Prime Stream
thescian | November 29, 2007Starting shortly at The Royal Society. I am going to see if I can plug into the webcast.
thescian | November 27, 2007 An eligible beebs reporter tries out scientific algorithmic superior proven and utterly amazing match-making advertised in some websites.
"The website then uses what statisticians call a regression equation to determine what sort of person I would be best matched with, according to my character and how that fits with historical data about other people's relationships.
The company says it's identified 99 distinct factors found in successful relationships. Another dating site says there are 29 - its mathematical match-making is based on research it says it's done on 10,000 married couples…
thescian | November 27, 2007A summary in WSJ about the state of affairs for OLPC.[via reddit] The discussion is not very much about what really makes an OLPC. It is more about how Intel, Microsoft and other companies are actively subverting it and how governments in many countries are weighing their options - not all in favor of OLPC.
The decision to buy Intel's Classmate over OLPC, someone is quoted as saying, is a no-brainer. And, it's precisely that. If kids and those in government have no brains, they should buy a proprietary system with a proprietary hardware/software and sign-up for multi-year maintenance…
thescian | November 14, 2007If there's a comet that should contain its enthusiasm, it's this. Such a large ego in so little a package, like a baby wearing adult's shirt and gaily roaming around the house! From the linked page: Formerly, the Sun was the largest object in the Solar System. Now, comet 17P/Holmes holds that distinction.
Spectacular outbursting comet 17P/Holmes exploded in size and brightness on October 24. It continues to expand and is now the largest single object in the Solar system, being bigger than the Sun
I suppose, like me, you have a minor quibble with how 'big' is defined. I mean, where do you…
thescian | November 9, 2007Well, forget about it. You haven't got it, whether you tried exercising it or not.
Police in India wrongfully arrested and detained a Bangalore man for 50 days after internet service provider Airtel mis-identified him as the person who posted images on Orkut that insulted a revered historical figure.
Lakshmana Kailash K., a 26-year-old techie, was arrested at his home on August 31 and transported to Pune, more than 10 hours away, according to news reports. He was held for 50 days and was released three weeks after police claimed to have apprehended the real people responsible for the posting…
thescian | November 7, 2007Register reports of a pilot program to monitor kids using RFID in Doncaster. The boss of the firm that did the pilot sez
"The system saves valuable lesson time, often wasted in registration and monitoring, while ensuring parents of their children's security. And there's the additional benefit of reduced costs in replacing school uniforms that have gone astray."
Bullshit. And, muhaha. If that's the sales pitch and schools are falling for it, britons have buried Orwell and 1984 once for all. The technology has its uses but schoolkids ain't it. We don't need to scar children with our…
thescian | November 5, 2007I found out today that it's the kitchen through the process of looking and then looking closer. Here's a nominal list of places to verify this truth:
1. Behind the refridgerator
2. Under the kitchen cabinets, near the wall-end
3. Behind the sink tap
4. On the wall right behind the sink tap
5. Wall and counter top around the mixer/grinder
6. Mixer and grinder
7. Around the supporting legs of the kitchen cabinet
8. Under the dirty feet of humans, cats and canines raiding the kitchen
Our kitchen is like a miniature amazon forest, full of bacterial colonies that literally thrive under our noses.…
thescian | October 30, 2007Yesterday on the radio I heard the phrase 'statistically significant' twice (one on a discussion about crime and other about cancer). We all think we know what it is: If all the birds overhead poo on you simultaneously, you know, it cannot be a random event. It is surely a statistically signifcant event full of practical consequences ordered by an angry diety to dirty your atheistic bald head (alright, my atheistic bald head). Nevertheless, if you aren't a scientist or a statistician, a short readup may help, because, it ain't so simple. The wikipedia page is not laymanish (if you are an…
thescian | October 24, 2007Particle physics explained in 60 second bursts of words at Symmetry Magazine published by Fermi Lab and SLAC.
I find this picture simple and utterly fascinating. It's an artistic rendering of the tracks of an electron and it's anti-particle as they dance in an electromagnetic field. Positron, electron's anti-particle, came out of Dirac's beautiful equation before it was found in a particle accelerator.
thescian | October 18, 2007BBC reports
A spokesman for the Science Museum said: "We know that eminent scientists can sometimes say things that cause controversy and the Science Museum does not shy away from debating controversial topics.
"However, we feel Dr Watson has gone beyond the point of acceptable debate and we are, as a result, cancelling his talk."
thescian | October 17, 2007[via Times Online] Dr Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and author of "Avoid Boring People", says that
he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.". He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
Did he really say that? Sheesh. Here's a sensible response to that from the same article
Commenting on Dr Watson's current views about race, Steven Rose, a…
thescian | October 16, 2007 Here's a BBC news that reports on a study about bed bugs that is so confusing that I can't make out what is really being suggested. At the beginning, there is this: "bugs cannot survive in the warm, dry conditions found in an unmade bed" Unmade bed is bad for bugs, and good for you, atleast that's what the news seems to imply, which is quite strange. Another paragraph down we see this "The warm, damp conditions created in an occupied bed are ideal for the creatures, but they are less likely to thrive when moisture is in shorter supply." In other words, if you don't sleep on the bed, bugs won…
thescian | October 15, 2007An exhibition of equations. A proper nerd's day out last sunday in London. Here's an equation I love, by Alison Gopnik's.
thescian | October 11, 2007An Independent article.
"There were about 400 of us in one room. No toilets, no buckets, no water for washing. No beds, no blankets, no soap. Nothing," said a 24-year-old monk who was held for 10 days at the Government Technical Institute, a leafy college in northern Rangoon which is now a prison camp for suspected dissidents. The young man, too frightened to be named, was one of 185 monks taken in a raid on a monastery in the Yankin district of Rangoon on 28 September, two days after government soldiers began attacking street protesters.
"The room was too small for everyone to lie down at…
thescian | October 8, 2007It's one of the most wonderful, confounding, nerve-racking and sublime mathematical conundrum of all times. In the spin of quantum mechanics, in the accretion of galactic clouds, in a little girl's twirl, when a pebble is dropped on a quiet lake; wherever and whenever there is rotation, it lurks, right at the center. This then, is Pi, the ratio of a cirlce's circumference to its diameter, an infinite series, a transcendental number, one of the uncountable many that is familiar and distant, like a far away galaxy.
Euclid proved every circle has a Pi in it, Archimedes dabbled in it, Ramanujan…
thescian | October 4, 2007Here. You can donate one and get one for yourself in November if you live in the US. Go here to sign-up.