Skulls confirm we're all out of Africa

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An analysis of thousands of skulls shows modern humans originated from a single point in Africa and finally lays to rest the idea of multiple origins…

Adam and Eve must have been black then.

Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq

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I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004.

Translation: Bitch about the war, and we'll take all of your stuff.

AOPA offers Congress a plan to combat medical certificate fraud

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AOPA has proposed a four-point plan to help the FAA combat the small number of falsified pilot medical certificates. AOPA President Phil Boyer told Congress July 17, that while the problem was very small, AOPA was concerned and would work with the FAA to solve it.

9 incidents in the last 9 years. Are you kidding me? How many car accidents were caused by incapacitated drivers in the same time frame?

If you have a valid drivers license, you should be able to fly. It is that simple.

Quantum Random Bit Generator

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The work on QRBG Service has been motivated by scientific necessity (primarily of local scientific community) of running various simulations (in cluster/Grid environments), whose results are often greatly affected by quality (distribution, nondeterminism, entropy, etc.) of used random numbers. Since true random numbers are impossible to generate with a finite state machine (such as today's computers), scientists are forced to either use specialized expensive hardware number generators, or, more frequently, to content themselves with suboptimal solutions (like pseudo-random numbers generators). The Service has begun as a result of an attempt to fulfill the scientists' needs for quality random numbers, but has now grown to a global (public) high-quality random numbers service.

Neat. Could be useful someday.

Coca-Cola is the Best Brand; Microsoft beats Apple

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Best Brands" Harris Poll for the first time ever.

Pretty amazing that when asked "Which three brands do you consider the best?", anybody would answer Microsoft or even Kraft Foods.

Russian Court to VISA: 'Must Process Payments to Allofmp3'

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The Moscow Arbitrary Court has ruled that Visa's decision to terminate its contract with Alltunes, MP3sparks, and AllofMP3 was illegal under Russian law because they operate legally according to ROM, the Russian Organization for Multimedia & digital systems.

This is like a never ending story…