New Friend

A curious little fella I met at the Ontario Marine land!

 All in all we bonded well. I wonder if he thought I was the one trapped behind the glass.

 He's chubby but in a good, healthy way.

 Bye bye!

The greatest love of all!

Shifting balance of darkness and light

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Rest, made increasingly impossible by the omnipresent force of the World Wide Web, can be found at Muskoka which is isolated enough to only have one 1994 computer for around 10 cottages. Fishing, exploring, waking up at 5am daily, going out on a boat - I had a great time!

The beaches there are generally pleasant but not really anything special - that is until sunset. The parting sun transforms the surroundings into splashing colors of yellow (pic 1 taken @ 8:21PM), deep red (pic 2 taken @ 8:45PM), and the gradients of the two. A contradictory presence of both increased light and increased darkness floods the lake. The sunset draws people out of their cottages, attracting the everlasting real vampires - mosquitoes. But what is really great is the peace and serenity. I really had an amazingly restful week. 

Truffle (so much for an original title)

As I outlined in my miniature manifesto a couple posts back, the "New Direction" post, I am going to be changing styles. Less talking - more pictures. Less resting - more posting. Less opinions & more creativity. Fancying myself to be an aspiring amateur photographer, I share the common weakness of the creative folk - the need to share. That is why I will use this blog as a vehicle for sharing my thoughts and life, not in the elongated text blocks, but in a more concise, visual, and hopefully more entertaining way!

This is a chocolate truffle that my friend made for me a while back :) She wanted me to take a picture of it for her blog, but it never found its way there. I do love desserts though, so I thought I would start my photo reel with something special! It is easy to get lost in chasing macro-opportunities, especially in the hyper-competitive environment which many of us are facing. But it is often the little moments which add up to constitute one long, unnoticeable continuum of a happy life. A banal wisdom, but banality itself never makes things false. Right now I just want a truffle!

Speeches. Starting out : Inspirations & Unique Style

While I am not a particularly creative type in every medium, I do shamelessly admit to having a few talents. Art isn't one of them. But what I am good at, is being a good orator.

I never underwent any specific training and deep inside - I am an introvert, though I try not to openly exhibit this socially shunned quality. But my speeches just worked out. The very first speech I did while still in ESL, and won a school award for it. I did great speeches in Russian, English, French and even Chinese with awards and high praise.

I have also joined a club, Toastmasters International. This club focuses on helping people perfect their spoken delivery. As an executive, I have tried my best to help others learn what I guess came naturally to me. To a certain extent, because I still have a lot of room to develop as well.

For Toastmasters, I have written a small tutorial for starting out in speeches and it is something I want to share with you guys :) Alright, enough of an intro. Let's jump into it!

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Starting out : Inspirations & Unique Style

One picture is worth a thousand words. A quote used to identify the best medium for spreading ideas, it definitely applies to perfecting a skill. Learning to tie a tie can be more effective to a YouTube video than to a set of word instructions. Learning a martial art is more effective in demonstration than in writing. Learning to speak is no different. 

As a speaker is more and more developed, they begin to define a profoundly their own style. It is evident in what a speaker accentuates, their pace, their attitude and how they carry themselves. It is evident in how they address the audience. A speaker's style is something that separates them from the rest and gets them noticed. As they get noticed, more interest is given to what they are saying. Thus, what they're saying acquires greater reach. 

Developing a style takes practice - that is for sure. It isn't forced - it comes naturally. But to aid its development, an aspiring speaker should definitely devote some time to observing the styles of others. A picture is definitely worth more than a thousand words here - everyone know that eye contact and audience engagement are good. However, upon actually viewing some great speakersand visually engaging with their speeches, a learner acquires a far deeper understanding of what works best for them to make them unique.

A style matures with the maturity of the speaking skill that the learner possesses. However, by starting to watch other people speak early, that style matures quicker and the learner acquires greater inspiration. That is why, at least in the belief of the reader, before focusing on the metrics of the speech (eye contact, voice projection, motion, etc.) - one should first find speakers they are inspired by. This will motivate you to get better and push you in the right direction. 

Everyone is different in how they choose their inspirations. Some can look at one speaker, others can have a few. Some may mimic their speeches, some may just watch. Whatever works for you best. You do not have to agree with the speaker's views to learn from how well they use oral communication. Hitler was a very expressive and one of the most powerful modern-age speakers, having moved millions. Nazism should not be tolerated but Hitler was talented, even though he used his talent for evil. Martin Luther King is a common inspiration. Some look in movies to find great examples to follow - Al Pacino performed a number of great monologues. Find these on YouTube.

A lot of people just jump to perfecting the physical aspects of their speech and how well they use the elements which are available to them. But what makes a good speech great is the passion of the speaker and no words will teach you how to portray passion. Pictures, videos - on the other hand, might. 

Large Hadron Collider was worth it?!

Wow! I'm back. This is truly shocking even to myself, I mean when was my last post?! Eras ago, I know. I mean even Blogger changed since then, it also managed to delete all of the pictures I ever uploaded. Sorry for my long absence.

Well, as wonderful as my glorious return is - the more rattling recent event is the discovery of the Higgs Boson! Something so small is having such a ripple effect among the scientific and the non-scientific communities alike. Don't forget the over-stimulated social media as well. No, it does not "cancel out physics", as some may believe, but it does open new horizons and while solidifying past theories, it is a big step into the bright future of us finally understanding where the beep do we live, or so what is the universe?

On top of that, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which took 30 years to build using $6.4 US dollars of financing finally fulfilled its purpose. A speculative investment, but knowledge is power and science is progress. I don't know where I got my recent manner to speak in general-sounding not-really-that-meaningful pseudo-deep statements, a nasty habit of shallow minds. But LHC was indeed worth it! The Higgs Boson is important, and to those who are still lagging behind the curve in understanding why - here is a brief point-form explanation:

• There are only 4 forces in the universe ("nuclear strong force", "nuclear weak force", "gravity", "electromagnetism"). 
• Fields, such as the electromagnetic field, are not like a secluded, defined, invisible areas in which the forces (ex. electromagnetism) operates. It is more like a fog of virtual photons which radiates from the point source of the field. 
• All 4 forces are carried by these virtual particles, called virtual because they exist only for a limited time and space & are in a way abstractions that cannot be described in terms of real particles but are used to represent carriers of force. These particles are called Gauge bosons. 
• We've seen all of them except for the graviton - the boson of gravity. 
• All forces have a point source from which the bosons radiate. 

That, is an essential explanation of what is happening in the universe. From there we can theorize about why things act the way they do, have the properties they have, where energy comes from etc. One question though could not be answered through this model - why does matter have mass? 

• There are some particles with very small mass, like electrons, other particles with huge amounts of mass - what makes them different? Size - no, they are all of the same size-less no-volume size! 
• In the 1960's, a number of theorists including Higgs theorized that there is a special field which permeates the entire universe evenly, not from a point source like the four source fields. An evenly distributed fog of force carriers which some particles interact more with than others. 
• So a top quark, with 350000x more mass than an electron, just interacts with this permeating field more than the electron. Photons (light particles) don't interact with it at all, which is why they are always flying around with the speed of light. If there would be no mass then everything else would be flying with the speed of light, and not in a good superman way. 
• A simpler way to represent it is that a real particle passing through the Higgs field (which is everywhere) gets infused with mass as certain Higgs field particles attach themselves to it.
• The Higgs boson is not the type of particle that attaches itself to other particles to give them mass, but it is the particle which we can theoretically observe to verify the existence of the Higgs field. 

So by slamming particles together with sufficient energy (and mass = energy), we have excited the Higgs field enough to verify the existence of the Higgs boson & further prove out hypothesis of why matter has mass. 

Did I say a brief explanation? HA I LIED! But I hope it cleared things up a bit :)

Confirming a 50 year old theory may not be as fun as those other news from LHC back in the day shaking Einstein's theories (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/09/110923-neutrinos-speed-of-light-particles-cern-physics-einstein-science/) - what happened to that by the way? But it does matter either way. Here is the part where I realize that it is 1am, this text is already very long, so I'll instead refer you to another long text for all you reading-lovers where CNN popularly explains WHY this discovery is important. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/07/04/f-god-particle-higgs-boson.html They haven't paid me for this advertisement. 

As for the moniker of "god particle" assigned to the Higgs boson, that probably refers to the importance we assign to matter having mass as something necessary for existance... I guess flying all over the universe in a deconstructed separate-particles state only sounds fun before you start imaging it :/ Oh well. Goodnight everyone :) 

Once again...

Alright, so here is the deal.

I know that I have been kind of (very) behind on this blog, that the one-year anniversary has passed, that my promise to get back to it got unfulfilled, and yes - all the pictures have been replaced by the exclamation mark triangles and I have not done anything to fix it.

Truth is, I like blogging and seeing the results once I write them made me feel proud. It is just a commitment right now which I cannot put on myself as my life is currently governed by a few high priorities. I have to get good marks in university, I have to do good work at my job, and also, very importantly, I am seeking ways to allocate more time for my family. Lately, I wasn't able to spend as much time with my younger brother, my grandparents and my parents. I miss them but it is just hard to make time.

Please be patient, I know it's been a while. I will not make any promises, perhaps if I do get back to blogging - I will start fresh (then all will be notified here about a new blog I'm doing!). I'm just trying to figure out my time and set my head straight at this point of my life. Hopefully, all will work out and then I will get back to doing what I like - blogging.

Physics No More

I am back. This post is, however, not about me - but about something that may change the very pillars of how we view the universe.

Internet is going wild. A shocking finding appeared on Forbes 13 minutes ago, Reuters an hour ago, and on another major news source 13 seconds ago. Articles are multiplying as I type.

CERN, the infamous large hadron collider, produced some unexpected results. Neutrinos (tiny particles with many puzzling properties) which were fired by the collider into the receptors 750km away, have arrived at the speed faster than the speed of light.

The difference in speed has been subtle. But it has been formulated by Einstein that the speed of light is constant and nothing in the Universe can travel faster than light. Physics has since then relied on this concept to explain matter, mass, the Universe - everything! The results published today override E = MC^2. Time travel is now no longer science fiction. Our whole understanding of nature is under question.

"Einstein's special relativity theory that says energy equals mass times the speed of light squared underlies "pretty much everything in modern physics," said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN who was not involved in the experiment. "It has worked perfectly until now."

Scientists are being cautious and many follow up tests will be conducted to measure the accuracy of results. But if it holds true then this is not just another finding. It is a revolution.

What an interesting time to be a physicist.