The thickness of the earth’s crust ranges from 50 miles in mountainous areas to just 6 miles beneath the ocean floor; the average around the world is 21 miles. The borehole, therefore, has already eaten its way through one-third of the earth’s surface.

In its descent, the drill has discovered fossilized microorganisms in the billion-year-old rocks at depths previously thought to have been barren of life. These fossils may well make scientists revise their opinions about early life on this planet.

http://scienceray.com/earth-sciences/an-amazing-journey-to-the-centre-of-the-world-investigating-the-world-below/

It started one night when Sojka modified the first sentence of the German-language Wikipedia article on the Danube Tower in Vienna. He changed "The Danube Tower is an observation tower" into "The Danube Tower is a television and observation tower."

Sojka, 34, an insurance agent from Lörrach, southwestern Germany, had given plenty of consideration to this step. There are few people, he says, who know as much about television towers as he does. Towers have fascinated him since he was a boy. He has literature on towers, coffee table books about towers and pictures of towers. On their honeymoon, he and his wife took a helicopter flight around his favorite -- the CN Tower in Toronto. A poster-sized photograph Sojka took of that tower hangs in their bedroom.

Who then, if not he, had the right to judge whether a 252-meter (827-foot) reinforced concrete pillar in Vienna should be described as a television tower?

The very next morning, Sojka saw he had been pulled up short. An Austrian with the username "Elisabeth59" had undone his modification and added a comment: "The Danube Tower is definitively not a television tower. It was conceived and built as an observation tower."

The move rather annoyed Sojka. He changed the article back again and wrote: "If you don't know anything, you should just keep your fingers still -- the danube tower is obviously a ttelevision tower (sic)."

Thus began one of the most absurd debates ever carried out on the German Wikipedia website. It amounted to pages and pages full of insults and corrections, reaching a length of 600,000 characters -- as much as a book. The underlying issues soon became much greater than just the Danube Tower -- it was about the truth and who has the right to enforce it.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-690402,00.html

It hurt. The experience was almost more than I could bear. I begged him to stop. Afraid he would kill me, I pleaded with him to honor my commitment to Haiti, to him as a brother in the mutual struggle for an end to our common oppression, but to no avail. He didn’t care that I was a Malcolm X scholar. He told me to shut up, and then slapped me in the face. Overpowered, I gave up fighting halfway through the night.

Accepting the helplessness of my situation, I chucked aside the Haiti bracelet I had worn so proudly for over a year, along with it, my dreams of human liberation. Someone, I told myself, would always be bigger and stronger than me. As a woman, my place in life had been ascribed from birth. A Chinese proverb says that “women are like the grass, meant to be stepped on.” The thought comforted me at the same time that it made me cringe.

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/23/we-are-not-your-weapons-we-are-women/

Planning a trip to Israel? Might want to leave that iPad at home. The Israeli Communications Ministry has ordered customs agents in the country to confiscate all Apple iPads from overseas passengers, The Christian Science Monitor reports.

The move apparently comes after the ministry's engineering staff could not agree on a means to test the iPad's compatibility with Israel's wireless networks.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362697,00.asp

Bob Geldof's BandAid campaign and LiveAid concerts to relieve victims of famine in Ethiopia in 1984-1985 went straight to paramilitary rebels

http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/we-aren-t-the-world/

In the social hierarchy of a wolf pack in captivity, the omega ranks below the alpha and beta wolves. In human terms, if an executive or a warrior is an alpha male and a nice-guy middle manager like The Office's Jim Halpert is a beta male, then Greenberg and his brethren are omega males. While the alpha male wants to dominate and the beta male just wants to get by, the omega male has either opted out or, if he used to try, given up. Greenberg says of his somewhat stunted best friend, "We call each other 'man,' but it's a joke. It's like imitating other people." The omega male is not experiencing the tired trope of the midlife crisis. A midlife crisis implies agency, a man who has the job and the family and chooses to reject it. The omega male doesn't have the power to reject anything—he's the one who has been brushed off. He's generally unemployed, and his romantic relationships are in shambles—he's either single or, if he's married, not happy about it. "I'm doing nothing and I'm tied to no one," Greenberg boasts.

http://www.slate.com/id/2248156/pagenum/all/#p2

The vehicle emissions standards will be phased in starting with the 2012 model year, raising fuel economy to an average 35.5 miles per gallon by the time the 2016 models are ready -- up 42 percent from the current 25 miles per gallon.

Lower U.S. gasoline consumption could make more crude supplies available in the world market, which in turn could put downward pressure on oil prices.

Phil Flynn, an analyst with PFGBest Research in Chicago, said the new standards will definitely lower U.S. oil demand, but that could be offset with higher fuel use in other countries.

"We can save it here, but are these cars going to be marketable in China, where all the demand growth is going to come from?" he asked.

The rules follow an EPA finding that greenhouse gas emissions from new vehicles contribute to air pollution, a danger to public health.

http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/41093