Mercyvill

(US Army/Flickr/CC BY 2.0) To look for aliens, most people peer towards the sky. But if you look down, you'll discover they already live among us. It has only been within the last three decades that technology has let people see octopuses' natural behaviour. These aliens have brains, like we do, but they're mostly inside their arms, and each arm acts as if it has a mind of its own. I'm speaking, of course, of the octopus. This tentacled beast – along with its cephalopod relatives, the squid and cuttlefish – are some of the strangest, most alien creatures on our planet. Scientists have a hard enough time getting into the minds of our nearest relatives, the apes and monkeys, let alone more distantly related mammals like dolphins or elephants. Octopuses? Forget about it. Our last common ancestor with the octopus was probably around 800 million years ago.

The lighting of a cross during the Christian Los Escobazos Festival in Spain, celebrating the conception of the Virgin Mary (Getty Images) Atheism is on the rise around the world, so does that mean spirituality will soon be a thing of the past? Rachel Nuwer discovers that the answer is far from simple. A growing number of people, millions worldwide, say they believe that life definitively ends at death – that there is no God, no afterlife and no divine plan. And it’s an outlook that could be gaining momentum – despite its lack of cheer. In some countries, openly acknowledged atheism has never been more popular. “There’s absolutely more atheists around today than ever before, both in sheer numbers and as a percentage of humanity,” says Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and author of Living the Secular Life . According to a Gallup International survey of more than 50,000 peopl...

(Thinkstock) Being bored could hinder our lives in ways we don’t realise – but it may also have helped shape one of our most productive characteristics, says David Robson. People are unhappy in their own company and some prefer painful experiences to their own thoughts, a new study claims. I’ve met lots of people with a talent to bore in my time, but Sandi Mann is one of the few to have honed it as a craft. Eager volunteers visiting her lab may be asked to carry out less-than-thrilling chores like copying out lengthy lists of telephone numbers. They mostly tolerate the task politely, she says, but their shuffling bottoms and regular yawns prove they are hardly relishing the experience. Their agony is science’s gain, though, since Mann wants to understand the profound effect that boredom may have on our lives. So far, she is one of the few psychologists to have forayed into such mind-numbing territories. “It’s the Cinderel...

The future of sex: can the female condom catch on second time around? Once mocked as having the erotic appeal of a jellyfish, the female condom is being reinvented as the next big thing in protective sex. In the first article from new digital publication Mosaic, Emily Anthes takes an in-depth investigation to see what chance it has of catching on this time around. The female condom flopped when it was launched some 20 years ago, but it never disappeared entirely and now a number of companies are entering the fray with new products. In 1987, an American pharmaceutical executive called Mary Ann Leeper flew to Copenhagen to get a first-hand look at what she thought might be the world’s next great health innovation. She didn’t expect to find it tucked away inside an old cigar box.

Phyno Birth name Azubuike Chibuzo Nelson Born 9 October 1986 (age 28) Enugu State , Nigeria [1] Genres Igbo rap , hip hop Occupation(s) Rapper record producer Years active (2003–present) Labels Sputnet Records Penthauze Music Associated acts Illbliss Olamide Flavour N'abania Timaya Clarence Peters Chidinma Runtown Mr. Raw Tha Suspect Lynxxx Skuki Azubuike Chibuzo Nelson (born 9 October 1986), known by his stage name Phyno , is a Nigerian rapper and record producer. [2] He started his musical career as a producer in 2003. He is renowned for rapping in the Igbo language . His debut studio album, No Guts No Glory , was released in 2014. It produced the singles "Ghost Mode", "Man of the Year", "Parcel" and "O Set". [3] As a producer, he has worked with artists such as Timaya , Flavour , Ruggedman , Bracket, J Martins and Mr. Raw

The deliberately sloppy look of many a meme now has a name. Imgur On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, and nobody cares if you can’t draw one. This is, essentially, the focus of a recent paper by Nick Douglas, the former editor of Valleywag who now runs the YouTube comedy channel Slacktory. His work is published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Visual Culture ( the whole issue is dedicated to memes). In his piece, Douglas tries to coin a phrase that describes the messy, iterative, and, frankly, not all that attractive visuals found on hubs like Imgur and Reddit and 4chan. He calls it “Internet Ugly.” The premise is that online art and memes aren't supposed to be pretty. More than that, they're supposed to look messy. “Th...

2014 wasn't just a pendulum swing—it was the closing of a chapter in American politics. Larry Downing/Reuters As you may have heard, 2014 was a good year for Republicans. They won a lot of elections ! They won big elections and small elections, elections in red states and elections in blue states, elections everyone knew they would win and elections virtually no one expected them to win. They won the Senate, giving them a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time in a decade. They netted 13 new seats in the House, giving them the largest House majority since FDR was president. Perhaps most crucially, Republicans now control 33 governorships and 68 of 98 statehouses, giving them the ability to implement their policy agenda across the country—something they still can't really do on th...

A lack of dining options may have started Jewish Christmas, but now it's a full-fledged ritual. StevenDePolo/Flickr If there’s a single identifiable moment when Jewish Christmas—the annual American tradition where Jews overindulge on Chinese food on December 25—transitioned from kitsch into codified custom, it was during Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s 2010 confirmation hearing. During an otherwise tense series of exchanges, Senator Lindsey Graham paused to ask Kagan where she had spent the previous Christmas. To great laughter, she replied:  “You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.” Never willing to let a moment pass without remark, Senator Chuck Schumer jumped in to explain, “If I might, no other restaurants are open.” For many Jewish Americans, the night before...

UK's first Bitcoin ATM STORY HIGHLIGHTS A cafe in London has installed the country's first Bitcoin ATM machine The machine takes money and dispenses Bitcoin which is then used to buy cakes and coffees Owner says the machine is one step further in controlling our own money (CNN) -- By now we're all familiar with the term Bitcoin, the notorious digital currency with dozens of copycats. But most of us would find it difficult to imagine actually using this crypto-currency or even picturing what it looks like. In fact, only a handful of venues in bustling London actually accept Bitcoin as a means of payment.