Prime Stream
thescian | March 27, 2009The Pope has said while in Africa that condoms may increase AIDS problems. What? He is so insulated from science that even the most basic application of science to our problems eludes his comprehension. Who the fuck advises the Pope? (besides the Bible, that is. If it is just the Bible, we have gotten to the bottom of this already).
Redemption for the Pope? asks The Lancet condemning the Pope's ignorance.
Whether the Pope's error was due to ignorance or a deliberate attempt to manipulate science to support Catholic ideology is unclear. But the comment still stands and the Vatican's attempts…
thescian | March 26, 2009It's TED day at this blog.
Here are two videos I watched lately. Viva la User Interface revolution!
Johnny Lee's Wii Hacks at TED
Pranav Mistry's Sixth Sense
thescian | March 23, 2009Where there is nothing, there is no thing as there. That's the usual response to 'what's outside the universe'. Evidently, this stands at the very edge of meaning: meaning in the scientific sense, meaning derived from being able to observe and measure some thing.
This response would satisfy those engaged in scientific observations and measurements. They can sleep easy in the knowledge that even if they don't know, they are making the attempt to know (am not saying they do sleep, but that they can sleep). In the end, this is probably the most rational way to proceed. But, what about ordinary…
thescian | March 5, 2009Here's a list of things I want to be able to buy in the near future:
Better eyes. Check this news at beebs on a man with bionic eyes. I am very hopeful. Spectacles suck, contact lenses suck. I want a pair of bionic eyes.
Better memory. No news on this. Cognitive enhancement drugs will not cut it. I want a prosthetic that adds to the sorry excuse of a memory that evolution has endowed me with. If we can interface with the optic nerve (above), we can interface with any nerve, the brain included.
Better legs - so I can run to the office a dozen miles without breaking a sweat. Sitting inside a…
thescian | March 3, 2009Every object is mathematical but some are more mathematical than others. This morning I noticed my one year old daughter playing with one of her toys - an open cube with small spheres at each vertex which held many distractions. On one side of this cube was an Archimedes screw, an astonishing mathematical object. She was running a small wheel that ran over this little plastic Archimedes screw. What joy a simple toy holds.
Archimedes Screw is one my favorite mathematical objects. What is your favorite mathematical object (utilitarian, like the Archimedes Screw, or abstract, like E8)?
thescian | February 17, 2009
Swarm of flies on the left. source
In Seven Samurai - one of the greatest movie of all times, there is a scene where the hired Samurai gather the villagers to instruct them on defending their village. A jittery villager runs away from the crowd and is brought back by Kambei, the aging samurai, who threatens the deserter with dire consequences. He then offers this, and I paraphrase here: An individual can fight a successful war only if he is part of a group. An individual will lose a war by standing alone.
As profound as this sounds, this is well known to birds, fishes, insects and animals…
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 16, 2009One chapter at a time over at Blogging the Origin. John's writing is a delight to read. Head over and enjoy his short stay (he'll be gone when he's done with the book. oh shame).
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 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 26, 2008
CERN's Large Hadron Collider is the largest and most powerful particle accelerator that the world has seen so far. It is a supreme expression of our collective scientific and technological ambition. It transcends national boundaries with components made in many countries and with more than 2000 people from more than 170 institutions worldwide participating in the experiments. The construction of LHC and the detectors is a story that is as varied and as interesting as the people involved in it.
LHC has six detectors. Of the these, ATLAS is the largest and most ambitious. Commissioned by CERN…
thescian | December 23, 2008Deceit is a useful behavior if one can get away with it while pursuing happiness; in evolutionary terms that would be to live and leave behind more copies of ones genes.
A NY Times article by Natalie Angier that connects the dots of deceit. Natalie Angier,a pulitzer-prize winning writer, is one of the finest writers of all things science. For more of her words, I recommend The Canon, a delightful whirligig tour of the beautiful basics of Science.
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 21, 2008A large hall in United Nations Office: The gathered mass of knuckleheads praised the munificence of their imagined protector, then proceeded to approve a "Defamation of Religion" resolution, largely supported by Islamic countries, condemning critical or offensive expressions directed at any religious faith. via UPI. What a farce the UN GA is.
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…