What Makes People Tick?

Vox.com presents an interesting article with 40 maps that show the start and spread of the internet. It looks like it all started in America, spreading from there to Europe and beyond. Reading this article made me wonder - didn't Dan Brown once write that the internet started at CERN? (Or some part of the technology that makes the internet possible anyway... Heck, it was a long, long time ago that I read his books...) "The internet increasingly pervades our lives, delivering information to us no matter where we are. It takes a complex system of cables, servers, towers, and other infrastructure, developed over decades, to allow us to stay in touch with our friends and family so effortlessly. Here are 40 maps that will help you better understand the internet — where it came from, how it works, and how it's used by people around the world." Source:  40 maps that explain the internet , Vox.com Maps 14 and 15 shows domain names around the world. The first map shows E...

This makes me happy!  Interactive maps that are easy to use and compare! Want to see what war, climate change or a forest fire do to a geographical region - Google Maps can show you! Daily Mail article here

Check out this very cool vid of Europe's shifting borders over the past 1000 years. Video here at Loiter.co The rise and fall of Hitler's Germany and of the Soviet Union look especially spectacular! Hope y'all enjoy!

According to this nature.com article; Italian scientists have managed to detect and measure dark matter ---AGAIN !!!  I love living in a world where technology makes it possible to research that which is so immensely far away or HUGE or alien or different that we never before thought it was possible to learn more about it. Who would have thought only  a few hundred years ago that we would be mapping the brain, performing open heart surgery or sending people into space? Who but the most imaginative sci-fi writer could have thought up our current technological and scientific advances? I love it! :-)

It may sound like it comes straight from science fiction but is very much becoming reality. How cool is this!!! A 'telepathy machine' that reconstructs speech from brain waves! I quoted the article's introduction below to give you an idea of how amazing this is! "When you read this sentence to yourself, it's likely that you hear the words in your head. Now, in what amounts to technological telepathy, others are on the verge of being able to hear your inner dialogue too. By peering inside the brain, it is possible to reconstruct speech from the activity that takes place when we hear someone talking." --  Telepathy machine reconstructs speech from brain waves  - New Scientist

To people who lived only a few hundred years ago, things we take for granted today like electricity, cars, cellphones and computers would have seemed like magic or the work of gods and demons. In the same way, things that we currently don't know, can't explain or attribute to otherworldly sources may be common knowledge or easily explained by science only a hundred or two hundred years from now. I hope today's article sparks your curiosity - and opens your mind! "Researchers at Harvard University have created the first noninvasive brain-to-brain interface (BBI) between a human… and a rat. Simply by thinking the appropriate thought, the BBI allows the human to control the rat’s tail. This is one of the most important steps towards BBIs that allow for telepathic links between two or more humans ..." -- Article Source: Extreme Tech