Rumi Nations

Ashutosh Joglekar's books list. http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2018/03/30-favorite-books.html Scott Aaronson' list https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3679 https://www.wired.com/story/most-read-wired-magazine-stories-2017/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/12/the-best-books-we-read-in-2017/548912/ https://longreads.com/2017/12/21/longreads-best-of-2017-essays/ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/21/world/asia/how-the-rohingya-escaped.html https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-journalists-covered-rise-mussolini-hitler-180961407/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/artificial-intelligence-future-scenarios-180968403/ https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/01/20/citizen-kay https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/where-we-are-hunt-cancer-vaccine-180968391/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/dna-based-attack-against-cancer-may-work-180968407/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/22/dona...

Online quizzes are not so innocent . It seems Myers Briggs is a bogus psychological test but very popular. Sigh. Somewhat better than a horoscope, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) is as bad as a lie detector.

Mauna Kea Heavens Timelapse from Sean Goebel on Vimeo .

SKYGLOWPROJECT.COM: KAIBAB ELEGY from Harun Mehmedinovic on Vimeo .

This seems to me to be the defining journalism-whistle-blower story of this generation. It's rare in today's world when privileged people voluntarily choose to take steps whereby they give up comfortable lives to do something that is in the 'public good.' Mr. Snowden was clearly a computer whiz which explains why he got jobs at the CIA (including postings in Geneva under diplomatic cover). Booz Allen obviously did not hire him or pay him the $1,20,000 salary without Mr. Snowden showcasing some considerable technical expertise. I believe Mr. Snowden's expertise probably lies in having deep expertise in various flavors of Linux. That is what I am inclined to infer from his various job roles as a 'Systems Engineer' or 'System Administrator.' Being the self-driven sort of person that he was, I am sure he must be having good knowledge about networking and encryption stuff including but not limited to Cisco routers and related technologies. ...

Taking the Drake Equation forward or modifying it, researchers have attempted to find out — estimate — the total number of intelligent civilizations that have ever existed in the visible universe since the Big Bang. In their words; Abstract: In this paper we address the cosmic frequency of technological species. Recent advances in exoplanet studies provide strong constraints on all astrophysical terms in the Drake Equation. Using these and modifying the form and intent of the Drake equation we show that we can set a firm lower bound on the probability that one or more additional technological species have evolved anywhere and at any time in the history of the observable Universe. We find that as long as the probability that a habitable zone planet develops a technological species is larger than ~10-24, then humanity is not the only time technological intelligence has evolved. This constraint has important scientific and philosophical consequences. The paper . ...

All that needs to be said: The best that humans can be! And the mandatory: it's been three years already since that day in August!?

This is fantastic news after all. http://www.breakthroughinitiatives.org/News/1 The work that began with pioneers like Frank Drake now proceeds forward. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/20/the-new-100-million-search-for-life-in-the-cosmos/ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/science/yuri-milner-russian-entrepreneur-promises-100-million-for-alien-search.html

That's all. The photos are breathtaking and the landscape is alien. Other-worldly!

You can see a color video .

From the Rolling Stone article about birth tourism. Wonder how many such cases of birth tourism are happening from India. I remember reading about people (from India) going to the U.S. to give birth in the India Today during the pre-internet days. Must be more than 20 years ago.

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...