thescian

User Image

Posts by this author

January 27, 2009
Here's a gift idea that I shall dub iPoop.
January 25, 2009
I'll be back in the UK tomorrow. There is quite a lot of material that I have accumulated in the many weeks here: interviews with scientists, social entrepreneurs, ideas for articles, stories and more. I'll start publishing them in the coming weeks and months. I've had discussions with a few…
January 22, 2009
Read these in the past two months. I don't know if I'll get to review them properly. Still, wanted to share a few words about them while the mind is drunk with a heady concoction of ideas and stories. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh First of the trilogy. Exceptional. There's original research on the…
January 20, 2009
Elizabeth Alexander's poem on the inauguration of Mr Obama as President captured America at the cusp of a new day. It is plain and simple, like a Whitman poem.Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice. A woman and…
January 19, 2009
A story that I enjoyed very much. Touchstone is one of the two selected stories of the Scifi Contest. Ramanand, you may know, won the 2007 contest last year. With this we've exhausted all the publishable stories. The Scientific Indian Stories book is in the works. I will make another announcement…
January 16, 2009
One chapter at a time over at Blogging the Origin. John's writing is a delight to read. Head over and enjoy his short stay (he'll be gone when he's done with the book. oh shame).
January 15, 2009
The history of Congo (and Africa, in general) is one of unbroken plundering by the outside world. And, history repeats more keenly in African than anywhere else. More than 5 million people have been murdered, women and children have been raped, families destroyed and unspeakable atrocities have…
January 14, 2009
The 58th edition of Four Stone Hearth, the anthro blog carnival is up. One linked post at Ethblography by Fran, an anthropologist, asserts that twittering means nothing:Like Wikipedia, then, it is for this reason that Twitter gets under my skin in a most uncomfortable way. It doesn't mean anything…
January 14, 2009
because he is the archetype of all those who hold that end justifies means. Wearing Machiavelli's shoes comes World-is-Flat-and-Black-and-White Mr Friedman, madly dancing with his column in NY Times on the recent gaza flare-up. Read Glenn Greenwald's criticism to restore some balance to this…
January 14, 2009
January 11, 2009
at Locus. Pay close attention to 'Don't research' especially if you write (or plan to write) speculative fiction. There's a Writer's Kit at TheScian,com that may interest you as well.
January 4, 2009
I was reading a fascinating discussion at Cosmic Variance on Boltzmann Brain Paradox and what Feynman made of it. The paradox raises questions about the state of the Universe, why is the beginning different from the end? Why must there be an arrow of Time? In a chaotic Universe, are we living in a…
January 4, 2009
Many young people today do not concern themselves with style and think that what one says should be said simply and that is all. For me, style--which does not exclude simplicity, quite the opposite--is above all a way of saying three or four things in one. There is the simple sentence, with its…
December 30, 2008
Here's how. Interview with the Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel.SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is Abraham's function in the Bible? Metzger: The great Jewish philosopher Maimonides explained this very impressively. God created various objects in heaven. The sun, for example, or the moon and…
December 29, 2008
I guess, Your Excellency, that I too should start off by kissing some god's arse. Which god's arse, though? There are so many choices. See, the Muslims have one god. The Christians have three gods. And we Hindus have three 36,000,000 gods. Making a grand total of 36,000,004 divine arses for me to…
December 29, 2008
Read Fafblog! Read Fafblog!
December 28, 2008
A good view of the man at IHT. It was only in the recent years - since my marriage and especially after the birth of our daughter - that I developed the sensibility that Pinter so masterfully exposed: the menace and violence of everyday life, as Horace Engdahl called it 'the precipice under…
December 26, 2008
CERN's Large Hadron Collider is the largest and most powerful particle accelerator that the world has seen so far. It is a supreme expression of our collective scientific and technological ambition. It transcends national boundaries with components made in many countries and with more than 2000…
December 23, 2008
One of the two selected stories of the Scifi contest has been published. Aditya Sudarshan in Live and exclusive tells you of a mad scientist, a house that is alive and a cheeky journalist trying to find a sensational story. Enjoy.
December 23, 2008
Deceit is a useful behavior if one can get away with it while pursuing happiness; in evolutionary terms that would be to live and leave behind more copies of ones genes. A NY Times article by Natalie Angier that connects the dots of deceit. Natalie Angier,a pulitzer-prize winning writer, is one of…
December 23, 2008
TV in India is mostly cricket, pelvic thrusts, incessant family drama prattle and rivers of tears, bored religious pundits fleecing eager supplicants, passionate debate about nothing by know-nothings, and more recently, the shameless exploitation of the terrorist attacks in Bombay. The carnage in…
December 21, 2008
An insightful interview in Frontline with the Egyptian economist Samir Amin.The dominant view in the media and in policymaking circles is that the current financial crisis is the result of undue deregulation and the greed of a few in Wall Street. We feel that we need to go beyond the superficial…
December 21, 2008
A large hall in United Nations Office: The gathered mass of knuckleheads praised the munificence of their imagined protector, then proceeded to approve a "Defamation of Religion" resolution, largely supported by Islamic countries, condemning critical or offensive expressions directed at any…
December 19, 2008
The INO project is still in 'seeking approval' stage. I had hoped to go see it while here in India but guess am out of luck. The observatory would be located in disused mining(?) tunnels in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve. Tunnels are good because that way we can eliminate cosmic rays and…
December 15, 2008
Nidhi Nova is now one year old. The force of tradition is great and our daughter was swept away yesterday by its blind tidings. We tried our best to ride the tumultuous waves of tradition while keeping our daughter above the waters. In many parts of India there is a (religious) tradition of giving…
December 11, 2008
Noah's Ark by Narendra Desirazu is a nifty story that won the sponsored prize in the 2008 Scifi Contest. It is now up for your reading. Enjoy.
December 5, 2008
I was in Delhi the last few days. Yesterday I met Dr Rathnasree, Director of Nehru Planetarium, and mentioned to her about the dust clouds that sweep and swirl around in all parts of Delhi. She suggested that the dust is probably a function of the geological piece of landmass that Delhi finds…
November 29, 2008
Yesterday's Hindu newspaper I read at our noisy suburb in Bangalore informs thus: Is there any relationship between road rage in cities, especially during peak hour traffic, and nutrient deficiency? Yes, says the country's renowned soil scientist J.C. Katyal, who is Vice-Chancellor of the Choudhary…
November 24, 2008
I and family will be traveling this week for a long stay in India (two months). I anticipate posts infused with spices, pickles and more in the coming weeks. The plan: Delhi during the first week of December. Bangalore and Namakkal most of the time, a trip to Chennai. I have been preparing for the…
November 22, 2008
Winning entries are up. More selected stories will go online in the coming weeks. Enjoy. Update: Comments (moderated) are now open for the winning stories. Share your thoughts with authors and other readers.