thescian | November 21, 2008This seems like the future for the truly lazy ones who pile up papers all over their desk.
Impressive. But, can they match this:
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…
thescian | November 15, 2008First prize
Aski's Choice by Rinku Dutta
Second prize
21 Minutes by Rahul Jaisheel
Sponsored prize
Noah's Ark by Narendra Desirazu
Selected stories
Live and Exclusive by Aditya Sudarshan (winner of our first scifi contest in 2006)
Touchstone by J Ramanand (winner of the contest in 2007)
Of Resolutions with Capital R's by Shuchikar
The prize winning stories will be published next week. The selected stories will be published one at a time in the following weeks.
While I and the authors prepare the stories for publication, I invite young writers to visit TheScian Writer's Kit, a compendium of…
thescian | November 14, 2008The realization of a dream. I believe we still need an inspiring campaign to create awareness and thereby generate enthusiasm among the taxpayers. Whatever lies ahead, this is a great day for the thousands of scientists and engineers who have made this possible.
thescian | November 13, 2008The latest New Scientist magazine has soundbites from writers like Gibson and Atwood and much else. Give it a read.
E M Forster in Aspects of The Novel, asks a pertinent question: Will the mirror get a new coat of quicksilver? Will the creative process itself alter? (By mirror he means novels, and the creative process is story telling - through words, paint, clay...).
This is the kind of meta question about art that only those who engage in speculative fiction can address, IMO. Science, of course, is the best possible vehicle for speculation because it is more consistent than most other…
thescian | November 10, 2008via BBC.
Learn more:
at Reporters Without Borders
at Committee to protect bloggers
thescian | November 10, 2008The winners have been decided. We have an exceptional story as a winner this year. Picking it as the winner was not hard.
I have been mulling over five stories for the past week - any of them could be chosen for the second prize. These stories are all excellent and I loathe to choose. In the end, I have decided on a story where the author has courageously pitted his head again a classic scifi theme. That said, we will publish all the good stories. Winners, authors of stories we will publish and all other participants can expect an email in the next few days with substantial feedback.
thescian | November 6, 2008Chandrayaan-1 has entered the phase where in two days it'll start circling the moon. ISRO Press release here. Feels good to finally have a piece of India around the moon, is it not!
thescian | November 5, 2008Rebecca Traister writes at Spiegel
How could Jesse Jackson not cry, standing in that crowd, realizing that whatever hurt time and generational difference might have inflicted on his project and his legacy, he was witnessing the dawn of a world that his work made possible, but which he had not been able to make possible himself.
And then he began to wave a small American flag on a wooden stick, like a kid at a Fourth of July parade. Elsewhere in the crowd, Oprah Winfrey, that most almighty American who, like Jackson, helped launch Obama's dream, but who on the night it was made manifest was…
thescian | November 4, 2008
Wife and I looked at this slideshow a few minutes ago and tears started rolling down our eyes. Through the hopeful and tearful eyes of these men and women, we glimpsed history. Our own spontaneous tears seems to be how our lives - a couple from India - has been deeply touched by the people of United States, by this extraordinary political groundswell.
thescian | November 1, 2008Vivaldi - The Four Seasons (Spring, Allegro, Nigel Kennedy). I am nostalgic today.
Beirut - St Apollonia. A haunting melody. What are they singing about?
'Nantes' , the take away show. This is how music happens.
Rodrigo y Gabriela - Tamacun. Full of life.
Coldplay - Viva la vida. Not many sing about the french revolution these days (and from a fallen king's point of view). Great beats.
thescian | October 29, 2008I'll holler when it's up. (The site message is courtesy of Shakespeare, Henry the Eighth.)
Update: It's up!
thescian | October 28, 2008Sunny day in the UK but I can't be oblivious to what's really happening around me: it's raining neutrinos. It's a deluge, in fact.
thescian | October 27, 2008There are many ways one can paint a portrait of the brain: as an organ that evolved from the simple beginnings as a few neuronal tissues in worms to one of the most interconnected mass of tissues anywhere in the universe perched atop a primate body; as the center of consciousness that questions its own reality; as a biological system whose workings are as beguiling as they are fascinating. Mr Adam Zeman in The Portrait of the Brain paints the human brain in all these ways and more.
The chapters of the book are organized by a clever sequence of case studies. From ailments that are caused by…
thescian | October 22, 2008BBC has some reactions by Indians on the launch. One of them is from a fruit vendor Sheila who is quoted as saying: "I don't think it is a good thing. I think this money could be used here for the poor. Look at how expensive things have become! If the money goes away from (our streets) then obviously things will become more expensive."
Sheila's sentiment is probably echoed by many. While it is not accurate - Indians have immensely profited from space capability -, it does point to the problem we have in selling space missions to many Indians. Consider the excitement in US and Europe when a…
thescian | October 22, 2008When we (self and wife) were in Atlanta, Ramya had a dental operation (to remove a painful inner tooth). I was waiting outside the operating room expecting her to come out holding her chin gingerly and saying, ga ma tut puld, and bravely smiling. Instead she came out on a wheelchair with her eyes closed (she was under sedatives) pushed by a grave looking nurse. My heart jumped in its cage, missed a beat and ran berserk for a moment. You may know the feeling. Well, it's more than a feeling. The feeling has physical basis. The heart actually jumps, stomach churns, eyes pop out and finger nails…
thescian | October 21, 2008Reading Günter Grass's The Rat. She-rat speaks thus:
we rats have battened on it, eaten our way to erudition. Oh, those mouldy parchments, those leather-bound folios, those collected works bristling with slips of paper, those clever-clever encycopedias. From d'Alembert to Diderot, we know it all: the holy Enlightenment and the subsequent revulsion against science. All secretions of human reason.
Even before that, as early as Augustine's day, we overate. From St Gall to Uppsala, every monastery library contributed to our erudition. We are decidedly well read; in times of famine we fed on…
thescian | October 17, 2008Destructive re-entry (planned) of Jules Verne ATV. [Click on the link for a must-see ESA Video]
[via APOD]
thescian | October 16, 2008Instead, we'll have a regularly updated set of 'Today's Recommendations' (on the left, heading may change) that'll display the intertube bits I have read or heard that I'd love to share. This includes blog posts (not blogs themselves, which I have lately realized is meaningless if I did't tell you what I read in them), news, music .. anything that Google Reader can parse and show me. The direct google reader link where you can find all the bits I consume is here.
Blogging has been slow lately. I have been spending all my spare time reading the scifi contest stories. We'll resume regular…