Evolution, You’re Drunk

Amoebas are puny, stupid blobs, so scientists were surprised to learn that they contain 200 times more DNA than Einstein did. Made of just one cell, researchers assumed amoebas would be simpler than humans genetically. Plus, amoebas date back farther in time than humans, and simplicity is considered an attribute of primitive beings....

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A Former NFL Cheerleader Tells All

SAs a glimpse into the dark side of NFL cheerleading, the recent Raiderettes lawsuit was revelatory, but it didn't quite capture the soup-to-nuts seediness of the enterprise. Thanks to a tipsterâ€"a former cheerleaderâ€"we've gotten our hands on a copy of the many rules and many regulations the 2009 Baltimore Ravens cheer squad was expected...

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The iPod Is Over

Over the holidays, Apple's iPad and iPhone sold better than they've ever sold before: 51 million iPhones and 26 million iPads in a single quarter. The lowly iPod, however, didn't do nearly as well. The company moved just 6 million of the trademark MP3 players, a 52 percent decline compared to the same period last year. All told, iPod accounted for just $973 million of the company's record $57.6 billion revenue last quarter....

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The Legend Of Guccifer

Each day, so much online data is stolen, accidentally released, or otherwise abused that the Internet would appear to be mainly a tool for sending information to places it’s not supposed to go. But there is something particularly impressive about the illicit seven-gigabyte archive that, as of this writing, sits in eleven publicly accessible Google Drive folders. It’s a riveting tour of delicious, illicit tidbits...

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Burundi’s Black Market Skull Trade

Has the tiny nation of Burundi become ground zero for a new global black-market trade in human remains?BUJUMBURA, Burundi â€" In evenings when the hippo emerges from the depths of Lake Tanganyika to graze its grassy shores, members of Bujumbura’s expat community gather at the various waterholes that ring the lake. At the Italian-owned Kiboko bar in “Buja,” everyoneâ€"from the local media and Dutch soldiers to Catholic nunsâ€"stops...

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The Hardest Computer Game Of All Time

Odysseus had it easy next to this.The Learning Company My first computer was an Apple IIe with 128KB of RAM, no hard drive, and a 5¼ inch floppy drive. One of the top educational games...

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Richard Sherman: The New, True All-American

Why has Sherman's infamous post-game interview stirred up so much discomfort? Easy: The nation sees itself in him. Elaine Thompson / APAs a citizen of Seattle, I’ve been aware of Richard Sherman for some time. I knew he was one of the best corners in football and had...

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Did This Guy Figure Out How Life Came From Matter?

Why does life exist? Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, luck may have little to do with it. Instead, according to the physicist proposing the idea, the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of...

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