How Your Brain Is Like The Cosmic Web July 22, 2017
Posted by tkcollier in cool stuff, Religion, Science & Technology.Tags: Brain, Cosmology, MIT, Science, Universe
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Interestingly enough, the total number of neurons in the human brain falls in the same ballpark of the number of galaxies in the observable universe.
It is truly a remarkable fact that the cosmic web is more similar to the human brain than it is to the interior of a galaxy; or that the neuronal network is more similar to the cosmic web than it is to the interior of a neuronal body. Despite extraordinary differences in substrate, physical mechanisms, and size, the human neuronal network and the cosmic web of galaxies, when considered with the tools of information theory, are strikingly similar.
http://nautil.us/issue/50/emergence/the-strange-similarity-of-neuron-and-galaxy-networks
Can you see the 4 Concentric circles that never touch? June 3, 2017
Posted by tkcollier in Art, cool stuff.Tags: optical illusion
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About How Long is a Day in the Solar System? May 31, 2017
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International Cultural Stereotypes March 20, 2017
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. Lewis, after visiting 135 countries and working in more than 20 of them, came to the conclusion that humans can be divided into 3 clear categories, based not on nationality or religion but on BEHAVIOUR. He named his typologies Linear-active, Multi-active and Reactive.
Source: The Lewis Model – Dimensions of Behaviour | Cross Culture
The Developing World Thinks Hitler Is Underrated November 27, 2016
Posted by tkcollier in cool stuff, Geopolitics, News and politics, philosophy & politics.Tags: Duerte, Geopolitics, Hitler, Putin
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– 19.02.1943
Foto: Walter Frentz
“english_caption” Hitler and the generals look at maps during a briefing at the headquarters of ‘Heeresgruppe Sued’ (Army Squad South) at Saporoshje (Ukraine). From left: General Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, Adolf Hitler, General Theodor Busse, General Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist
– 02.19.1943
Picture: Walter Frentz “english_e
Yet in much of the developing world, where ignorance regarding the Holocaust and Hitler’s fantasies of world domination is rife, he is perceived less as a mass murderer and ideologue of global conquest than as a stern disciplinarian who addressed social ills in a briskly efficient manner. His is a legacy of “law and order,” not of horrific chaos and collapsed cities. Additionally, and crucially, in the non-Western world the name Hitler can connote “anti-imperialist rebel” due to the German leader’s nationalistic struggle against “Anglo-French-American-Zionist domination.”
How a Solar Flare Almost Triggered a Nuclear War in 1967 August 11, 2016
Posted by tkcollier in cool stuff, Geopolitics, In The News, Science & Technology.Tags: Cold War, Geopolitics, Nuclear War, Solar Flare
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On May 23, 1967, multiple radar installations in the Arctic suddenly and inexplicably went dark.The U.S. military believed the Soviets had managed to disable the Early Warning System. With war imminent, the Air Force began prepping aircraft equipped with nuclear weapons. However, those aircraft never launched, as commanders received crucial information at the last minute that may have averted full-scale nuclear war.
That information came from the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) newly established Solar Forecasting Center. A few days prior, it had detected a massive solar storm, one of the largest of the century. The storm produced solar flares and radio bursts that knocked out communications around the world, including the Air Force’s Early Warning System.
The Solar Forecasting Center issued a bulletin warning that severe solar flares were incoming, and that bulletin managed to reach a commanding officer in time to avert action against the Soviets. If that bulletin had been delayed a few minutes, those nuclear aircraft could have launched, and the solar flares would have made it impossible to communicate in the air. If those aircraft had launched, there would have been no way to call them back.
Source: How a Solar Flare Almost Triggered a Nuclear War in 1967
Which stars were you really born under? May 26, 2016
Posted by tkcollier in cool stuff, In The News, Lifestyle, Religion.add a comment
did you know around 86% of us were actually born under a different constellation to our star sign?
Source: BBC iWonder – Which stars were you really born under?
Millennials (and Xers) Taking the Tough Mudder Pledge | Saeculum Research Blog May 9, 2016
Posted by tkcollier in cool stuff.Tags: Baby Boomers, generation X, Lifestyle, Millennials, Tough Mudder, Woodstock
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http://blog.saeculumresearch.com/2012/11/millennials-and-xers-taking-the-tough-mudder-pledge/
1491 – The Atlantic October 12, 2015
Posted by tkcollier in cool stuff.Tags: Christianity, Columbus, Geopolitics, History, Native Americans
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A long article about what the “New World” that Columbus discovered may really have been like, versus what we were taught in school.
Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact
Source: 1491 – The Atlantic
Short-Term Profits Are Bad for Your Brain | TIME September 23, 2015
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In truth, the ancient brain that serves us each day – evolved in scarcity, focused on the short term and habit driven – is poorly matched to the frenzied affluence of contemporary culture.
If we are to change the future, we must first each take the responsibility for changing ourselves. We must become mindful of the longer-term consequences of our actions, and we must ask: Is the debt- driven short-term market model, with its power to foster greed and erode the social contract, an adaptive strategy for the 21st century?
http://time.com/4040720/brain-interest-rate/
Many scientific studies can’t be replicated. That’s a problem. – The Washington Post August 28, 2015
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/08/27/trouble-in-science-massive-effort-to-reproduce-100-experimental-results-succeeds-only-36-times/
The Interview: Henry Kissinger | The National Interest August 22, 2015
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The challenge of China is a much subtler problem than that of the Soviet Union. The Soviet problem was largely strategic. This is a cultural issue: Can two civilizations that do not, at least as yet, think alike come to a coexistence formula that produces world order?
We refuse to learn from experience. Because it’s essentially done by an ahistorical people. In schools now, they don’t teach history anymore as a sequence of events. They deal with it in terms of themes without context.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-interview-henry-kissinger-13615?page=show
Here’s the argument for banning killer robots before we’re swarmed by them – The Washington Post August 22, 2015
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I’m not really a weapons designer, but it’s only a small extrapolation from the DARPA FLA program (small high-speed quadcopters zooming in and out of buildings) and the CODE program (“hunting in packs like wolves”) to imagine dumping truckloads of flying microrobots the size of large insects, each carrying a 1g shaped charge to blow holes in peoples’ heads or a microrifle to shoot their eyes out. They might need some larger ones to blow holes in doors and walls and stop vehicles. They are totally expendable and very cheap. Planners also seem to be thinking about naval and air-to-air combat which would involve much more expensive assets, but the principle is the same — overwhelming numbers, cooperative behaviors, etc.
So we’re in a new era here. The obvious analogy is to the development of nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer and Szilard warned of an arms race and lost the argument to Teller, Von Neumann and others who wanted to go full speed ahead. The U.S. and Soviets built massive arsenals and placed each other under the threat of nuclear doomsday for decades. Arms control treaties have made the world safer, though. And scientists and engineers have often recognized that there are no-go zones. When gene-splicing became possible, everyone called time-out and held a big conference at Asilomar. More recently, scientists called for a ban on gene-editing with the “crispr” technique.
An argument to be made about immigrant babies and citizenship August 21, 2015
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/26/AR2010032603077.html
Enacting legislation, based on this legal precedent, still wouldn’t prevent “birth tourism” abuse; where, as a example, wealthy Chinese time their tourist visa to coincide with the birth of their baby.
Corn Wars | The New Republic August 20, 2015
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The federal government, thereby, has implicitly acknowledged that it considers agricultural products both an asset and a weapon in a long-range geopolitical chess match with China, a resource of near-military value and importance, one that must be protected by all available means. By that logic, those Chinese nationals stealing corn are spies, no different—and, indeed, perhaps more important—than those who swipe plans for a new weapons system.
Today, it’s estimated that 92 percent of American corn and 94 percent of American soybeans are GMOs, almost all of it produced by Monsanto or DuPont Pioneer, and again, nearly half of the seed sold globally. The prosecution of Mo Hailong and his circle stands as a warning to the Chinese government, issued through its proxy companies.
Good News! A Rare Caribbean Bird, Rediscovered July 28, 2015
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What our DNA and Solar System have in common (Video) May 15, 2015
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Mass Deaths in Americas Start New CO2 Epoch March 12, 2015
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mass-deaths-in-americas-start-new-co2-epoch/
The atmosphere recorded the mass death, slavery and warfare that followed 1492. The death by smallpox and warfare of an estimated 50 million native Americans—as well as the enslavement of Africans to work in the newly depopulated Americas—allowed forests to grow in former farmland. By 1610, the growth of all those trees had sucked enough carbon dioxide out of the sky to cause a drop of at least seven parts per million in atmospheric concentrations of the most prominent greenhouse gas and start a little ice age. Based on that dramatic shift, 1610 should be considered the start date of a new, proposed geologic epoch—the Anthropocene, or recent age of humanity—according to the authors of a new study.
How Russia and the EU are economically connected to each other October 20, 2014
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Isis September 7, 2014
Posted by tkcollier in cool stuff.Tags: Geopolitics, Islam, Oil
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