The Scientific Indian
Archives for October, 2009
Raymond Carver: On Writing
Posted by Selva on October 29, 2009 Read On Writing by Carver if you harbor ambitions, then print the good lines and stick it on your wall. I came by this piece via an article in Guardian by Stuart Evers. I am going to skip what Stuart said and point you to what interested me most in Carver’s essay. Ambition and a…
Pollution in China
Posted by Selva on October 23, 2009 This is and will be a burden on the World’s conscience, the dark continent of our time. The images are devastating. Xuanwei (宣威) in Yunnan province is a cancer village. Every year there are more than 20 people die of cancer. 11-year-old student Xu Li (徐丽) is suffering from bone cancer. May 8, 2007 “Pollution…
Gin and Tonic
Posted by Selva on October 15, 2009 Something to read while having it. Why do people still drink it although there are no malarial mosquitoes where it is now had (such as, by me right now in Amersham)? Well, what can we say except that history is arbitrary and it has the advantage of being in the past and hence unquestionable.
Higgs Bosons from the future are messing about at LHC
Posted by Selva on October 13, 2009 They are already here, they are amidst us, they zip through our heads affecting LHC funding, they come from future and cunningly prevent their production at LHC by affecting the present. Meet Bosons from the future. So, this in short, is the paper by two physicists discussed in this NY Times article. Dr. Nielson said…
Bladeless fan
Posted by Selva on October 13, 2009 The nifty Dyson’s Air Multiplier. Air multiplier, molecule mover…
Could Evolution Stop?
Posted by Selva on October 9, 2009 Let’s see if we can figure this out from first principles. Limiting ourselves to biological evolution, evolution needs a few things to work in practice:- -a mechanism of inheritance. Genes in our case. Consider stones. Stones don’t have genes. Stones don’t evolve (biologically, that is. I know a pebble back in my village river that…
The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
Posted by Selva on October 8, 2009 Inspired and inspiring young man from Africa William Kamkwamba. Watched him on The Daily Show just now.
TheScian SF Contest 2009 – Closed for submissions
Posted by Selva on October 5, 2009 Congrats to all the participants who took the critical first step by courageously sending your baby into the wild. The number of submissions this year is eleven which is not too many. I hope to provide good feedback to authors as I can spend more time with fewer stories. The book preparation is coming along…
Pablo Neruda at Kings Place tomorrow
Posted by Selva on October 4, 2009 There’s a reading at Kings place tomorrow. See here for details. You’ll have to buy tickets. If you read Neruda, I don’t have to tell you it will be worth the money. I hear there will be a screening of a reading by Neruda himself.
Dinosaur eggs in Tamilnadu
Posted by Selva on October 2, 2009 Loads of them reports the Beebs. Quite a remarkable find and it seems already some information has been gleaned of their past. “The leader of the team, MU Ramkumar, told the BBC the finding is significant and could help to unravel the mystery about the extinction of dinosaurs. The important finding is that these eggs…