Hyenas eat our ancestors for breakfast

Five hundred thousand years ago a hyena was munching on the remains of one of our early human ancestors.

The human remains were found resting in a cave in the suburbs of what is now Casablanca in Morocco, an area known to be rich in fossils.More specifically, it was tucking into the thigh bone of an individual believed to belong to the prehistoric species Homo rhodesiensis,thought to be the common ancestor of both our species and the Neanderthals.

The femur bone was uncovered in a layer of sediment known to be half a million years old. It was unearthed in excavations in 1994 but only "rediscovered" over a decade later. -BBC news 

I thought this was interesting because it's not everyday you hear your great great great great great great etc. ancestor could have been an ancient hyenas breakfast. I don't really know what principle this would fit in with or what it would be like in the ideal world because I really don't mind the fact that we used to be eaten. It's not like we don't eat animals and back then we were just another animal. And besides being eaten by a prehistoric hyena is a pretty cool way to go.

Weasel interferes with physics!

The Large Hadron Collider is offline because a weasel had an encounter with the transformer and caused a "severe electrical perturbation". The weasel did not survive.

In an ideal world, our human actions would not cause death of other creatures. As it is, we can do our best to live the Golden Rule with all the creatures on earth. In this particular case, perhaps a better barrier between the transformer and the animals would be useful to consider.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36173247

PowerShake

PowerShake is a wireless charging system thought of by Paul Worgan of the University of Bristol, in England, with his colleagues. Of course, there have been wireless charging systems before. So what’s different about this one? The answer is that PowerShake is focusing on trying to make phones and other portable electronic devices, such as smartwatches, be able to share their charge. You would be able to share charge by holding a device with a low battery against another device, which would then initiate the power transfer. I thought that that seems like it would make it easy to just steal someone else’s charge, but perhaps they’ll make it so that there’s something else you have to do first.

In testing this idea, however, they found that some people said they wouldn’t want to share their precious battery charge. In response to this, they decided that a form of inducement might help. Vassilis Kostakos, a computer scientist at Oulu University in Finland, said that one possibility is cash. He and his colleagues set up an auction for battery charge, with 22 volunteers. The results showed that most of the people wanted $2.00 for 10% of their power when it was fully charged, and $5.00 for 10% when their charge had depleted to 20%. On average, people wanted $3.00 for 10% of their power.

A principle I think is involved here is the golden rule. If you needed to make an important phone call, but didn’t have the charge to do it with, you’d probably appreciate it if someone was willing to give you some power. Of course, many people probably would want to help, though maybe not if you just wanted to watch some cat video. The ideal situation, I think, would be that everyone would have solar charging capabilities on their devices as well as be able to charge them normally, and possibly be able to share their charge. They would share generously when possible, in device power the same as in everything else.

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21697800-trading-power-could-free-users-dead-battery-tyranny-buddy-can-you-spare

Ballot

I thought this comic was cynically funny.

Myo

The Myo Gesture Control Armband, being developed by Thalmic Labs, is a wearable device that allows you to control the actions of electronic devices (through Bluetooth) with different hand and arm motions. It feels the movements of your muscles and translates that to what it should do. In a video released about the Myo armband by Thalmic Labs, it showed multiple real-life scenarios where this could be used, including someone who is fixing their bike pausing and rewinding a video that tells him how, someone giving a presentation changing the screen with a twist of their hand, a medical personal changing the view of a patient's scan without having to move away, as well as some uses for toys and in video games, just for fun. There was also another video about the Myo technology being used to make a prosthetic arm, something I found pretty cool. It costs about $200 to buy.

I think that in an ideal world, more people and businesses would work together instead of competing against each other, so that we could further our technology more quickly. Also, that anyone in need of a prosthetic limb would be able to get one without financial difficulty—not by some power forcing them to give their money to help him, but by the simple kindness of others. Actually, scratch that, no one would even be in the circumstances that would make them need a prosthetic limb, though people would still help each other in hard times without the use of government intervention.

First Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te1RBQQlHz4

Prosthetic Arm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSuzMxQDmzg

Monster Trucks and Floods

This past week there was a flood in Millsap, Texas. A woman, Deborah Wright, was trapped in her house when through the flood she saw her neighbor, Cole Geeo, coming to her rescue in his monster truck. He also helped a couple whose car had gone off the side of the road during the flood. Cole's father had helped people in a flood that had happened years before and his father was the inspiration for Cole. Geeo built his monster truck because of his father's good example. This man was applying the Golden Rule to his life. Ideally, everyone would be like this man and want to help where they can. Cole was passionate about helping people with his truck. We should use our assets for the good of others. 
Link here

Harriet Tubman will be the new face of the the $20 bill

The replacement of Andrew Jackson on the front of the new $20 bill with abolitionist Harriet Tubman isn't the only change to new versions of U.S. currency announced Wednesday — five leaders of the women's suffrage movement will also be featured on the back of the $10 bill.

Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul will be on the back of the bill, the Treasury Department announced. Alexander Hamilton's image will still appear on the front of the $10 bill.

"I'm very excited by it and I think it's much bigger than just honoring one woman," Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told NBC News. "This is about saying that our money is going to tell a much bigger part of our story."

I think the principle involved in this is equality. Having women on our currency is helping us get closer to a world where men and women are equally represented. The world is made up of 50% women and 50% men so we should be equally represented in all the things we do.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/anthony-mott-truth-stanton-paul-meet-women-new-10-bill-n559476