All That Glitters Isn't Gold

“I respect orders but I respect myself too and I do not obey to foolish rules made especially to humiliate me.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Earthquakes don't come with time tickets

WHITE NOISE

General Topic : Science Why Does White Noise Help People Sleep? A white noise machine is the simplest solution to blocking out noise. On its face, flipping on white noise before hitting the sack must be the most counterintuitive idea out there. Want to sleep better? Simple solution: make a bunch of noise. Sweet dreams ahoy. And yet, not only do some people swear they can't get to sleep without a fan running, there are even companies that will sell you optimized noise-makers for helping you get the best of your bed rest. What is up with our brains and our ears? The short answer: white noise is betternoise. At least for (some) sleepers. White noise, if you're using the technical definition, is a consistent noise that comes out evenly across all hearable frequencies. Say you're a musician. To play a middle C note, you play something that's about 261.6 hertz, the unit of frequency. White noise is just an equal amount at every frequency, from low to high, that a human being can hear. To keep the music analogy going, it's a gigantic band all playing a slightly different note. (Machines pushed to the limit, like fans, are especially good at hitting these notes.) When a noise wakes you up in the night, it's not the noise itself that wakes you up, per se, but the sudden change or inconsistencies in noise that jar you. White noise creates a masking effect, blocking out those sudden changes that frustrate light sleepers, or people trying to fall asleep. "The simple version is that hearing still works while you're asleep," says Seth S. Horowitz, a neuroscientist and author of The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind. "This is why the majority of bedpartners prefer the constant white noise of a CPAP machine rather than their spouse’s crescendo-decrescendo snoring sounds," Clete A. Kushida, director of the Stanford Center for Human Sleep Research, writes in an email to Popular Science. Makes sense, right? But it's not always that straightforward.  For one thing, there's pink noise. There's some semi-complicated math involved, but essentially, pink noise is white noise, but with the higher frequencies turned down in intensity. White noise has equal power across all frequencies; pink noise comes out louder and more powerful on the lower ends of the sound spectrum. That could be helpful for people suffering from tinnitus, or who just find the upper registers of true white noise unpleasant. The noise family tree doesn't stop there, either: depending on which frequencies you tone down or up, you might also produce Brown noise, (named for a person, not a color) violet noise, and a mess of other colors. Different folks might prefer different sounds. And, of course, not everyone needs that noise. In some people, the masking effect of white noise can do the exact opposite of what it does for most people--actually increasing sensitivity to underlying sounds, Horowitz says. In the strange, not-totally-explained world of stochastic resonance, people are occasionally able to pick up noises "masked" with white noise better than they are at picking up the noise in total silence. But that's an explanation article for another time. You look like you need some rest. Credits: Colin Lecher February 17, 2014

If a smile lasts for more than a minute, it's a con-man's ruse

Captain Holt from Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Blessed are the forgetful; for they get over their blunders

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

Stephen Hawking (via quotemadness)

Quickest Way

Is to do exactly what you are afraid to do.

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Zombie apocalypse statistics

When buried six feet down, without a coffin, in ordinary soil, an unembalmed adult normally takes eight to twelve years to decompose to a skeleton. However if placed in a coffin the body can take many years longer, depending on type of wood used. For example a solid oak coffin will hughly slow down the process.

Assuming everyone is buried without a coffin and in normal soil, there would be 31517016 zombies purely risen from the dead. You would be wondering why 31517016 zombies, the math is, 2626418 is the average number of people dieing per annum and 12 is the number for years (maximum) for a body to decompose, 2626418 × 12 = 31517016 All the dead people buried before 12 years ago, would have already decompose and will not be considered undead. So with 7 Billion living humans (with modern technology) verses 31517016 undead classic zombies, who as slow, witless and only react to sound, We can survive a zombie apocalypse with ease.

BUT

If the undead is considered to be all the dead people till now, that would be 107 billion zombie against 7 billion zombie. Making that around 15 zombies for every 1 living human. The chances of surviving is slim.

Beautiful proofs (#4) - When Gauss was a young child...

The legend goes something like this:

Gauss’s teacher wanted to occupy his students by making them add large sets of numbers and told everyone in class to find the sum of 1+2+3+ …. + 100.

And Gauss, who was a young child (age ~ 10) quickly found the sum by just pairing up numbers:

Using this ingenious method used by Gauss allows us to write a generic formula for the sum of first n positive integers as follows:

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

-Elie Wiesel when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, in the New York Times 11 December 1986.