thescian
Posts by this author
September 12, 2006
What drives readers away from a blog? Joyless and monomaniacal writing says James Lileks who blogs at The Daily Bleat. Mark Savage of the BBC is meeting bloggers.
James Lileks, a journalist from the American Mid West, has made an art of writing very funny and entertaining pieces on everyday…
September 11, 2006
Recently Anand posted at the Kitchen about our superstitious brain. There's more proof for that now. A recent study reported in the New Scientist has the scoop. Our perception of moral standing improves after a shower.
Those who were given an opportunity to wash their hands after recalling…
September 10, 2006
Ramya and I went to the STOMP show yesterday in London Westend. The STOMP folks create rhythms out of everyday objects like brooms, sticks, sinks and such. I dig such performances where ordinary objects are transformed into artistic expressions. STOMP is in the same vein as the Blue Man Group (…
September 8, 2006
Like most people who don't own Bermuda shorts, I'm bored by ordinary travel. See the Beautiful Grand Canyon. OK, I see it. OK, it's beautiful. Now what? And I have no use for vacation paradises. Take the little true love along to kick back and work on the relationship. She gets her tits sun-burned…
September 6, 2006
You would think it is easy to explain.
Some evolutionary psychologists suggest that music originated as a way for males to impress and attract females. Others see its roots in the relationship between mother and child. In a third hypothesis, music was a social adhesive, helping to forge common…
September 5, 2006
The vortices created by the wings of an aircraft. Stunning! Even more stunning is this image. [via APOD] You can recreate a bit of this using a bag of flour and a table fan. (Don't tell you spouse/parent/child that I suggested it. And clean up after.)
September 4, 2006
How would you feel after crashing a beautiful spacecraft on the moon? Excited and very happy, if it is in the name of science.
"We're very happy and very excited, the team is rejoicing," said SMART-1 project scientist Bernard Foing, speaking from the mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany.…
September 4, 2006
More here. It was a freak accident. He was a passionate man who did much to bring public focus onto wildlife issues. I enjoyed many of his shows greatly. Sad day.
September 3, 2006
Read the science fiction novel Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling over the weekend. The story follows the lives of a bunch of unreasonable people who hack the weather - where hacking means getting in the middle of storms and capturing a lot of scientific data. The year is 2031 and the world is a…
September 2, 2006
This humble blogger is overwhelmed by the kind gesture. Welcome.
August 31, 2006
The Science Fiction Contest was announced a few months ago to give an opportunity for those who want to make their mama proud. Time, you may not have realized, passes. We now have thirty more days before the contest closes its door to work out the winners. That's four more weeks. 2592000 seconds (…
August 31, 2006
Fun stuff. Search and download. See the announcement. A fable I liked from Aesop's Fables book below. We call this desensitization in the modern lingo.
August 31, 2006
The Oscars of Indian Science have been awarded. Read about it at nanopolitan.
For those interested in looking this up in wikipedia, the pages on Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award lacks details and could use some updates. The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar page is yet to be created.
August 30, 2006
Very cool page at the AAAS Kids section.You can also upload a picture and create an instant genius out of your favorite person.
August 30, 2006
Heard on the BBC today morning, spoken by someone high up at the AAAS (President?) . I am paraphrasing. "The global energy systems investments (oil rigs, coal mines, distribution, refineries, etc) are about 12 trillion dollars and it takes about 30 to 40 years to change their character (from coal…
August 29, 2006
On the occasion of Pluto being booted out of its planetary status, guess who is using it as a promotional event? Astrologers in India, thats who.
"Indian astrology is mathematically concerned with the nine planets, two of which are Raghu and Ketu that are nothing but derivatives from the diameter…
August 29, 2006
The next target group for penis enlargement ads has been identified. It's the polar bears whose member has been retreating because of all the harmful chemicals they ingest. Suspend your disbelief and go read Maggie Wittlin's recent posting of I Can't Believe It's Science at Seed Magazine.
August 29, 2006
A comprehensive article at The New Yorker on Perelman, Poincaré conjecture and the politics of math. Perelman, as you might have read, refused the Fields medal - the nobel prize like award for math. From the article,
Mikhail Gromov, the Russian geometer, said that he understood Perelman's logic: "…
August 28, 2006
Chris Mooney, author and science blogger who blogs here at The Intersection, has his landmark book Republican War on Science out on paperback. The accompanying War on Science website has much for your scientific eyes that is rebelling against the administration's war on science. Chris has…
August 28, 2006
I thoroughly enjoy the Last Word feature of New Scientist where the readers pose and answer questions amongst themselves. The questions are hilarious sometimes and always informative. Case in point: The question about the awful smell of human droppings.
Another question asked and yet unanswered is…
August 24, 2006
A short story at Prospect by Vasily Grossman (Yikes! Just noticed that it needs Subscription to view in full.)
He would look into the dog's eyes. These kind eyes, not the eyes of Niels Bohr, would be the first to look into the cosmos, to see cosmic space that was not limited by the earth's…
August 24, 2006
Thus Spake Zuska - a new blog added to scienceblogs. Zuska spoke thusly,
I verbally bludgeon morons, celebrate the fabulousness of techie women, and encourage every female to release her Inner Pissed-Off Woman.
Woot!
August 24, 2006
Here at the University of Michigan website. It is neatly done presentation aimed at you ane me, the intelligent science reader. In other news, a research breakthrough where stem cells can be produced without destroying human embryos might be what researchers were looking for in the US.
August 24, 2006
Apparently, I had screwed up the feed burner feed here. My bloglines subscription for this blog was showing no signs of activity for the past few days. It's fixed now.
August 24, 2006
Omar Khayyám was an accomplished mathematician and an astronomer although he is most often remembered for Rubaiyat. That one line introduction out of way, let's get to the finger part. Khayyám wrote thusly,
"The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall…
August 23, 2006
To nature, the life of an empire is no more than the life of a swarm of bees, and a thousand years are of lesser count than half an hour to you and me. Now the moral of that is that we must not depend on any sort of divine providence to put a stop to war. Providence says, 'Kill one another my…
August 23, 2006
Dilip writes in How the Other Half Lives
,
"Malnourishment, particularly of kids, has been in the news in recent weeks and months. In Guna district of Madhya Pradesh (check this photo essay), in Orissa, in Maharashtra's Melghat, and even in Bombay.
Is this a new phenomenon? Not at all.…
August 22, 2006
An artful way to expose the unreasonable assumptions we make when we stereotype people. Click around. Surprise yourself. [via]
August 22, 2006
Here's the news at Reuters that's reporting on the gods who shall not be denied the worldly pleasures. After drinking milk, it appears that the next logical step for gods would be fondling udders.
Thousands of people flocked to temples across India on Monday following reports that idols of Hindu…