thescian
Posts by this author
June 20, 2007
A timely review of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the novel that is keeping me awake for the past few nights. I'd have to leave it there and say no more: cannot do justice to the novel in a blog post, neither do I believe I have the maturity and understanding for it.
June 19, 2007
An old friend of mine forwarded an email with a picture of someone named Mataji Nirmala Devi who had the Indian flag at her feet. She is apparently a spiritual leader. Anyway, the email was the collective nationalistic scream of Indians (atleast the ones who have email access and occupy themselves…
June 19, 2007
You be careful when you name your girl child. It may affect what she turns into, Zuska notes.
You may notice many Indian names for girls end with 'a' (rhymes with 'yaaa', Ramya, Priya...). That goes back to Manu Smriti, the tribal codebook of a bunch of pretentious ancient men, which says a girl's…
June 19, 2007
Looks like the Sun has a cold and is oozing plasma.
Saw the video via APOD: "The Sun's photosphere has thousands of bumps called granules and usually a few dark depressions called sunspots. The above time-lapse movie centered on Sunspot 875 was taken last year by the Vacuum Tower Telescope in the…
June 18, 2007
First the bass guitarist walked onto the stage and started strumming, next was the man on piano, and then the man on drums.
Amidst the soft music and dim lights walked another man onto the stage. He didn't play any musical instrument. He was the instrument. He wore grey pants, a yellow shirt left…
June 17, 2007
Abi quotes from Indian Express It's official: a vast majority of our colleges are mediocre.
Lakshmi at nonoscience talks about the problems underlying Science Writing
My brother-in-law sends a link to Great Global Warming Swindle. I am yet to watch it. If you have watched it, chime in please.…
June 15, 2007
Blow it out and let the new fire ride the smoke stream baby!
Don't see nothing? Watch carefully a few times and let your eyes adjust for the dark. Took this video almost two years ago while I was in Atlanta. I was trying to put together a list of simple science videos for TheScian.com. Got any…
June 15, 2007
Hey, come back here! I assure you, I am not blogging from the toilet. Just watched Colbert have a very panguttaral (as opposed to cerebral) conversation with Dr Gershon, author of The Second Brain which says how our gut can really do the brain in - with a bloody diarrhea, as the doctor explained.…
June 15, 2007
Bruce Sterling is a science fiction author and design expert (Haven't read him? Start with Holy Fire). Watch him talk about Payphone design at MIT Technology Review website. How would Google design a Payphone? Hilarious and spot on. It's about two minutes into the video.
This month's Technology…
June 14, 2007
Ladies and gents, TheScian.com has woken up from slumber. After weeks of prodding, the new site with a new logo, new style and new everything is up.
Selected stories from last year's contest are published for your reading pleasure. This year's Science fiction Short Story Contest announcement is up…
June 14, 2007
Vision is one of the first and most useful applications of bionic systems. Our eyes, while they are wonderful, still suck, and are worse than octopus eyes. For a start, the optic nerves in humans go over the retina obstructing light instead of behind it. They then plunge through the retina creating…
June 13, 2007
There's a permanent display in London Science Museum of King George III's collection of scientific instruments in 18th century. Consider Boyle-Hooke Vacuum pump made in 1659.
It is very hard and takes enormous effort to pump air out of the glass container. They sometimes used horses to pump air…
June 12, 2007
A recent weekend edition of Guardian newspaper promised readers paper plane nirvana. I was one of the reader who dutifully folded enough paper to submerge myself in pieces of origami that looked like crabs having sex and octopus at a disco - many wonderful and weird things but nothing that enjoyed…
June 7, 2007
Would you please stop looking at me so accusingly! I fess up. I've been wasting time with Paris Hilton diary and the rotten olympics logo. But please, I implore, Lords of the Intertubes, have mercy on my bleeding eyes...
June 7, 2007
Saw the news on Beebs and read this article at Technology Review.
Scientists analyzed 500,000 genetic markers in each of 1,700 people, making it the largest such study to date. By comparing the DNA of 2,000 patients with one of seven different diseases--Crohn's disease, type 1 and 2 diabetes,…
June 7, 2007
What happens to a ball when it is fired at 100 KMPH in the opposite direction from a truck moving at 100 KMPH?
[via reddit]
Can you guess why the ball moves in the direction of the truck after bouncing?
June 6, 2007
Cicadas. They hide underground doing pretty much nothing for a number of years. Not any number of years but number of years that are prime. 3,5, 13, 17.. Aha. Smart. They use prime years to beat predators (that's the theory and I'll go with it). Any other occurence of primes in the natural world…
June 5, 2007
The official one is a piece of turd. Here's my nomination, a nifty logo by a Mr Richard Bamsey hosted at the Beebs. [the 4th]
Naturally, the creators of the official logo are defending the eye sore below.
June 5, 2007
Fascinating news I read at ScienceDaily.
An important new study from the Journal of Consumer Research demonstrates how this "cognitive lock-in" can cause us to remain loyal to a product, even if objectively better alternatives exist.
"We find that consumers typically are not aware that this…
June 4, 2007
Welcome to the ward of post-operative aftertaste where you can taste you appendix or spleen for a fee.
Transgastric surgery, or natural orifice translumenal endosurgery (NOTES), as it is officially known, involves passing flexible surgical tools and a camera in through the patient's mouth to reach…
June 4, 2007
There was a long discussion about religion and god at home yesterday night. I ought to write it for public consumption some time. For now, I'll just post some thoughts about Hell and Hinduism. For those bought up by religious christian parents, the conception hell is probably as intimate and as…
June 3, 2007
Quoted at Harpers. Deliciously subversive.
Wherever religion is resorted to as a strong drink, and as an escape from the dull, monotonous round of home, those of its ministers who pepper the highest will be the surest to please. They who strew the Eternal Path with the greatest amount of brimstone…
May 31, 2007
iBioSeminars, a free online library of seminars aimed to spur students in India. They are soliciting feedback on the service before wider deployment. Bangalore's National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) will provide the servers.
"Many bright students in science institutes and colleges in…
May 31, 2007
God says no to abortion. God says no to condoms. God says no to reason and toleration. Since god has a very fragile ego and does not say all this in public, it falls upon a bishop of the catholic church in Scotland to relay god's delusions to us mortals. A friend of mine in Colorado - a woman, an…
May 29, 2007
A name is a mark of existence: past, present or future, real or imagined. People, places, things, non-things, every conceivable entity in this universe has a name. You may even say something is conceivable because it has a name. No wonder then that we try various things with such an important…
May 29, 2007
What does it mean to be scientifically literate in the 21st century?
How do we measure the scientific literacy of a society? How do we boost it? What is the value of this literacy? Who is responsible for fostering it?
Explore these questions in a 1200 words essay. First prize is $2,500 Prize…
May 29, 2007
I mean, literally. A recent APOD image shows a football ground size hole in Mars.
Quite possibly, the spots are entrances to deep underground caves capable of protecting Martian life, were it to exist... Such holes and underground caves might be prime targets for future spacecraft, robots, and even…
May 25, 2007
I am having lunch with a couple of Italian colleagues in Milan. They speak of politics and religion - mostly in Italian. I look from face to face gathering clues about the subject matter, all the while killing pasta with a fork. The pasta tastes like shoes. I cover it up with large quantities of…
May 24, 2007
Category error knows no boundaries. Well, that's why it is called a category error, I hear you say. Wait. Lend me your eyeballs for a minute and I'll show you what I mean: A category error that crosses continents and technology boundaries.
This fine example of a category error was dropped into our…