thescian
Posts by this author
September 23, 2008
A C Grayling in his regular column in New Scientist questions the use of Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature (it's like polygraph, for the brain) in a criminal case in Bombay where life sentences were given to accused based on Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature (BEOS) reports from forensic…
September 18, 2008
No, no. This isn't from the tasteless blurb on the cover of a Creationist book. This is about research on the evolution of anus published at Nature Magazine."The very simple question is how to get from one opening to two," says Detlev Arendt, a researcher at the European Molecular Biology…
September 17, 2008
Folks, this an experimental post (for me, that is). It is slightly incoherent. Written in five minutes. No corrections made. My typing hands decide not to pause. Enjoy if you can get through the muddle.
Big Bang, a variation
I watched Brian Cox present an excellent BBC TV programme on the LHC (on…
September 16, 2008
I found the below from historian and writer Ramachandra Guha's book India After Gandhi to be of interest given the current US election campaign (Note that Mr Guha was talking within the context of Partition)."The world over, the rhetoric of modern democratic politics has been marked by two rather…
September 12, 2008
We are close! You could be the one and if you are you will be teleported to NYC for a party with people from other dimensions.
It's time to celebrate the conversations we have had all through these years. Come join us Saturday 20 September in London at Calthorpe Arms, a pub near Russell Square and…
September 10, 2008
Saw this at a mailing list [Anarchy-SF]. I would have left out Harry Potter (it's gratuitous with certain themes: homosexuality, libertarian....). A good list to pick from you are looking for fiction on political sf to read.
September 9, 2008
and today the Large Hadron Collider has begun probing the very stuff that we and our dreams are made of.
September 4, 2008
I am sure this has happened to many. I find catching myself out at times in that strange land where an Explanation has taken the place of Truth. I stand there looking lovingly at the face of Clarity and Certainty with little realization that they are strangling curiosity to death; when they vanish…
September 1, 2008
Muse and make money.Hi all,
We're delighted to be able to tell you about this contest we have just got up and running. We're presenting it in partnership with LiveJournal, one of the oldest, most respected names in the community blogging world.
It's a pretty simple challenge we have here, one that…
August 29, 2008
It's blogroll rebuilding time! How better to start than with a clean slate. To begin, all the book podcasts I listen to regularly have now been placed in Google Reader. You'll also find it shared on the side bar to the left. Subscribe to the share, if you would like to keep a tab on my…
August 27, 2008
How would you explain digital computation and binary math/logic to someone who does not have a mathematics or computer science background? I had about two minutes to think when my brother-in-law asked how computers work. I went with the first useful thought that came to my mind.
Explain what's…
August 21, 2008
Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody…
August 21, 2008
Suvrat Kher, a geologist, has given answers to questions from a muddled engineer and wannabe astrologer. Suvrat Kher is a patient bloke. Instead of hitting the questioner on the head repeatedly with Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit, he has done the nicer thing.
Why do so many seemingly educated people…
August 19, 2008
How does one deal with those who do not understand the rational way of living, those who follow unreasonable dogma like religion and give in to superstitions?
There are two different approaches marked by the diametric positions that they take. One is to shame the irrational person so that they are…
August 15, 2008
Leaping Shampoo Fascinating effect. Even more fascinating is how the experimenters are able to produce a cascade effect (towards the end of the video).
[via reddit]
August 14, 2008
LiveScience has a nifty list. From an artificial hippocampus - the part of the brain that helps with short-term memory-, to Retinal Prosthesis or bionic eyes - electrodes implanted in the eye that help people who've lost some of their retinal function see again.
August 13, 2008
An article in NY Times about an immigrant who has lived half his life in the US dies in custody due to systemic negligence and apathy. This is not a one off case, if you are tempted to dismiss it.Mr. Ng's death follows a succession of cases that have drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of…
August 11, 2008
Anand Giridharadas (his blog) writes at IHT:many of the people who are making the new India new - from the stockbrokers to the bedecked socialites - are responsible for preserving a certain gloomy element of the Indian past: a tendency to treat the hired help like chattel, to taunt and humiliate…
August 6, 2008
What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias. -Vikram Seth, From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet.
August 6, 2008
A Screensaver of moving dots. Sure you can see it, but can you hear it? [Mo at Neurophilosophy]
What do you think is the sate of science? More important, do you like iPhone 3G, MacBook Air or 40GB Apple TV? Take this Seed/Sb survey.
Family is all one has got. That goes for all primates. Photos of…
August 5, 2008
Shakespeare really does something to our inner reality, making me feel more alive in more unpredictable mental ways when I read or see his work. I am also getting a sense of an underlying shape to experience, as though the syntax in front of my eyes were keying into mental pathways behind them,…
August 4, 2008
A collection of scifi speculation ranging from robocracy to anarchy at io9.
August 3, 2008
Go here for some stunning time-lapse video of Britons living, moving about and talking - seen through the world of satellite and communication imagery.
Nifty new modes of perception. If some day, things beyond biology come alive, this is how they may be perceived?
August 3, 2008
Today. 140 dead. 40 children. Stampede at the Nainadevi temple, Himachal Pradesh.
July. 6 dead. Stampede at Jagannath temple, Orissa.
March. 10 dead. Stampede at temple, Madhya Pradesh.
January. 5 dead. Stampede at Durga Malleswara temple, Andra Pradesh.
August 1, 2008
3D printing is here. Try RepRap, Shapeways, Fab @ Home. I've been messing around with Blender and PyTopMod to make some designs for printing off at Shapeways. Worth learning these two if you are into things like this (I love this stuff), although PyTopMod may be too mathematical.
RepRap
Darwin:…
July 30, 2008
Read an article about Glass at NY Times. It seems to have coalesced some scattered thoughts between my ears (the word coagulated probably fits too, you decide).
Some weeks back I was looking through the window at the sky. An airplane was gliding slowly across my field of vision from right to left.…
July 29, 2008
Orwell is a hero of mine, and of many. This news at the BBC caught my eyes.
His diary entries are to be published on a special blog - one entry at a time by The Orwell Prize."From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell's face from reading his most strongly…
July 28, 2008
I'd love to see us stop the suffocating Vedic flatulence. Among my country men and women, there's a tendency to inflate the past beyond reasonable limits. If someone can draw a thread from Vedic literature, Vedic mathematics, Vedic astronomy, Vedic quantum mechanics and Vedic levitation it's…
July 22, 2008
I have a few invites to give away for Dropbox (private beta). Leave a comment with your email if you want one (first-come first-served).
I have been using it for a week now to keep my notes, pictures, etc synchronized between two computers. Very fast and unobtrusive. Recommended.
July 22, 2008
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
--Ernest Hemingway