DesiPundit
thescian | February 2, 2009There 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, we get 10 raised to the power of some-doodillion. So there, that is the limit. Great. However, I think arriving at a number like this is questionable. It assumes that we have a valid definition of what memory is, which may not be true. (There are valid and verifiable definitions for computer memory…
thescian | 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 dying in a plane crash. Questions about the validity of calculations are legitimate. However, I am not sure if I will enjoy thinking about the implications of this particular question (especially if it leads to more wailing from those who are scared of blackholes). How do you arrive at a decision…
thescian | January 22, 2009Read 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 poppy trade: how many of us knew that most of opium sold to China by the British came from India, how were workers transported in ships to foreign lands, the mingling of cultures and languages. Extraordinary tale.
The Imam and the Indian by Amitav Ghosh
Prose pieces. The one about the ghost of…
thescian | January 20, 2009Elizabeth 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 her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin.
We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others…
thescian | January 19, 2009A 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 shortly so authors can send in their best stories to be shortlisted for the book. Get your muse going meanwhile.
thescian | January 15, 2009The 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 been committed in Congo in the past decade - the consequence of the world's insatiable demand for raw materials. Johann Hari writes in The Independant:
the debate about Congo in the West - when it exists at all - focuses on our inability to provide a decent bandage, without mentioning that we are…
thescian | January 14, 2009The 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. It is genuinely uninformative, ego-centric and self-obsessed drivel. The audience is no one and everyone; the subject is nothing and everything. I don't need to know when someone brushes their teeth or takes out the trash or picks their nose. I really don't. Humanity is exceptionally ridiculous.…
thescian | January 11, 2009at 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.
thescian | 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 bubble of order that randomly arose? As I was pondering things beyond my reach, in my own small way I realized my conception of the Universe was erroneous. You see, I had always thought of the Universe as a really really large 'thing' inside which everything is, there is no outside, and that's that…
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 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 23, 2008TV 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 Bombay is impossible to comprehend and the grief impossible to console, but for the commercial media all of this is great television.
Nissim Mannathukkaren writes in The Hindu of the hypocritical outrage and the selective amnesia that plagues the well-to-do citizens of our great fucking nation and…
thescian | December 21, 2008An 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 and descriptive framing of the crisis and understand it historically and politically. What is your analysis?
The financial collapse is only the tip of the iceberg. Under the surface there is a deep crisis of accumulation of capital in the real productive economy, and deeper even there is a systemic…
thescian | December 19, 2008The 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 background radiation from messing up the observations. As for detecting the neutrinos themselves, it will help us understand the obscure stuff that this world is made of. What's more, the observations will aid in solving world's climate problem, will resurrect free market capitalism to it's heady Enron days…
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 | November 29, 2008Yesterday'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 Charan Singh Agricultural University in Haryana.
Speaking to presspersons on the sidelines of the annual convention of the Indian Society for Soil Science (ISSS) on the campus of the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, Dr. Katyal, who is also president of ISSS, explained that zinc…
thescian | November 17, 2008My 11 month old daughter loves electric lights. If you visit my home, you may often find me standing near the switch and flicking it on and off while the daughter watches and squeals in delight. Today morning we were playing our switching game and I explained to her with much drama how photons are expelled from the atoms in the filament, how they travel down to her eyes, how the arrow of time and principle of least action guides the photons and the whole world, etc. She, of course, giggled watching my mouth make all the funny sounds.
When my hand reached her eyes, I gave a tickle, then…