Have you ever watched a space shuttle launch before?
You can watch on YouTube, this video by NASAtelevision of Atlantis STS-129 launch to the International Space Station. You see the countdown, launch, and solid rocket booster separation. You also get commentary on what exactly is happening as well as hearing the crew in the shuttle and controllers.
The commentator gives interesting facts and explanation (providing stats on the shuttle speed and time of the flight)
Video report on DemocracyNow.org with a report from Smita Narula in 2011…
According to statistics, a quarter of a million Indian farmers committed suicide in the last 16 years. Doing some math, this is equivalent to one suicide every 30 minutes for years.
This is due to insurmountable debt caused by government’s removal of agricultural subsidies and global competition with genetically modified cotton seeds which are resistance to pests. Farmers go into debt in order to purchase these more expensive seeds in order to compete. Unfortunately these seeds require more water than traditional seeds. And since most farms in India are watered by rain and have lack of irrigation, the crops often fail. Trapped in a cycle of insurmountable debt, some farmers consume the pesticide that they purchased in order to kill themselves. Some write suicide notes to government hoping that someone would listen.
One farmer had to put her teenage children to work in the 7 acre farm. After daily toiling for a year, they probably earn about $250 for the entire year.
Paul Nicklen gave a Ted talk in 2011 where he showed this beautiful slideshow of an Antarctic animals set to music which includes some great shots of a rare white bear. He also got some great shots of leopard seals when he got into the water with them. Besides having very beautiful photographs, the talk also has some humor in it. But the main point of the talk is to generate awareness of the global warming problem and its danger to the wildlife that inhabits the icy world. You also see a photograph of a dead polar bear.
The Vega Science Trust video collection has a video linked here of Professor Paul Davies giving a scientific talk on wormholes and the possibility of time travel. The lecture is targeted to the general audience so you do not need to be a physicist to understand it. In fact, Davies showed only two equations and one of them is the famous “e equals m c squared”.
There are very interesting ideas and some time travel paradoxes presented. Another article explains some paradoxes of time travel.
He made reference to singularity, anti-gravity, relativity, black hole, world line, and space time diagrams. The idea to get out of this lecture is that physics does not preclude the possibility of time travel. And in fact time travel into the future is possible and the effects can be measured. It is time travel into the past that is tougher. It is not that the laws of physics prevent it, but that to achieve it would be so great of an undertaking that practicality precludes it. There were some bits of humor in the lecture and Davies concluded with a great ending.
There was a small question and answer session at the end where Davies made a point that if in fact a time machine can be invented, it can never bring a person back to a time before the machine’s invention.
Whether time travel is possible or not is a question that physicists are still debating. They may not come up with a definitive answer until the quantum mechanics and general relativity have been unified under the grand unified theory (of which they are still working on).
In this 2004 TED.com video, Steven Levitt presents analysis of drug dealing economics.
Steven Levit is the author of Freakonomics. Drug dealing is not as lucrative as some people might think, or as what is portrayed in the movies. It turns out that the lowest tier drug dealer makes the equivalent of $3.50 per hour — this is lower than the minimum age — which is why some drug dealer have to work part-time at McDonalds.
Worse than that is that it is a dangerous profession, with the chances of being killed on the same ballpark as that of soldiers in a war zone. Inner city drug dealers has about a 25% chance of getting killed over a four-year period.
In the video he compares the organization of drug gangs to that of the organization of McDonald’s where there are different tiers, levels, and hierarchy. Unlike the low-tier drug dealer, drug gang leaders (equivalent to that of a McDonald’s franchisee owner), however can make substantial amount of money — about $100,000 a year.
The video does have some humor injected into it by the presenter.
Demetri Martin is a comic in New York City. You can see some of his video clips on ComedyCentral linked here. I would classify a lot of his joke into the category of “observational humor” and reminds me a lot of the style of Seinfeld. His joke are relatively clean (relatively speaking as compared to other comedians).
Martin got a degree from Yale and almost got a degree from NYU School of Law (which he had received full scholarship to). But he dropped out of law school to become a comedian one year prior to graduation [source Wikipedia].
Here is an article interview of Martin.
Watch this Nova video documentary about the technology of using hydrogen fuel cell in powering cars. The video is hosted by Robert Krulwich and starring Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the CarTalk brothers who does the weekly Cartalk radio show.
The video is 14 minutes long. The promise of fuel cells is very appealing as it makes cars emit nothing except water as a by product. However, the difficulty is getting enough hydrogen and storing it in the fuel tank. You can learn more about how fuel cells work in this Clickable Car.
Explains the dangers of sugar in particular the fructose. Common sugar contains 50% fructose. High fructose corn syrup contains even more at 55% fructose. That is why high fructose corn syrup is so bad for you.
He explains in biochemical details as to how sugar turns into fat. He actually will say that sugar is toxic. Because he explains in such scientific rigor, after watching the video, you will most likely become convinced of the dangers of sugar.
The question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, results in a paradoxical answer. The answer, regardless of which one it is, will lead to another question that contradicts that answer. If you say chicken came first, then the question is where is the egg from which the chicken came from. If you say egg came first, then the question is where is the chicken that laid the egg?
So far the best answer I found was from the ASAPScience video …
There are many videos on YouTube talking about making money online. But this video linked here by Darren Rowse actually makes a lot of sense. Darren Rowse is the founder of Problogger.net and have written the book ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.