While you were sleeping it off

Stories you might have missed.

the Sun has flipped. No, not the sun but the sun's magnetic poles. UKIndependent:

The sun has "flipped upside down", with its north and south poles reversed to reach the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24, Nasa has said.

Now, the magnetic fields will once again started moving in opposite directions to begin the completion of the 22 year long process which will culminate in the poles switching once again..

video here.



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Old lefty Bishop Cruz suggests a new year's resolution for the Philippines: Stop Killing Journalists. 
Four years on, the killers behind the Manguindanao massacre are still not going to trial.

and maybe while they are at it, they could stop killing political rivals, or at least make a law saying that the family of indicted politicians aren't allowed to run for office. Only a few weeks after the ex mayor's daughter won, there was another hit job on the family of the rival he tried to kill (and his hitmen killed our nephew, a bystander). But never mind. Only a few more bystanders were killed in that second attack.


But the attack on a politician at the airport a week ago has a lot of people upset.

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4000 years ago, a change in the monsoon caused the collapse of the Indus valley empire...and maybe the same problem caused the collapse of the old kingdom of Egypt.

and what caused the collapse of the Hohokam people in 1300?
 

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from Wired: The Mad Hatterpiller.

The Mad Hatterpillar, Uraba lugens, the caterpillar of an Australian moth.
Image copyright Nuytsia@Tas.

no, not a hat: the heads it "shed" as it molted to grow. And like many caterpillers, the hairs cause severe itching for those who touch it.

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