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submission
Jeremy Erwin writes:
The Russian Government is using the pretext of software piracy to suppress dissident organizations, seizing computers and shutting down websites, regardless of whether the targeted groups actually use unlicensed software. Similar groups, allied with the government, remain immune to harassment. The New York Times article notes that Microsoft's behavior has not been completely above board.
8847700
submission
Jeremy Erwin writes:
Our Neolithic ancestors might have first experimented with agriculture in order to ensure a steady supply of alcoholic liquids according to a new book by Patrick McGovern, Uncorking the Past
The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages
"Archaeologists have long pondered the question of which came first, bread or beer. McGovern surmises that these prehistoric humans didn't initially have the ability to master the very complicated process of brewing beer. However, they were even more incapable of baking bread, for which wild grains are extremely unsuitable. They would have had first to separate the tiny grains from the chaff, with a yield hardly worth the great effort. If anything, the earliest bakers probably made nothing more than a barely palatable type of rough bread, containing the unwanted addition of the grain's many husks."
Calcium Oxalate is considered by most brewers to be an undesirable byproduct of alcohol production. Lacking a firm grasp of chemistry and filters, early brewers simply created special grooved beer crocks would allow the beer stone to precipitate out of solution into the grooves. 5500 years later, the deposits remained, providing archaeologists with evidence of beer production.
