10 random things to learn on November 19th

10 random things to learn today:

How can we communicate the dangers of nuclear waste to future civilizations? – By Juliet Lapidos

During a 2004 cleanup operation at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, personnel digging through a trench uncovered a safe containing a glass bottle. And inside the bottle, white sludge. Tests identifying the substance as a type of plutonium gave way to more tests until, in the Spring of 2009, scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory revealed what, exactly, the crew had uncovered: A 1944 artifact from the fledgling nuclear weapons program—the oldest existing sample of bomb-grade plutonium from a nuclear reactor, with a half-life of 24,110 years. Although this sexagenarian sludge isn't dangerous to touch—its particles are too large to penetrate skin—it's poisonous if swallowed or inhaled and will be for centuries to come. Yet it was housed in a flimsy receptacle that should rightfully contain nothing more toxic than bleach.

Seven questions that keep physicists up at night – space – 23 October 2009 – New Scientist

It's not your average confession show: a panel of leading physicists spilling the beans about what keeps them tossing and turning in the wee hours.

That was the scene a few days ago in front of a packed auditorium at the Perimeter Institute, in Waterloo, Canada, when a panel of physicists was asked to respond to a single question: "What keeps you awake at night?"

The discussion was part of "Quantum to Cosmos", a 10-day physics extravaganza, which ends on Sunday.

While most panelists professed to sleep very soundly, here are seven key conundrums that emerged during the session, which can be viewed here.

Global Guide to Business Etiquette

Star Alliance airline network and PZ’s favorite monthly magazine, the very British Monocle, have issued a great traveling guide for business, cultural and local knowledge, illustrated by Satoshi Hashimoto.

As strong promoters of international relations, we are sharing with you these great tips to set you straight away on the right tracks wherever you go.

Enjoy and learn!

Book Review – 'What the Dog Saw – And Other Adventures,' by Malcolm Gladwell – Review

Have you ever wondered why there are so many kinds of mustard but only one kind of ketchup? Or what Cézanne did before painting his first significant works in his 50s? Have you hungered for the story behind the Veg-O-Matic, star of the frenetic late-night TV ads? Or wanted to know where Led Zeppelin got the riff in “Whole Lotta Love”?

Neither had I, until I began this collection by the indefatigably curious journalist Malcolm Gladwell. The familiar jacket design, with its tiny graphic on a spare background, reminds us that Gladwell has become a brand. He is the author of the mega-best sellers “The Tipping Point,” “Blink” and “Outliers”; a popular speaker on the Dilbert circuit; and a prolific contributor to The New Yorker, where the 19 articles in “What the Dog Saw” were originally published. This volume includes prequels to those books and other examples of Gladwell’s stock in trade: counterintuitive findings from little-known experts.

CNBC TRANSCRIPT: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates – Keeping America Great

The embodiment of the American dream, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, self-made billionaires whose values run as deep as their wealth. One redefined an industry, the other the modern investor. But both put their stock in America, and by investing in business and humanity, reaped the rewards of this great country's capitalist tradition. Today that tradition is under siege, our way of life questioned. And with America at an inflection point, a future generation looks for guidance from the world's two greatest capitalists. Now, they are going back to school, not to learn, but to teach. Showing the next generation of business leaders that wealth is not about the money you amass, but the number of lives you enrich. Tonight in a CNBC town hall event, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates share their secrets to keeping America great.

Five Things the U.S. Can Learn from China

Could the world's lone but weary superpower actually learn something from China? It's a politically incorrect question, of course. China is an authoritarian nation; its ruling Communist Party deals ruthlessly with any challenge to its hegemony. It remains, relatively speaking, a poor, developing country with huge problems to confront, massive corruption and environmental degradation being Nos. 1 and 1a. Still, this is a moment of humility for the U.S., and China is doing some important things right. If the U.S. were to ask the Chinese what it could learn from their example, it might gain some insight into what it's doing right and wrong. Here are five lessons from China's success story:

Looking for a Method in Cellphone Price Madness

HERE’S a consolation prize to the millions who recoil in bafflement from cellphone companies’ labyrinthine price plans, with their ever more intricate arrays of minutes, messages and megabytes: Economists don’t understand them, either.

• When Apple and AT&T started offering the iPhone for $199, plus $30 a month for Internet access, sales shot up, even though the previous deal — $399 for the phone and $20 a month — cost less over a two-year contract.

• Phone companies have doubled the price for text messages, to 20 cents each, in recent years, even though they cost almost nothing to deliver.

• When companies introduce certain discounts — like Sprint’s recent offer of free calling to any mobile number — the effect is that customers often switch to more expensive plans.

How To Keep Track Of What You’ve Learnt

Most people forget what they’ve just learnt within 12 and 24 hours. If you are reading this post now, chances are that tomorrow you’ll not even remember it.

Knowing this, we can try to understand why we forget what we’ve learnt just a few hours ago. When a new piece of information enters your brain, it is stored as a volatile information, because your brain doesn’t know if it’s useful or not.

Our brain works like a big search engine, when you insert a new piece of information, it goes on a big stack called short term memory. When you want to remember that information, your brain will try to search inside that stack for the information you requested.

This process happens asynchrony, that’s why you often remember a title of a song after many hours from your first attempt.

If you are trying to recall something after a long time (it can be even 1 hour for useless information), your brain will have an hard time finding it, as it’s more likely you have forget it.

20 Essential Tricks and Skills Every BitTorrent User Should Know | Maximum PC

To get started, you need a desktop client. We recommend using uTorrent, or uT for short. We prefer uTorrent based on its combination of advanced features, performance, and small footprint — in other words, it has all the makings of a power user program.

On the following pages, we'll not only show you how to get the most out of uTorrent, but out of BitTorrent in general. We'll cover both basic and advanced tips, and then toss in some of our favorite third-party add-ons for good measure. Whether you're new to BitTorrent or a seasoned vet, there's something in this guide for you.

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