Prime Stream
thescian | June 20, 2008Modern day living is now a highly competitive sport. The field events are well established: catching a bus driven by a cynical driver, getting a promotion at job, getting good grades in college, getting a grant for research, getting your research paper published, etc. Where there is extreme competition, there is room for the use of performance enhancement drugs. Some would call this 'room for cheating' but I am ambivalent on this. Enhancing your performance to compete is simply the natural thing to do. How far can/should one go in that direction is debatable but we can't pretend that we have…
thescian | June 14, 2008A BBC report:
More than 500 people have been killed in Assam - and half as many in neighbouring West Bengal - in the past few years because their neighbours thought they were witches.
A study on these killings by a Bengal police officer, Asit Baran Choudhury, suggests that most of those accused of practising witchcraft and then killed are "isolated families" with some landed property.
He says most of those killed are widows.
"Powerful people in the community target them to acquire the land," says the study.
Another instance of greed exploiting ignorance.
thescian | June 6, 2008Which is easy: To maintain your balance when cycling uphill, or when cycling downhill? Assume you maintain a constant speed of 6 km/hr and the inclination is constant. If you like to challenge your proficiency in physics, assume further that you are negotiating a bend.
I don't know the answer so I am hoping someone would explain in a way I and others can understand.
This question came up when I was negotiating a small bridge over a brook on my usual cycling route. As you come off the bridge you have to veer to the right sharply. I find it harder to maintain balance on the downhill climb than…
thescian | May 28, 2008 [Image Credit: David C. Blackburn] Who would have thought! However, the frogs have to really kick hard to unclaw - the claw comes out by piercing the frog's skin. A half-baked defense mechanism is what I think this is. Maybe in another hundred years - and if we keep pushing their habitats to the margins - they'll fully bake their claws and get it ready to wage a war on humans.
thescian | May 15, 2008So, it's gonna get MickeySoft (that's a Wolf in Mickey make-up, run children, run). As, one Slashdot commenter put it, "This is like McDonalds bullying and lobbying to make the BigMac the preferred choice for UN's world food programme, and succeeding."
Give a read to Ivan KrstiÄ's remarkably insightful and properly angry account.
thescian | May 14, 2008G1.9+0.3, remnant of the most recent supernova in our galaxy that happened a mere 140 years ago.
Wired post covering the announcement.
thescian | May 13, 2008A BBC report:
According to Unicef's latest State of the World's Children's report, India has the worst indicators of child malnutrition in South Asia: 48% of under fives in India are stunted, compared to 43% in Bangladesh and 37% in Pakistan.
Meanwhile 30% of babies in India are born underweight, compared to 22% in Bangladesh and 19% in Pakistan. Unicef calculates that 40% of all underweight babies in the world are Indian.
Put all that in hard numbers and the figures are stark. Fifty million Indian under fives are affected by malnutrition. Rising food prices, Unicef says mean 1.5 to 1.8…
thescian | May 12, 2008The intoxicated brain knows no fear. Apparently, that's why people loosen-up when drunk and will happily talk to fearsome strangers. That's funny, 'coz someone I know will go completely quiet when drunk and will simply stare at you like you are a wall of abstract painting if you talk to him. I am wondering why..
thescian | May 8, 2008Donate what you can. Save the Children. Red Cross. The death toll may have crossed 100000.
thescian | April 20, 2008The real crisis behind climate crisis. A NY Times article:
Thirty years ago, Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer and writer, put forward a blunt analysis of precisely this mentality. He argued that the environmental crisis of the 1970s -- an era innocent of climate change; what we would give to have back that environmental crisis! -- was at its heart a crisis of character and would have to be addressed first at that level: at home, as it were. He was impatient with people who wrote checks to environmental organizations while thoughtlessly squandering fossil fuel in their everyday lives -- the…
thescian | April 18, 2008Yesterday evening our three year old niece was playing with our four month old daughter Nidhi. She (niece) would leap towards Nidhi and shout. At first, Nidhi seemed slightly fearful of this leaping figure. At around the third try, Nidhi started laughing loudly to everyone's surprise. Our niece, encouraged by the success of her antics, started a regimen of vigorous jumping. A positive feedback loop of leap-n-laugh ensued, much to our amusement.
This was the first instance when Nidhi was laughing out loud in such a sustained manner. Her father - like all fathers do - found this heart-warming…
thescian | April 14, 2008Big whorls have little whorls,
Which feed on their velocity,
And little whorls have lesser whorls,
And so on to viscosity
--Lewis Richardson
Poem quoted at Arunn's post on turbulence (in Tamil). Your southside smooth ride into turbulence.
thescian | April 14, 2008Consider a pebble in space. Assume it is very lucky in that it never gets hit by anything in space, neither does it fall into a star, planet or meet with any such physically violent end. How long will it last as a pebble (i.e. retain it's shape)? In other words, how long would atoms stick together if untouched by external forces? Do feel free to rephrase the question if needed.
thescian | April 7, 20082300 cotton farmers have committed suicide in India since 2000 due to crop failure. Profound gloom as Amelia Gentleman says in a IHT story.