December 19, 2013
By The Morning News
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- Obama's panel says the NSA shouldn't collect phone data, but critics see a path to continue untargeted spying.
- Drone strike kills a dozen and injures more at a wedding in Yemen—the kind of strike that fuels rather than diminishes al Qaeda.
- Patriarch of Duck Dynasty suspended over remarks in GQ about the civil-rights era and gay people.
- Related: The GQ article in question, where Drew Magary doesn't get saved by Phil Robertson.
- Toe bone discovered in Siberia shows that Neanderthals not only bred with homo sapiens, but a little-researched species called Denisovans.
- See also: Portraits of Michael Jackson lookalikes and impersonators.
- Awards for this year's movies handed out based on principles from behavioral economics.
- "Most amazing science images of 2013" include a remarkable animation of cat lungs being inflated.
- Nineteen million dollars granted for a camera to capture the massive black hole in the middle of the Milky Way.
- Poppy farmers in Myanmar make $1400 more per year than other farmers, which explains a 23% rise in opium output.
- Librarian and gang trash Renaissance library in Naples and loot several books, including a 1518 edition of Thomas More's Utopia that has yet to be recovered.
- At what point were there too many books to read in one lifetime? Physics points to an answer.
- Ten years of self-portraits taken while falling.
- Introduction to Cicada 3301, internet mystery full of ciphers that's been baffling programmers for two years.
- More than half of Reddit's NoFap community—dedicated to quitting watching porn—developed a regular habit between the ages of 12 and 14.
- Canadian scientists use desk fan to convert alcohol mist into binary code, which can then send text messages.
- Gingerbread-ticket promotion on Finnish bus line proves to be a bust, with broken promises.
- Reams of data about Christmas in America; e.g., among the religiously unaffiliated, 87% say they celebrate the holiday.
