an attack but not all of them. It's also a little scary how many attack vectors there are in a person's life. Just about everyone has an email address, cell phone, and a service that, when compromised, unlocks the door to a world of treasure and hurt.
Scientists believe that fighting as a result of periods of population booms helped humans evolve at such a rapid pace:
During the onset of an Ice Age or a drought, human populations would have contracted, driving the remaining small, isolated human groups to diversify – developing different biological traits from one another.
…
When conditions improved again, populations that had developed different characteristics would have come into contact again. This might have increased the likelihood of competition between distinct groups, but also allowed genetic novelties to spread that would not have arisen without the initial fragmentation.
via Adam Orbit