I don’t know why, but everyone’s been tuning into this blog about the dissection of a giant squid. Takes me right back to Marine Biology, 10th grade. My lab partner was a lesbian and way too interested in the dissection of squid.

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!

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. 

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!

The hospital in Baralaba, a tiny town in Queensland, 200 miles northwest of Brisbane, has been plagued by red back spiders for months.

Staff has tried to ward them off by spraying with pesticides, to no avail (WTF!?!?!). The only other option was to close the hospital for fumigation. Mother Nature’s a b*tch.

link

For the first time in Britain two blind patients have been implanted with bionic eyes. The procedure was preformed at Moorfields Eye Hospital in central London last week and the two patients are said to be “doing well.”

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