Creative commons
thescian | January 4, 2009Many 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 immediate meaning, and then at the same time, below this immediate meaning, other meanings are organized. If one is not capable of giving language this plurality of meaning, then it is not worth the trouble to write.
From an interview that was given when he was seventy and had lost his vision to the…
thescian | December 30, 2008Here'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 the stars -- they are all high above us. This was understood to mean that God wanted us to respect them more than the things which were created on Earth. Gradually things went wrong. Instead of praying directly to God, the people turned the objects into targets of their prayers.
This is impressive?!…
thescian | 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 choose from. -Balram Halwai alais Munna
What a fucking joke. -Pinky Madam
India is a land of chicken coops. The chicken coops have been in existence since Manu wrote that kings and priests came out of god's prettiest and purest body parts while shit-eating lowly men and women came out of his holy…
thescian | December 28, 2008A 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 everyday prattle'. It was a bliss to be unaware, but now, I can't sleep some nights. One other primate caught in this modern world's uncertainties.
thescian | December 23, 2008One 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.
thescian | December 15, 2008Nidhi 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 the child a headshave and ear-piercing when the child is a year old - or sometimes even younger. The reasons for the two - one very risky and the other definitely harmful - no one knows. I am told that the hair is offered to gods. I am fine with that, I think that's what gods deserve, a bit of…
thescian | December 11, 2008Noah'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.
thescian | December 5, 2008I 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 itself on, additionally, being a tropical country, the weathering is cruel and complete and may be implicated as well.
As I single handely kept the autorickshaws running in Delhi for four days, I saw dust coating everything - democratically and mindlessly; I felt dust in my teeth, eyes and nose; I…
thescian | November 24, 2008I 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 trip for some time and have arranged to meet a few men and women of science. That said, there is no detailed plan. I am look forward to meeting as many as I could: scientists, bloggers, readers of TheScian.com, science enthusiasts and anyone who has been wondering if I am bald or I shave my head…
thescian | November 22, 2008Winning 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.
thescian | November 21, 2008This seems like the future for the truly lazy ones who pile up papers all over their desk.
Impressive. But, can they match this:
thescian | November 15, 2008First prizeAski's Choice by Rinku Dutta
Second prize21 Minutes by Rahul Jaisheel
Sponsored prizeNoah's Ark by Narendra Desirazu
Selected storiesLive and Exclusive by Aditya Sudarshan (winner of our first scifi contest in 2006)
Touchstone by J Ramanand (winner of the contest in 2007)
Of Resolutions with Capital R's by Shuchikar
The prize winning stories will be published next week. The selected stories will be published one at a time in the following weeks.
While I and the authors prepare the stories for publication, I invite young writers to visit TheScian Writer's Kit, a compendium of…
thescian | November 1, 2008Vivaldi - The Four Seasons (Spring, Allegro, Nigel Kennedy). I am nostalgic today.
Beirut - St Apollonia. A haunting melody. What are they singing about?
'Nantes' , the take away show. This is how music happens.
Rodrigo y Gabriela - Tamacun. Full of life.
Coldplay - Viva la vida. Not many sing about the french revolution these days (and from a fallen king's point of view). Great beats.
thescian | October 21, 2008Reading Günter Grass's The Rat. She-rat speaks thus:we rats have battened on it, eaten our way to erudition. Oh, those mouldy parchments, those leather-bound folios, those collected works bristling with slips of paper, those clever-clever encycopedias. From d'Alembert to Diderot, we know it all: the holy Enlightenment and the subsequent revulsion against science. All secretions of human reason.
Even before that, as early as Augustine's day, we overate. From St Gall to Uppsala, every monastery library contributed to our erudition. We are decidedly well read; in times of famine we fed on…
thescian | October 14, 2008Watched this delightful Mexican duo play on a Jools Holland music show a few nights back (you can watch it on BBC iPlayer in UK).
thescian | October 2, 2008Photo via Speigel.
When I was about 15 or 16, I read Gandhi's autobiography. I clearly remember how much his simplicity and honesty impressed me. Later while in college, I re-read it and as young men are wont to do, stopped eating meat for seven years - as a sort of pledge of allegiance to non-violence and ahimsa principles. Whatever my immature reactions to Gandhi were at that time, his message of compassion and truth left a deep mark on my mind and I still carry it.
After college I went through a phase and held views perhaps similar to that of Orwell about Gandhi. It evolved over the years…
awild | October 1, 2008This morning I had to deny a scientist permission to use my photos of her ants in a paper headed for PLoS Biology. I hate doing that. Especially when I took those photos in part to help her to promote her research.
The problem is that PLoS content is managed under a Creative Commons (=CC) licensing scheme. I don't do CC. Overall it's not a bad licensing scheme, but for one sticking point: CC allows users to re-distribute an image to external parties.
In an ideal world, non-profit users would faithfully tack on the CC license and the attribution to the photographer, as required by the…
thescian | October 1, 2008The contest is now closed. We've received 34 stories this year which, I think, is more than last two years. My thanks for all the authors who have participated. I have so far read three stories in the order I received them and have written out feedback for them. Authors can expect feedback and request for revisions in the coming days. Although, we'll have some stories revised before publication, for the purpose of the contest, stories will be judged on the originals received.
thescian | September 24, 2008Send them in. I'll start reading them from this weekend.
For some of the stories with good ideas whose execution can be bettered, I hope to ask the authors for revisions. Btw, we will look through the past two years stories, not just this year's contest submissions. Over the two years I have improved my own literary taste and skills. If I had missed any author earlier because I was stupid, it's time to rectify that omission. We'll have to work out how we'll handle revisions to stories. Probably get the original stories out on TheScian.com and later update them with revised stories as the…