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POPSLinguistic superpowers The book Limits of Language by Swedish linguist Mikael Parkvall is a sort of languages-only Guinness Book of Records, listing everything that’s large, small and otherwise interesting about the manifold manners of human speech and associated forms of communication. One item deals with the world’s most linguistically diverse countries, and is illustrated with this map, of the world’s ‘linguistic superpowers’.
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POPSIs Time disappearing from the universe? At an everyday level, the change would not be perceptible. However, it would be obvious from cosmic scale measurements tracking the course of the universe over billions of years. The change would be infinitesimally slow from a human perspective, but in terms of the vast perspective of cosmology, the study of ancient light from suns that shone billions of years ago, it could easily be measured Difficult to fathom.
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POPSTolstoy & Gandhi: Two Giants Bound By Pacifism
Enlightening account of the relationship between Tolstoy & Gandhi "In South Africa, Tolstoy's writings landed on the desk of a young Indian dissident, Mahatma Gandhi. He was overwhelmed, declaring that after reading Tolstoy his "lack of faith in non-violence vanished." He hung a picture of Tolstoy on his office wall and named the camp where he trained activists in peaceful resistance Tolstoy Farm. Gandhi wrote five letters to Leo Tolstoy and received four in return, all glowing with praise and intellectual exchange. In his last letter, written in September 1910 only weeks before his death, Tolstoy told Gandhi that his activity was "the most central and important of all the work now being done in the world." Years later, Gandhi repaid the compliment, writing that he knew of no one "in India or anywhere else who has had as profound an understanding of nonviolence as Tolstoy had." Tolstoy had inspired Gandhi's legendary instruction to "be the change you want to see in the worl
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POPSKnowing me, knowing Moo Cow art by Caroline Shotton. I refer to myself as the "Madcow", and my father calls me "Moocow", so I was delighted to discover this "Mooart". I think it's rather cute.
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POPSTime Travel in the Brain Perhaps areas that are lit up are where new pathways are being formed, and dark areas are where old pathways are 'studied' or remembered. Where, while the brain may not literally be able to 'see' the future, our choices are being refined, by the projection of possible outcomes of choices, based on past experience.
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POPSSleep Last Night?............ Don't forget they are serving to protect us and the world. Makes us realize our problems are minuscule, no matter how bad they are. They are our true heroes!
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POPSThe Physics of Information: What the Universe Doesn't Want You to Know The panellists for the discussion were:Dr. Leonard Susskind is widely recognized as one of the most creative researchers in the field of theoretical particle physics. Dr. Seth Lloyd is a Professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. Dr. Christopher Fuchs is a Long Term Visitor with Perimeter Institute and is an adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of New Mexico. Sir Anthony Leggett is from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
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