Creative commons
thescian | July 30, 2007Hop over and drink scifi till you hallucinate about strange horizons. via bb
thescian | July 29, 2007 The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Macondo was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about by the…
thescian | July 26, 2007
A new essay has surfaced at TheScian.com. It has got pictures and you can click and hear me mumble and pretend to read it.
Whitby, a seaside town in North Yorkshire, is home to Dracula's cave, gothic gulls, and a B&B establishment that charms its guests with a roaring toilet the size of a matchbox, and a suicidal room heater that is colder than CERN's cryogenic systems. To this town, we - I and my wife Ramya - were headed for a vacation. Read on or listen to the audio.
If you want to volunteer your reading skills and have a good mic, send me an email [selvakumar @ gmail .com ]. There…
thescian | July 25, 2007The keyboard design for most laptops is just hopeless. Under the keys are multiple ecosystems hosting bacteria that are rapidly evolving to eat your fingers.
Today morning I used a USB powered cleaner to clean the keyboard of my work laptop (I got the cleaner as a gift from the sibling after she saw the keyboard on a bright day). The cleaner worked much more efficiently than I imagined. I say this because as I muzzled in the cleaning airbrush under the keys, I saw what looked like dog hair in compromising positions hastily get out and run. Before you start imagining things, I want to…
thescian | July 20, 2007
Andrea Bocelli's Amapola. Romance has not been rendered in a more beautiful and moving voice.
thescian | July 19, 2007Well, you are lucky. PZ's has suggestions. [the last point, the post is in response to the recent disturbance in the fabric of google maps].
thescian | July 17, 2007My problems all started with my early education. I went to a school for mentally disturbed teachers. -Woody Allen
We don't know why we laugh. But we do know this: before we laugh truthfully there is a flash in the mind, a flash which tells us undeniably that we really get it.
thescian | July 12, 2007People live in places, like Namakkal and Amersham. Amersham is a place named after a heap of stones. Namakkal is also a place named after a stone, but a stone is not a place. A stone is something stuck in a place because it has no legs. People have legs. That's why they move about to many places. I moved from Namakkal to Amersham. Today morning, like every other morning, I moved from my bedroom to the bathroom. A bathroom is a small place. Normally, it is the smallest place in a house. It is also the place where you are free to make faces at the mirror and place your hand on your genitals.…
thescian | July 9, 2007I don't understand anything about ballet. All I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.-Anton Chekhov
thescian | July 5, 2007How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart, NY Times
At Costco, one of Mr. Sinegal's[CEO of Costco] cardinal rules is that no branded item can be marked up by more than 14 percent, and no private-label item by more than 15 percent. In contrast, supermarkets generally mark up merchandise by 25 percent, and department stores by 50 percent or more.
"They could probably get more money for a lot of items they sell," said Ed Weller, a retailing analyst at ThinkEquity.
But Mr. Sinegal warned that if Costco increased markups to 16 or 18 percent, the company might slip down a dangerous slope and lose…
thescian | July 4, 2007I was checking site stats for thescian.com. Apparently, when a hopeful youngman searches for "get an erection with my mind", google leads him to the Crawling On the Clayball essay!
Please hang on a moment while I awkwardly roll on the tiny doormat laughing.
The youngman should perhaps try the new sexy european youtube channel. (Not impressed with the link? Alright,here it is, your moment of nirvana. Probably, NSFW)
thescian | July 3, 2007The review is here [Guardian]. I have read Gandhi's My Experiments with Truth twice so far: once in school and then again while doing my undergraduation. It had a great influence on me during my younger years and I still owe much to the book for showing what passion and commitment to one's belief means. The second reading was at a time when I was very impressionable which naturally led me into the moral servitude of abstinence from meat. I served time for 6 years and casually broke the abstinence during a fine dinner in a Namakkal hotel with spicy chicken. The reason: I had realized my…
thescian | June 29, 2007Catching up on readings I had saved up.
Edge essay. WHY DO SOME PEOPLE RESIST SCIENCE? By Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg
Pankaj Mishra's review of The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future by Martha C. Nussbaum.
Battle of the book reviews. Book review on a blog? Nah! You can't be serious!. There's middle ground. There's got to be. Blogs are here to stay.
A plug for TheScian Science Fiction Story Contest. The stories have started trickling in. Don't hurry, though. There's time. Only your very best submission please.
thescian | June 28, 2007The news is this: rich chinese men flagellate on animal penis to soften the blows of midlife crisis. Some time back there was another news about an abandoned boat near a big chinese city that was full of rare animals, starving and at the verge of dying. The newly minted rich in the land of manufactoring-plants need some alternate vocation to eating penises; unsuspecting animals may go extinct otherwise.
thescian | June 28, 2007The Machine Stops is a short story by E M Forster, which he wrote as a reaction to one of H G Wells's optimistic stories. I have read through part of the story and I must confess I find the vocabulary outdated, but that should not surprise anyone, since all science fiction stories run that risk. Here's an interesting section where Vashti, mother of Kuno, is asked by the forlorn son to visit her. They live on either side of the planet, underground in honeycomb like rooms that are plugged into The Machine. The Machine is the all pervading, life sustaining system, a new god created out of…
thescian | June 21, 2007Lawence Lessig has annouced his decision to shift his focus from IP related issues to solving the problem of Corruption for the next ten years. Bravo! He defines corruption thus:
"Corruption" ... the subtle pressure to take views or positions because of the financial reward they will bring you. link
thescian | June 20, 2007A timely review of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the novel that is keeping me awake for the past few nights. I'd have to leave it there and say no more: cannot do justice to the novel in a blog post, neither do I believe I have the maturity and understanding for it.
thescian | June 19, 2007An old friend of mine forwarded an email with a picture of someone named Mataji Nirmala Devi who had the Indian flag at her feet. She is apparently a spiritual leader. Anyway, the email was the collective nationalistic scream of Indians (atleast the ones who have email access and occupy themselves with forwarded messages).
"It is an insult! Indian Government must take action against this unpatriotic cult", read the email. Hey, here's a brilliant idea: let Nationlism and Religion to go at each other's throat. That could be the beginning of an end that we all have been waiting for.
I sent a…
thescian | June 18, 2007First the bass guitarist walked onto the stage and started strumming, next was the man on piano, and then the man on drums.
Amidst the soft music and dim lights walked another man onto the stage. He didn't play any musical instrument. He was the instrument. He wore grey pants, a yellow shirt left unbuttoned, and green shoes. Green tap shoes. He placed the towel on the six feet tall speaker system and started tapping. He tapped for two hours. Jazz on shoes.
I was at Saddler's Wells Theatre for Savion Glover's performance last thursday. His first show in London. No strobe lights. No…