The 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin will be celebrated on 12 February 2009.

Because Darwin was one of the greatest thinkers in history there are lots of preparations going on around the world to celebrate this special event. Information for schools and others can be found here at Darwin 200.

You may be interested to know that the complete works of Darwin are online. This site contains all his publications, 20,000 private papers, the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue and hundreds of supplementary works: specimens, biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and a gem is his first formulation of the theory of natural selection.

About 90,000 pages of manuscripts, field notes, photographs and sketches connected with Charles Darwin are online where they can be viewed free.

Medical animator David Bolinsky presents 3 minutes of stunning animation that show the bustling life inside a cell.

Built by his company, XVIVO, to teach Harvard medical students, the clip features sweeping cinematic values and even a little drama. It communicates not only the facts of life, but life’s truth and beauty.

HUMOUR: Ask the question:
What is quite funny about this?

Humour involves the appreciation of oddness.

In humour there is the willingness to enjoy seeing the OTHER SIDE of things, the willingness to see fresh points of view, to see them and appreciate them without necessarily feeling the need to adopt them as one’s own.

Humour includes flexibility in the way we can look at information, the humour of creativity, and the humour of insight. Humour means seeing things in a different way. Appreciating the value of differences.

There’s the humour of wisdom, the humour of balance and tolerance, the humour of plurality. The enjoyment of surprise, chance and variety. The good mood, the sound of laughter, good humour and good health.

What is the human global brainpower?

How many human brains in the world?

As of this post there are: 6,706,760,775

For the latest number you can click here and go to the US Census Bureau anytime and check their population clock.

GLOBAL VILLAGE 100
What if we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people with all the existing human ratios remaining the same? What would that little global village look like?

This micro-village would look something the following. There would be:

Think about it and post your comment:
When you think about the world from this compressed perspective what, in your opinion, is the most interesting thing for you to consider?

Think of your brain as a necktop computer. Which, of course, it is.

Your brain’s computing power, with its massive network of over 100 billion brain cells, is around 100 TFlop/s (“teraflops” or trillions of calculations per second).

Each one of your billions of brain cells is like a computer processing unit—taking information IN and sending it OUT. It’s the earth’s supreme intelligent machine. And, you are a lucky owner.

The problem is how to boost your brain’s software because the software you are currently using is over 2500 years old!

DID YOU KNOW?
• The worlds #1 supercomputer is–BlueGene–at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California which was built by IBM.
• It has set a new record of 136 TFlop/s (“teraflops” or trillions of calculations per second).
• But human brains are still better than supercomputers in many respects.
• BlueGene will have 50 terabytes (trillion bytes) of memory while the brain has a 100 terabyte capacity.
• Brains are portable. BlueGene is the size of two basketball courts and weighs 200 tons.
• The average brain is 56 cubic inches and weighs 3.3 pounds.
• The human brain is distinguished by its ability to think and create in addition to simply processing information quickly.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE …
There’s one big difference between your brain and a supercomputer: consciousness.

You are aware of this difference and a computer is not.

Computers do not have emotions, thoughts and dreams. At least not yet! Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly developing emotional capabilities in computers and robots.

When we first started teaching sports thinking to triathletes ten years ago there were those who thought we were being facetious if not downright oxymoronic. But, think about it!

Why should sports be protected from thinking?

“Sports and games are hurdling borders as never before, breeding fresh champions, creating new wealth and changing the lives of individuals and the destiny of nations” writes International Editor, Michael Elliott, in a Special Edition of Time magazine titled Games People Play.

He goes on to write about ‘Serious Fun’ and that, “In this Olympic Year, we chose as our topic the games people play, and the ways in which sports are an essential part of our humanity”.

••• See also School of Sports Thinking at Australian Sports Commission

••• See also  Sports legend named Australian Thinker of the Year

The smell of a flower - The memory of a walk in the park - The pain of stepping on a nail. These experiences are made possible by the 3 pounds of tissue in our heads…the BRAIN!!

Neuroscience for Kids has been created for all students and teachers who would like to learn about the nervous system.

Discover the exciting world of the brain, spinal cord, neurons and the senses. Use the experiments, activities and games to help you learn about the nervous system. Portions of Neuroscience for Kids are available in Spanish, Slovene, Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Japanese and Turkish.

The best-seller, Software For The Brain (Wrightbooks 1989), was first published by Michael Hewitt-Gleeson 18 years ago in Australia and internationally and is now in its Fourth Edition.

FREE COPY: You can click here to download your own copy.

This book presents the ‘universal brain software’ which may be the most powerful brain software in the world.

Just imagine you owned the world’s most powerful iPod which could easily store a library of over 10,000 songs.

Now, imagine you posessed only one Patsy Cline CD to load and play on your iPod. There’s nothing wrong with Patsy but a daily diet of I Fall To Pieces and Your Cheatin’ Heart limits your long term music entertainment.

Similar limitations apply to your necktop computer if you only possess one brain software–logic–available for you to use.

Logic is useful enough for basic mathematics, labelling and mail-sorting and dealing with the past but it’s not nearly enough to help you cope with life and the challenges of the future.

THREE QUESTIONS (Write month/year in boxes)

1. Do you have access to a laptop, palmtop or desktop personal computer? If so, estimate when was the last time you added or upgraded the software?
______________
2. Do you have a sound system—a CD player, a vinyl turntable or an iPod/MP3 player? If so, when was the last time you added a CD or abum to your library, or some tracks to your playlist?
______________
3. Do you have a necktop computer—a brain? Yes, you do. When was the last time you added or upgraded your neuroware or brain software?
______________

THINK ABOUT THIS
If you were educated in the Western education system—Europe, the Americas, Australia etc—the brain software you are using, logic, is 2500 years old.

The logic operating system was developed by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Greece around 500 BCE. It was picked up by the Church via Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century and embedded in its education system which was then spread, with missionary zeal, around the world. The Western education system, with its RIGHT/WRONG logic brain software, may be Europe’s greatest historical export.