June 2012
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500 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies,... →
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Scientists twist light to transmit an astounding... →
Researchers in the United States and Israel have created infinite-capacity wireless vortex beams that can carry 2.5 terabits per second – that’s enough to transmit seven full Blu-ray movies every second. This may be the fastest wireless network ever created, a breakthrough that could revolutionize the development of faster wireless and fiber-optic networks.
Scientists have been...
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Get Ready, Because Voyager I Is *This Close* to... →
Last week, in the corners of the Internet devoted to outer space, things started to get a little, well, hot. Voyager 1, the man-made object farthest away from Earth, was encountering a sharp uptick in the number of a certain kind of energetic particles around it. Had the spacecraft become the first human creation to “officially” leave the solar system?
It’s hard to overstate...
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Calvinball in Cairo || Foreign Policy →
The best guide to the chaos of Egyptian politics is Hobbes. No, not Thomas Hobbes —- Calvin and Hobbes. Analysts have been arguing since the revolution over whether to call what followed a transition to democracy, a soft coup, an uprising, or something else entirely. But over the last week it’s become clear that Egyptians are in fact caught up in one great game of Calvinball.
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It’s Official: Neutrinos Can’t Beat Speed of Light... →
Physicists at the CERN laboratory have put the final nail in the coffin for the idea that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light. They also confirmed that the groundbreaking results from 2011 can be blamed on faulty equipment….
At the International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics in Kyoto on June 8, CERN research director Sergio Bertolucci presented results on...
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Plastic Straw Bans Are the New Plastic Bag Bans ||... →
Unlike plastic bags or utensils, which harm the environment while actually serving a useful purpose, drinking straws have no reason to exist other than to provide a crumb of luxury to a paying customer. Nobody will suffer unduly if these plastic tubes are removed from their mouths; in fact, that would only streamline the traditional drinking method of lips-meet-liquid.
I will suffer...
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An Economy Built to Stall: With a third slowdown... →
Well, this week makes it official. The weakest economic recovery since World War II has become weaker still, sinking into a spring slowdown for the third year in a row. Are we finally ready to debate a change in the policies that have led to this pass?
On Thursday the government reported that growth in the first quarter was 1.9%, even weaker than the 2.2% initial estimate. Then Friday delivered...
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Discovery at al-Magar || horsetalk →
Over the next few years, Ibn Gublan unearthed some 300 objects there. Though none was as large as the first, his finds included a small stone menagerie: ostrich, sheep and goats; what may be fish and birds; a cow-like bovid (Bovidae); and an elegant canine profile that resembles one of the oldest known domesticated breeds, the desert saluki. In addition, he found mortars and pestles, grain...
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Turing and the Test of Time | IEEE Spectrum →
The centenary of Alan Turing’s birth is being greeted by an extraordinary response, not only in mathematical and scientific circles but in a much wider public arena. It marks the awareness that he was one of the 20th century’s seminal figures, whose brief life is better appreciated in the 21st century than in his own.
One reason for this fascination is that he was an unworldly person at the heart...
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The roar of the crowd: Crowdsourcing is... →
According to Joseph Henrich and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia, most undergraduates are WEIRD. Those who teach them might well agree. But Dr Henrich did not intend the term as an insult when he popularised it in a paper published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 2010. Instead, he was proposing an acronym: Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic.
One reason...
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We Are All Persian Grammarians Now || Sohrab... →
As the Iranian mullahs’ nuclearization drive reaches its end goal, Western policymakers face a narrowing range of bad options. There are difficult choices ahead, and those choices are made all the more difficult by Tehran’s long track record of vicious rhetoric directed at Israel—the most notorious example of which was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call in 2005 for Israel to be “wiped...
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Stability trumps all other concerns in China || Yu... →
Today, Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is serving an 11-year prison sentence. Unrelenting abuse and threats from state security forces sent me into exile to the United States in January. And barely four months later, Chen Guangcheng has made the same journey. Our three fates should remind the world that, contrary to myths and assumptions, economic liberalization and development...
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