5 Dumb Hobbies You Won’t Believe Have World Championships | Cracked.com.
Boredom: We’ve all been there. From “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” to “The License Plate Game,” people have sought out ways to pass the monotony when life slows down. Little did we realize that these pointless time wasters were, for some, the subject of a years-long pursuit of excellence. Which is why people started organizing things like …
BlackRock Hires Former Swiss Central Bank Chief – NYTimes.com.
ONDON – The money manager BlackRock has hired Philipp M. Hildebrand, who resigned under a cloud from the Swiss National Bank in January, to oversee institutional client relationships outside the United States.
Mr. Hildbebrand, 48, stepped down as head of Switzerland’s central bank after doubts were raised about currency trades he and his wife made in 2011.
He had been an advocate for stricter banking regulation and played a central role in the Swiss National Bank’s efforts to keep investors from bidding up the value of the Swiss franc, which is seen as a haven from the current global turmoil.
In his new role at BlackRock, Mr. Hildebrand will advise the firm’s clients across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. He is expected to begin work in October and will be based in London.
In recent years, BlackRock has grown in prominence, advising a number of heavily indebted companies and countries, including Greece, about how to weather the financial crisis. BlackRock has around $3.7 trillion of assets under management.
Where Does America Get Oil? You May Be Surprised : NPR.
Since the Arab oil embargoes of the 1960s and 70s, it’s been conventional wisdom to talk about American dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf. But the global oil market has changed dramatically since then.
Today, the U.S. actually gets most of its imported oil from Canada and Latin America.
And many Americans might be surprised to learn that the U.S. now imports roughly the same amount of oil from Africa as it does from the Persian Gulf. African imports were a bit higher in 2010, while Persian Gulf oil accounted for a bit more last year.
America is one of the world’s largest oil producers, and close to 40 percent of U.S. oil needs are met at home. Most of the imports currently come from five countries: Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria.
Desert Kingdoms Versus The Great White North
Canada is far and away the biggest purveyor of crude to its southern neighbor, hitting a record 2.2 million barrels a day last year as its share of the U.S. market grew by 12 percent.
Energy expert Robert Rapier says the take-away for Americans may be “marry a Canadian,” because he or she will be a citizen of an increasingly rich country. “Their budget looks good, and they’re sitting on top of tremendous reserves,” he says.
The birthplace of the human race is Asia – our earliest ancestors came to Asia in a huge migration 37-38 million years ago, before they evolved into present-day apes and humans.
A team of palaeontologists in Myanmar has found the tooth of a pre-human ancestor – afrasia djijidae, so-called because it forms a missing link between Africa and Asia – that is very similar another early ancestor found in Libya.
Four similar teeth were found after six years of sifting through sediment – a find that helps seal Asia as the starting point for our species.
A team of palaeontologists in Myanmar has found the tooth of a pre-human ancestor – afrasia djijidae, so-called because it forms a missing link between Africa and Asia – that is very similar another early ancestor found in Libya
The 37-million-year-old tooth proves that early human ancestors lived in Asia, and only moved to Africa fairly late in the process of evolution – the latest in a series of discoveries that have ‘sealed’ Asia as the starting point for our species
The human family tree: A team of palaeontologists in Myanmar has found the tooth of a pre-human ancestor – afrasia djijidae, so-called because it forms a missing link between Africa and Asia. It is very similar another early ancestor found in Libya
‘Not only does Afrasia help seal the case that anthropoids first evolved in Asia, it also tells us when our anthropoid ancestors first made their way to Africa, where they continued to evolve into apes and humans,’ says Chris Beard, Carnegie Museum of Natural History palaontologist.
He worked with an international team that included scientists from the University of Poitiers.
‘Afrasia is a game-changer because for the first time it signals when our distant ancestors initially colonized Africa. If this ancient migration had never taken place, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.’
Paleontologists have been divided over exactly how and when early Asian anthropoids made their way from Asia to Africa.
The trip could not have been easy, because a more extensive version of the modern Mediterranean Sea called the Tethys Sea separated Africa from Eurasia at that time. While the discovery of Afrasia does not solve the exact route early anthropoids followed in reaching Africa, it does suggest that the colonization event occurred relatively recently, only shortly before the first anthropoid fossils are found in the African fossil record.
¿Not only does Afrasia help seal the case that anthropoids first evolved in Asia, it also tells us when our anthropoid ancestors first made their way to Africa, where they continued to evolve into apes and humans,¿ says Chris Beard, Carnegie Museum of Natural History palaontologist
¿Not only does Afrasia help seal the case that anthropoids first evolved in Asia, it also tells us when our anthropoid ancestors first made their way to Africa, where they continued to evolve into apes and humans,¿ says Chris Beard, Carnegie Museum of Natural History palaontologist
Myanmar’s 37-million-year-old Afrasia is remarkable in that its teeth closely resemble those of Afrotarsius libycus, a North African primate dating to about the same time.
The four known teeth of Afrasia were recovered after six years of sifting through tons of sediment near Nyaungpinle in central Myanmar.
Details of tooth shape in the Asian Afrasia and the North African Afrotarsius fossils indicate that these animals probably ate insects.
The size of their teeth suggests that in life these animals weighed around 3.5 ounces, roughly the size of a modern tarsier.
‘For years we thought the African fossil record was simply bad,’ says Professor Jean-Jacques Jaeger of the University of Poitiers in France, the team leader and a Carnegie Museum research associate. ‘The fact that such similar anthropoids lived at the same time in Myanmar and Libya suggests that the gap in early African anthropoid evolution is actually real. Anthropoids didn’t arrive in Africa until right before we find their fossils in Libya.’
The search for the origin of early anthropoids—and, by extension, early human ancestors—is a focal point of modern paleoanthropology.
The discovery of Afrasia shows that one lineage of early anthropoids colonized Africa around 37–38 million years ago, but the diversity of early anthropoids known from the Libyan site that produced Afrotarsius libycus hints that the true picture was more complicated.
These other Libyan fossil anthropoids may be the descendants of one or more additional Asian colonists, because they don’t appear to be specially related to Afrasia and Afrotarsius. Fossil evidence of evolutionary divergence—when a species divides to create new lineages—is critical data for researchers in evolution.
The groundbreaking discovery of the relationship between Asia’s Afrasia and North Africa’s Afrotarsius is an important benchmark for pinpointing the date at which Asian anthropoids colonized Africa.
Nader Nazemi 