thescian

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May 15, 2009
One of the occasional political posts. You're probably full of this news already, if you live in the UK. It on the TV for 24 hrs. Anyway, let me unload before my head explodes. The motherload. There's an article in guardian that's worth a read to understand how deeply fucked-up many MPs heads are.…
May 14, 2009
Layman: What are the strings in String Theory made of? Physicist: Well, they are not made of anything. They are fundamental. Layman: Like how sometime back protons were fundamental, and then how quarks were fundamental? Physicist: You see, physics usually advances gradually, building upon our…
May 12, 2009
Dubliners, naturally. Counterparts is as simple and as powerful as it gets. The story leads us to these lines: The boy uttered a squeal of pain as the stick cut his thigh. He clasped his hands together in the air and his voice shook with fright. "O, pa!" he cried. "Don't beat me, pa! And I'll... I'…
May 6, 2009
If you are school teacher in US, you'll have to be careful.
April 30, 2009
It happens when matter meets anti-matter. That there is such a thing called anti-matter never ceases to amaze me. Paul Dirac, when he arrived at the famous equation for electron-, realized that the equation predicted two particles: one was the electron and the other a as yet unknown particle…
April 21, 2009
World Digital Library, the UN project to provide digital access to cultural heritage of our world. The search interface is quite interesting. Give it a go. Susan Boyle. For a few minutes, I forgot my distaste for gawdy talent shows and delighted in Possibilities. The unlikely and heart-warming…
April 20, 2009
The accomplished author died a few days ago at 78. This, at Guardian:[As a] science fiction author [he] "wasn't interested in the far future, spaceships and all that", he explained; rather he was interested in "the evolving world, the world of hidden persuaders, of the communications landscape…
April 15, 2009
From his collection Death of a Naturalist. A wonderful collection of short poems. This particular poem's theme and language resonates across cultures and continents. It triggered memories of my time with my grandfather on the land picking cotton and onion, cutting grass and sugarcane, wading…
April 9, 2009
This at the BBC. So, when he was 10, Blair's father fell seriously ill. Blair prays for his atheist father with his headmaster."I said to him 'Before we pray, I should tell you that my father, he doesn't believe in God. "And I always remember the headmaster saying to me 'Well, that doesn't matter…
April 9, 2009
An interesting article by Nicholas Kulish on something very german: Rules.What the Germans call Ordnung (the usual translation is "order," but it is a much broader concept) is the unwritten road map of one society's concerted effort to permanently banish the instability and violence that have…
April 8, 2009
Would you please piss-off. -Dawkins. Dawkins responds to Mr Blair, who wrote:The 21st century will be poorer in spirit and ambition, less focused on social justice, less sensitive to conscience and the common good, without a full and proper recognition of the role that the great faiths can and do…
April 8, 2009
First published around this time in 1869 in The Atlantic. Stirs me whenever I read it. Some parts of the poem: Pround music of the storm! Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies! Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains! Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras…
March 27, 2009
The Pope has said while in Africa that condoms may increase AIDS problems. What? He is so insulated from science that even the most basic application of science to our problems eludes his comprehension. Who the fuck advises the Pope? (besides the Bible, that is. If it is just the Bible, we have…
March 27, 2009
Business that requires direct customer service, that's where. If the post's heading attracted you, you should give this HN thread about Google Checkout woes a read. As many on the thread point out, there is a upper bound you hit when optimizing customer service against efficiency. After a stage,…
March 26, 2009
It's TED day at this blog. Here are two videos I watched lately. Viva la User Interface revolution!Johnny Lee's Wii Hacks at TED Pranav Mistry's Sixth Sense
March 26, 2009
TEDIndia Conference: "The Future Beckons" has been announced. It will take place November 4-7, 2009, in Mysore, India. More here. iAccelerator 2009 startup incubator at IIM Ahmedabad is now accepting applications. They help first time technology entrepreneurs. Go here and get started.
March 23, 2009
Where there is nothing, there is no thing as there. That's the usual response to 'what's outside the universe'. Evidently, this stands at the very edge of meaning: meaning in the scientific sense, meaning derived from being able to observe and measure some thing. This response would satisfy those…
March 20, 2009
Ladies and lads, Extreme Sheep LED Art, a.k.a Welsh herd hacking and The Baa-Vinci Project. via
March 18, 2009
1. grandeur, not excess 2. sublimity, not harshness 3. strength, not rashness 4. severity, not grimness 5. gravity, not dullness 6. joy, not abandon 7. pleasantness, not decadence 8. greatness, not pomposity I like 1, 6 and 8. They make my sensibilities feel warm and fuzzy, like a campfire that is…
March 12, 2009
Twenty years ago this month, something happened at CERN that would change the world forever: Tim Berners-Lee handed a document to his supervisor Mike Sendall entitled "Information Management : a Proposal". "Vague, but exciting" is how Mike described it, and he gave Tim the nod to take his proposal…
March 5, 2009
Here's a list of things I want to be able to buy in the near future: Better eyes. Check this news at beebs on a man with bionic eyes. I am very hopeful. Spectacles suck, contact lenses suck. I want a pair of bionic eyes. Better memory. No news on this. Cognitive enhancement drugs will not cut it. I…
March 3, 2009
Every object is mathematical but some are more mathematical than others. This morning I noticed my one year old daughter playing with one of her toys - an open cube with small spheres at each vertex which held many distractions. On one side of this cube was an Archimedes screw, an astonishing…
February 24, 2009
What a tasteless and offensive question, you think. Let me correct that misunderstanding. Don't look upon arseholes as second-class organs. If you did not have one, you'll be full of shit. If gods don't have the hole, boy, then they surely have accumulated all the crap since the beginning of time.…
February 17, 2009
Swarm of flies on the left. source In Seven Samurai - one of the greatest movie of all times, there is a scene where the hired Samurai gather the villagers to instruct them on defending their village. A jittery villager runs away from the crowd and is brought back by Kambei, the aging samurai,…
February 9, 2009
The newer model is out. The beginning of the end of paper books? Maybe. Paper books will be around, but devices like Kindle are certain to change the rules of the game. Gone are the days when we can argue that paper books are superior to electronic reading devices because they are portable, don't…
February 3, 2009
It made a deep impression in me to listen to Updike talk about the countless stars and galaxies and our cosmic insignificance in an old interview recording (one of the rare few) given to Eleanor Wachtel who hosts Writers & Company. Ian McEwan writes in the guardian:This most Lutheran of writers…
February 2, 2009
There is and there isn't. The case for there is would go like this: let's say, our brain can store 1000 doodles in each cell and a further 5000 doodles in each distinct connection (that is, the wiring itself as information). If we consider all the permutations and combination of cells and wiring,…
January 30, 2009
I am fascinated by the question: Who was Shakespeare. I take it as an expression of awe and wonder at a genius who kept almost all of his personal life hidden. It is also an opportunity to know about the historical backdrop in which many of his plays are set. The question will never be resolved (…
January 29, 2009
[text updated] Questions about the validity of previously calculated blackhole creation probabilities at LHC are discussed in this New Scientist article. The conclusion? We don't have a clue of what the range of probabilities are. It is however still small compared to, say, getting hit by a car or…