Hello there all you hungry squishy eyeballers. Here are some stories that I found interesting. The first in an article from over at the BBC that says that researchers have shed more light (pun intended) on the origins of the universe, supporting the big bang theory. Now I'm not an astrophysicist, but from what I understand, the researchers have found evidence supporting something called the Inflationary theory about what happened right after the big bang. The theory has been around for some time and had quite a bit of indirect evidence to back it up, but this has been the first set of direct evidence that our current model of what happened right after the creation of the universe (when the universe was estimated to be about 10-32 seconds old) is correct.
Speaking of shining light to make things clearer, the E.U. parliament is considering legislation that will significantly cut roaming charges, well for people in the E.U. anyway. Roaming data has always been a significant cost well over the regular data packages, but evening the playing field between roaming and non-roaming calling and data charges brings an interesting side effect into perspective. If this goes through, in the E.U. it may no longer be necessary to get a "local" phone contract if the cost of roaming with another carrier is cheaper than the local carrier's cost. This may be one of those rare, unicorn type sightings, of government regulation actually encouraging competition.
Over in Ukraine, they're preparing for an entirely different type of charge as the government there says they're preparing for war. While I doubt they would be able to do anything other than saber rattle, I send my best hopes for the innocent people of Ukraine and Russia and hope that Russia's seizing of Crimea doesn't lead to war. It's easier for the politicians to say that their troops will fight, but it's easy to be patriotic when you're not surrounded, outnumbered, technologically outmatched and lacking support from the local population.
I would be more understanding of the whole situation if the war was over a necessity, like water. According to Unicef, about 768 million people don't have access to clean water. That's a huge number who need something that most of us reading this take for granted every day. Access to clean water is especially vital for children and researchers from the University of East Anglia have linked the availability of clean water to absenteeism from school. Education is important in the development of a society and the elevation of citizens from poverty. With less absenteeism the children would have a greater chance to succeed.
In other news of succeeding where one would expect failure, a worm has decided to one-up biotech engineered corn designed to kill it, by evolving to eat it anyway. It seems the scientists studying the engineered corn warned that this may happen and trusted the seed companies, farmers and even the government to do the right thing and follow their recommendations, which they didn't.
This is not really a surprise, especially as a study from the University of Oxford indicates that more intelligent people are more trusting. I'm not too sure what to think of this study though, but I think it's reasonable to think that if you weren't too smart to begin with, you would be less trusting because people would be trying to take advantage of you all the time. Negative trust experiences would make people less trusting. This could be also related to the environment, as persons with a lower socio-economic status may have to have less trust to survive versus people who have a more trusting environment (i.e. rich) to grow and live in.
Continuing on the topic of the rich, it turns out financial inequality is pretty bad in Britain, where the five richest families there are worth more than the poorest 20% of the population. These types of articles are usually sensationalist because they tend to include university students (who have lots of loans and hence a negative net worth) into the equation. If this was the case, then as the students got jobs and bought land, houses and other assets, the problem would go away by itself. It seems however, there are large swaths of the population that have little or no assets, regardless of age.
In related rich people news, from the things-I-can't-afford department, it seems that Tesla is 'poaching' Prius buyers. The current Tesla Model S is approximately three times as expensive as a Prius though, so I'm not sure poaching is the right word to use there. If Tesla made a Model S like car that was much cheaper (which from what I understand is the plan), then there I could see extensive poaching taking place. All we need to happen after that is the self-driving car and then hopefully we see a lot less deaths on the road due to drinking and driving.
Finally, in related drinking (but not driving) news, we end with an article from the Chicago Tribune reporting that Guinness, the well known Irish brewer, is pulling their support for the St. Patrick's day parade over the parade's ban on gays. While it is my understanding that the parade is run by a private group, I find it difficult to believe in this day and age the group doesn't see the hypocrisy that much of the Irish history has to do with fighting against oppression and here they are, essentially oppressing people in a parade celebrating (among other things) the fight against oppression. Hopefully next year, with a major sponsor like Guinness pulling out, they think about who they want to exclude.
Well, that's all for now folks. I hope you had a good read and remember, keep those eyeballs well fed and squishy!
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