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 | 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 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, 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, 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 | 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 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 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.