Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
<map name="admap71632" id="admap71632"><area href=" shape="rect" coords="0,0,728,90" title="" alt="" target="_blank" /></map><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:728px;border-style:none;background-color:#ffffff;"><tr><td><img src=" style="width:728px;height:90px;border-style:none;" usemap="#admap71632" alt="" /></td></tr><tr><td style="background-color:#ffffff;" colspan="1"><center><a style="font-size:10px;color:#0000ff;text-decoration:none;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;font-family:Tahoma, verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-transform: none;letter-spacing:normal;text-shadow:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:normal;" href=" Archives Contact Forum Store! November 21, 2012 Woop! November 20, 2012 BAM! November 19, 2012 Discuss this comic in the forum November 18, 2012 Hey geeks! November 17, 2012
Gravity and Warped Spacetime
Einstein saw a beautiful idea in his notion of curved space and time. He saw that the falling astronaut wasn't being pulled or pushed by anything, but just moving along a straight line (a geodesic) through curved spacetime. He realized that gravity could be reinterpreted, not as a force pulling on objects, but as a curvature of spacetime. Objects falling in a gravitational field—like around the Earth—aren't being pulled, but are simply moving along geodesics in the warped spacetime surrounding any heavy object. The Moon's orbit doesn't circle the Earth because of a pull, but because the straightest line through spacetime brings it back to the same point in space. This bending of spacetime is particularly noticeable on Earth; throw a ball up in the air, and it follows its geodesic as it rises and falls. The first of Newton's Laws of Motion, which says that moving objects move in a straight line. A similar thing happens with slices warped by gravity. appropriately. G = 8 π T.
Seeing in the Dark
Credit: cliff1066tm. Patient TN was, by his own account, completely blind. Two consecutive strokes had destroyed the visual cortex of his brain, and consequently, his ability to see. It is not uncommon for stroke patients to suffer brain damage, but the case of TN — referenced by his initials, the general practice in such studies — was peculiar. His first stroke had injured only one hemisphere of his visual cortex. Known as selective bilateral occipital damage, TN’s unusual injury made him the subject of much interest while recovering at a hospital in Geneva. To further test the extent of TN’s abilities, researchers from Tilburg University in the Netherlands devised a simple yet decisive experiment: an obstacle course. TN’s rare condition is known as blindsight. The researchers explained that TN’s success indicates that “humans can sustain sophisticated visuo-spacial skills in the absence of perceptual awareness.”
Buddhas Brain: Neuroplasticity and Meditation
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
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25 Spectacular Movies You (Probably) Haven't Seen Pt. 2
Human Traffic Very unique comedy about the drug/club culture in the UK. Five friends ponder society, drug use and their own lives as they go about their usual weekend of snorting, smoking, popping, dancing and sex. The Matador Pierce Brosnan plays an assassin going through a mid-life crisis as he approached retirement. He’s like 007 on a spree of existential questioning. The Good, The Bad, And the Weird Two comical outlaws and a bounty hunter fight for a treasure map in 1940s Manchuria while being pursued by the Japanese army and Chinese bandits. Tucker and Dale vs. A group of college students go camping for the weekend and, through a series of unlucky events, begin thinking that the harmless Tucker & Dale (pictured above) are trying to kill them. New Kids Turbo An absolutely nutty movie from the Netherlands. Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang KKBB is a murder-comedy (?) Big Trouble Big Trouble is one of those movies where all of these different people end up intertwined at the end of the movie. Dr.
The Lesson of the Monkeys
I was first told of this experiment* by a former work colleague, and later discovered this illustration of it. It’s both illuminating and disturbing. There is a clunky word that describes this phenomenon: filiopietism, or the reverence of forebears or tradition carried to excess. The lesson is as obvious as it is important: question everything. * Stephenson, G.
The 20 most-watched TED Talks to date
TEDTalks The 20 most-watched TEDTalks (so far) Today, on the fifth birthday of TEDTalks video, we’re releasing a new list of the 20 most-watched TEDTalks over the past five years — as watched on all the platforms we track: TED.com, YouTube, iTunes, embed and download, Hulu and more … What a great, mixed-up group this is! Playlist The 20 most popular TED Talks, as of December 2013 UPDATED: To see all these talks at one click, check out our updated Playlist: The 20 Most Popular Talks of All Time.
