Rumi Nations

This may be familiar territory for some; but still a detailed article on the Fermi Paradox is always interesting.

Clearly, there is just too much of the stuff. This is a meta-collection of articles that are themselves collections of good articles. Starting with this collection of the Best Business Journalism of 2013 compiled by The New Yorker . The most popular Quartz stories of 2013. Top Long Reads of 2013 . The 41 best stories of 2013 compiled by BusinessWeek . Some of the best Sportswriting of the year for those interested.

Fascinating tales about childhood epilepsy and what people do (and doctors recommend) when drugs and therapies don't work. One solution is keto diet which consists of food that is full of fat and no carbs. One would think this would damage the kids but strangely enough, the food stops the epileptic attacks. And the latest is using medical marijuana processed in a particular manner to treat treatment-resistant epilepsy. And it's working.

Commander Hadfield has tweeted many photographs during his time in space. Here are a few of his tweets. Looking north from our orbit to the forbidding rock and ice of Greenland. pic.twitter.com/v4zoygpQgI — Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 7, 2013 Glacial water burping into the Atlantic in deep Southern Argentina. pic.twitter.com/cRBehZEx — Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 10, 2013 Tonight's Finale: Nature inspires awe - cloud, ice and rock in southern South America. pic.twitter.com/sqCYVSbZTw — Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 24, 2013 Tonight's Finale: Patagonia to the Pacific, the glaciers showing the height of the southern Andes. pic.twitter.com/2eWQCzKKV6 — Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) April 13, 2013 Strange how the slow flow of glacial ice becomes more visible from here, so far away. pic.twitter.com/SCRkzgBABT — Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 8, 2013 From over the southern tip of S. America, I looked so...

The story of Kayla, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig, James Foley and Theo Fadnos in The New Yorker .

Commemorating the lunar landing from 46 years ago, here are some wonderful photographs published on The Atlantic website. Some goods ones are there that I hadn't come across before. Really. Go check them. Let me paste just one here. Those tiny workers are perched some 110 meters or 360 feet above the ground. And more photos of Apollo 11 are here .

When do we learn to accept our mortality? At 60? At 20? Perhaps never. When should we? Perhaps mot people never accept their mortality — certainly not before the time comes when you start seeing your contemporaries fall off. Realizing that you are mortal at 60 or 70 may be a good thing. It perhaps makes people more mellow and more congenial, less abrasive, less aggressive. If one could reach that realization earlier, it might make us better human beings. Perhaps religion plays a role in how and when people come to terms with their mortality. For me, my idea of mortality and what lessons to learn have to all come from exceptional individuals who lived and died exemplary lives. Learning you have an incurable disease when you are in your 30s has got to be one of the toughest things one can face in life. Perhaps after years and decades of effort, you are close to achieving some important life goal, some important professional milestone in your mid-30s but then suddenly you are t...

As New Horizons closes in on its Pluto encounter, some facts about it to blow one's mind. New Horizons approximate distance from Earth : 3 billion miles; 4.8 billion kilometers (32.28 astronomical units) New Horizons approximate distance from Pluto : 93 million miles; 149 million kilometers (1 AU) Time for signal to reach Earth : 4 hours, 28 minutes, 31 seconds Primary communications : NASA Deep Space Network Canberra Station, Australia (70-meter antenna) Simple calculations show that at the enormous distance of 4.8 billion kms where Pluto is, one arcsecond equals some 24,000 kms. Hence, when they point that " big seven-foot, high-gain dish antenna" of the New Horizons spacecraft towards Earth, they've to be pretty precisely so that the signal is received in Canberra. If you are about 15 arcseconds off, instead of the Earth, you might be pointing to the Moon.