A Stony Brook University study forged since 2005 has revealed evidence that early hominids lived in tiny, separate bands for 100,000 years, and came incredibly close to extinction some 70,000 years ago. Extremes in climate helped contribute to an estimated dwindling down to about 2,000 humans worldwide.

The genetic study examined for the first time the evolution of our species from its origins with “mitochondrial Eve,” a female hominid who lived some 200,000 years ago, to the point of near extinction 70,000 years ago, when the human population dwindled to as little as 2,000.

After this dismal period, the human race expanded quickly all over the African continent and emigrated beyond its shores until it populated all the corners of the Earth.

The expansion marked the end of the Stone Age in Africa and the beginning of a cultural advancement that has led several archeologists to consider it the start of modern man, with the advent of language and complex and abstract thought.

The migrations out of Africa are estimated to have begun some 60,000 years ago. But little was known about the human trajectory between Eve and that period.

It’s nice to know that written in our DNA is the fortitude to survive, even if it means suffocating all of our natural resources and bloating the world’s population to around 6 billion people. Go hominids!

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“No this is not a drill” warns Wall Street Journal columnist Brett Arends as he lays out his reasons why he believes Americans need to start stockpiling food. Thankfully, hunkering down in the face on an impending apocalypse is not the reason, rather, Arends says stockpiling food will make a shrewd investment:

If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you’ll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year. And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They’re all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

Sounds pretty fucking stupid to me, but of course I’m one of those people who keeps food to actually EAT, not as an investment.

Having previously read a bit about The Great Year, a documentary narrated by James Earl Jones (so you KNOW that shit is gonna be serious) I was stoked to see it on Dailygrail the other day up for streaming on the always radtacular Google Video. Anyone interested in 2012, ancient civilizations, and Zeitgeist-type intrigue should take an hour and check this shit out. Here’s the pitch from the DVD one sheet:

The Great Year, is the term that some ancient civilizations use to describe the slow precession of the equinox through the twelve houses of the ancient zodiac, a period that takes about 24,000 years. Different cultures refer to this cycle by different names including: the Platonic year, Perfect year, Yuga cycle, Ages of Man or just the equinoctial cycle, but one thing is clear, it was known to virtually every ancient culture throughout the globe. In their epic work Hamlet’s Mill Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend document the great year tale and point out it was the number one topic woven into myths and folklore around the ancient world. Why were our ancestors so fascinated by this subject that they memorized stories that were passed down for thousands of years and built megalithic structures on every continent to monitor this movement? We think it is because the tales are true! That is, as the Sun curves through space carrying the Earth with it, our bodies and our planet move to a region where they are affected by different cosmic forces that indirectly result in the rise and fall of civilization. As mans consciousness expands and contracts, and the cycle plays out, just like a solar year with its seasons, it results in great ages of enlightenment and dark ages of misery. Indeed, the archaeological record shows a broad decline of ancient civilizations beginning about 5000 years ago, a long world wide dark age and then finally a rise in consciousness with the renaissance continuing to the present day. Were the tales and myths and stone henges really just for amusement and farming? Or is Hamlet’s Mill correct: folklore is the scientific language of ancient times, and they were trying tell us of the dark days to come, and trying desparetly to preserve knowledge in the pyramids and megaliths and temples so carefully aligned to the heavens incorporating sophisticated mathematical principles.This is the story of the Great Year and new scientific evidence to support it. Recent solar system studies seem to indicate that precession is indeed caused by a curving motion of our sun through space. While not yet widely accepted, if true it a startling finding confirming the wisdom of the ancients. 

A 14-year-old Japanese girl committed suicide by mixing laundry detergent and cleansers, then unwittingly poisoned 90 of her fellow neighbors with the pungent waft as a result.

The girl’s suicide Wednesday night was part of an expanding string of similar deaths that experts say have been encouraged by Internet suicide sites.

A 31-year-old man outside Tokyo killed himself inside a car early Thursday by mixing detergent and bath salts, police said. A local police spokesman refused to give further details, but Kyodo News agency reported the man put a sign reading “Stay Away” on the car window.

Reports of another similar case emerged Thusday afternoon when a 42-year-old woman in Nagoya, central Japan, was found dead in a bathtub. According to Kyodo, there was toilet cleaner and bath powder nearby, along with a sign outside that read, “Poisonous gas being emitted. Caution.”

Internet suicide sites?! What the hell is wrong with us? Not to mention, what the hell is wrong with Japan?

Japan’s government has long battled to contain the country’s alarmingly high suicide rate. A total of 32,155 people killed themselves in 2006, giving the country the ninth highest rate in the world, according to the government.

Suicides first passed the 30,000 mark in 1998, near the height of an economic slump that left many bankrupt, jobless and desperate.

The government has earmarked $220 million for anti-suicide programs to help those with depression and other mental conditions.

Last year it set a goal of cutting the suicide rate by 20 percent in 10 years through steps such as reducing unemployment, boosting workplace counseling and filtering Web sites that promote suicide.

It’s a good thing we’re too distracted by Lost and Britney Spears to be anywhere near the top 10 most suicidal countries. America Wins again!

Mom, Dad, don’t read this one. Do you ever have those times in your life where it seems like you keep seeing the same random things? Like that week where every time I had to stand in line for something, there would be a group of retarded people in front of me, taking FOREVER to place their orders and pay for their shit. EVEN when I had gone out of town. That was annoying and I’m glad it’s over. But this week it seems like everything comes back to The Dick…

It started with HBO’s Real Sex episode my roommate and I watched. The focus was strap-ons. Captivated, we both agreed that we couldn’t die without partaking in strap-on fun. Add it to my list of things to do.

Then I kept having these strange dreams about inverted penises… Then everything began to look phallic to me. My boss’ speakers pique my curiosity… just yesterday, someone randomly brought up the pervertedness of The Little Mermaid… I hesitantly ate sausages last night… And this morning I read this:

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

“You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We’ve had a number of attempted lynchings. … You see them covered in marks after being beaten,” Kinshasa’s police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

“I’m tempted to say it’s one huge joke,” Oleko said.

“But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent. To that I tell them, ‘How do you know if you haven’t gone home and tried it’,” he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

“It’s real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny,” said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

That sucks!!!!! Stay the eff away from my man!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

I will never be able to masturbate again. THANKS INTERNET!