thescian
Posts by this author
November 13, 2009
I loathe tech support so I switched my parents to Ubuntu a while ago. But, you may not be so lucky. Your parents may not like Ubuntu. I can't imagine why they wouldn't, but, if they don't and they must absolutely have Windows, then use Windows SteadyState. It's free. [via this /. thread]
November 8, 2009
Read an interesting interview with Roger Penrose at Discover Magazine. Found this part fascinating:
So Schrödinger himself never believed that the cat analogy reflected the nature of reality?
Oh yes, I think he was pointing this out. I mean, look at three of the biggest figures in quantum…
November 6, 2009
As I was stuffing my face today, I wondered if the Universe cared. The short answer is no. The slightly longer and more depressing answer is: my existence is more marginal than a speck of stray DNA on a grain of sand staring at vast oceans (that's literally true, oh the irony...). Clearly, there's…
November 2, 2009
So, I am in India for a short trip and was in Coimbatore yesterday. A truck almost collided with the autorickshaw (three-person tincan with an engine strapped on) I was riding in, then a bus gently nudged me as I was walking on --what I thought was clearly marked--a pedestrian path.
Things fall…
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 little luck are…
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å¨) in Yunnan province is a cancer village. Every year there are more than 20 people die of cancer. 11-year-old student Xu Li (å¾ä¸½) is suffering from bone cancer. May…
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.
October 12, 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…
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…
October 8, 2009
Inspired and inspiring young man from Africa William Kamkwamba. Watched him on The Daily Show just now.
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…
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.
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…
October 1, 2009
Saw a post on the crazy-dangerous-pathetic-dude on Pharyngula. One comment(#8) stood out as an answer to the question "When you get rid of God, what do you fill the void with?" :
Earth..:If you have a void that was filled with an imaginary friend, its still a void.
September 30, 2009
Dropbox works very well. To keep notes and to keep them synchronized, I use Tomboy + Dropbox. LifeHacker has pointers on this.
September 28, 2009
Alright. Now, you have no excuses. Send it in before I come and snatch it. Here is the link to go to, if you have not heard about the contest.
September 22, 2009
Since I am not posting much on the blog, the wife suggests I leave a few links she supplies. So here they are:-
http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article22217.ece
Since Indian rural workers under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme do not get their wages in time, they are powerless,…
September 13, 2009
via BBC. Norman Borlaug is the Father of Green Revolution whose research has saved many many millions from starvation. To me, he defines effective compassion like no other. It is a shame his work is not as well known among the general population as it should be. We would do well to be inspired by…
September 7, 2009
Paul Krugman on How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? in today's NY Times.
India's Moon Mission is over, somewhat prematurely--on 28 August, after nearly 10 months in moon orbit, Chandrayan-I stopped talking and ISRO had to declare the mission over. Nevertheless, this is an immense achievement for…
September 5, 2009
A poem from the book I am reading at present. The Mirror Maker by Primo Levi. I had an epiphany few weeks back--an epiphany that I was unable to describe--, an epiphany that I have now found the words for in Levi's lucid poem: 'between us, for at least a moment, was drawn a segment, a well-defined…
September 2, 2009
From the beebs:
Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed.
The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals.
Bruce Schneider calls this security theater. It…
September 1, 2009
A very limited list of things that nobody knows (as compiled by yours truly, a very limited human). As you may notice, most of the list treads close to things that may be broadly classed as epistemological questions. Do extend it with your own unknowns. There are some other more comprehensive lists…
August 31, 2009
Well, you knew that already. Anyway, here's something to read and fume about.
Here in the island, things aren't great either. The inanely orchestrated coverage at the BBC leading up to the release of the Lockerbie criminal was/is breathtaking in its obviousness.
August 27, 2009
A few links on the great Uruguayan writer. His latest book is called Mirrors, he explains why in this video, in a voice that makes one to listen to it far into the night.
He is interviewed by Michael Silverblatt for KCRW Bookworm.
Blogging will be infrequent for some weeks due to travel, study…
August 18, 2009
You'll be docile when horizontal, apparently. So an insult won't move you to action that much when you are lying down. via NewScientist.
August 17, 2009
A celebration of human ingenuity through the life of Benjamin Franklin by Maira Kalman at And the Pursuit of Happiness.
August 12, 2009
From the preface of his Collected Fictions translated by Andrew Hurley.
Reading is an activity subsequent to writing--more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. (1935)
The learned doctors of the Great Vehicle teach us that the essential characteristic of the universe is its emptiness. They are…
August 11, 2009
From BBC News:
The extra cost of providing security for the three people identified as allowing the death of Baby Peter could rise to £1m a year, a union has said.
For those outside in UK, this is a heart-wrenching case of a baby being tortured to death. After reading the above news, I wonder how…
August 3, 2009
There is, I must say, a rather unconventional article in New Scientist called Evolution's third replicator: Genes, memes, and now what? by Susan Blackmore about ... what's the word I am looking for...hmm.. Human Culture + Technology.
Susan suggests that we have unleashed a technoculture goo.…