Charlie Chaplin’s brilliant speech from “The Great Dictator“.
Author: neil
Online Bullying [Article, Video]
On October 10, Amanda Todd as found dead at home in Canada. She was 15. This is the story of her online bullies, her attempt to tell her story on you-tube, & her tragic end. Ubiquitous internet access, without really understanding the implications of the use, is a far bigger danger than most of us realize (especially the young ones). Please spare the time to click through & read / watch and hopefully share this with your near & dear ones.
The Secret Life of Atoms [article]
Serge Haroche and David Wineland won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics because they’ve managed to manipulate particles one at a time: Haroche with individual photons, and Wineland with trapped ions. What does that mean? Dennis Overbye of the NYTimes shed a little light, literally.
Bouncing Water [Video, article]
Sea Views [Picture, News]
Carnival Spirit arrives in Sydney waters.
Understanding in Debates [link]
Lest we in the rest of the world naively believe that the US-promoted style of democratic electing a government is the best in the world, here’s the Memorandum of Understanding that the campaigns signed. A carefully constructed document that ensures that the candidates sponsors interests’ never come up as questions. And if you didn’t get a chance to watch the 2nd debate, watch it here.
Galactic neighbours [article]
European astronomers say that just outside our solar system they’ve found a planet that’s the closest you can get to Earth in location and size.
2nd US Presidential Debate
The second debate starts at 9:00pm at Hofstra University, Long Island, New York. The moderator is CNN’s Candy Crowley. You can watch the debate here, if you’re interested. Check here for your local time (if you’re in Sydney or Delhi).
Are Chinese telecom firms really a danger to national security?
Lifespan
How long will you live? & how long will it seem like? Geoffrey West, a theoretical physicist, has some interesting observations on the correlation between heartbeats & lifespans. He says “…larger animals have predictably slower heartbeats than small animals. … The whale is a hundred million times bigger than a shrew, but its heart rate is just a hundred times slower. …..larger animals having a longer life span than smaller animals. These two laws together say, essentially, that there are the same number of heartbeats in your lifetime whether you are a shrew or a whale. It gives rise to the idea that big animals live very long but very slowly, and little ones live very fast but over a very short period of time.” Read more here