thescian | January 6, 2008Yours truly has come out the rock he has been hiding under and has signed-up onto Facebook.
When I signed-up, Facebook offered a chance to surprise all those on my gmail addressbook ( selvakumar @ gmail , look me up, yo). And, I did. It also offered to send me a million dollars which I politely declined.
Clearly, I am late for the party as I see most of you are on there already. (I was in for a big surprise when I saw my sister on Facebook. It was a weird experience to have Facebook suggest my sister as a Friend whom I may know. Facebook! You socially-inept software!)
Come by and say…
thescian | January 3, 2008Boots is a big healthcare/beauty store here in the UK. I buy a lot of shit-gear for my daughter there. Like all other stores out making a quick buck Boots too harps on the vitamin supplements theme and sell things that would make you levitate, help your mother, and transport you to paradise. But, is there a line which they would not cross, like saying Vitamin B keeps your energy level up? Well, shame on you if you thought they wouldn't. Read DC's Improbable Science on a sting operation that shreds Boots disingenuous marketing.
thescian | January 3, 2008A summary of a forecasting (sort of) report at RealClimate:
The group imagined three potential scenarios, labeled expected, severe, and catastrophic. These are not forecasts exactly, since forecasting society is even harder than forecasting climate, which is itself pretty dicey on a regional spatial scale, but rather a fleshing out of plausible possibilities, a story-telling, visualization-type exercise.
The "expected" scenario calls for 1.3 °C of warming globally above 1990 levels, by the year 2040. Changes in precipitation and sea level prompt migration at a scale sufficient to challenge…
thescian | January 3, 2008Simple truths, simply written; one on unceasing Life and the other on what we make of that Life - the precarious gait that some call experience. How moving! Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman: two of the America's greatest poets.
A noiseless patient spider
Walt Whitman
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in…
thescian | January 2, 2008A recent Science Friday podcast at NPR, hosted by the ever ebullient Ira Flatow. Absolutely fascinating.
thescian | January 1, 2008John Hockenberry on the big Media Networks and what he learnt by working for them, at TR. A passionately written account of why they are so fucked up.
The most memorable reporting I've encountered on the conflict in Iraq was delivered in the form of confetti exploding out of a cardboard tube. I had just begun working at the MIT Media Lab in March 2006 when Alyssa Wright, a lab student, got me to participate in a project called "Cherry Blossoms." I strapped on a backpack with a pair of vertical tubes sticking out of the top; they were connected to a detonation device linked to a Global…
thescian | January 1, 2008Read the novels "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (see a note) and "Measuring the world". Read a few of Borges's stories, but I am yet to read him more thoroughly. 2008 would be that year, I hope. Is magic realism the voice of the so-called third world?
Rediscovered Shakespeare through a rereading of a few plays (Tempest, Julius Caesar) and his sonnets. What a man! what a man! We know almost nothing about him, but his creations, oh, his creations are what dreams are made of!
For the first time, listened to Andrea Bocelli and Joshua Bell. A pleasure like no other. Opera and classical music is…
thescian | December 31, 2007No, no, it wasn't caused by any of the modern marvels to counter erectile dysfunction, it was biological evolution ensuring good sex and the consequences thereof, says Dr Bowman. A report at Press Esc:
"As the diameter of the bony pelvis increased over time to permit passage of an infant with a larger cranium, the size of the vaginal canal necessarily also became larger, potentially resulting in a vaginal-penile discrepancy in size," Dr. Bowman pointed out. "Sexually satisfying coitus requires a satisfactory 'fit' for both partners."
This meant that as humans evolved, men with larger penises…
thescian | December 30, 2007Great post at Neil Gaiman's journal on getting an agent (via reddit). Covers much more ground than just agents. Read up. I liked these best:
There is no substitute for writing a book that people want to buy and read. If you can do that, you can get published. If you can't, no clever workaround will help, because we can't force people to buy and read books they don't like.
Be obviously and extraordinarily good.
The first point above is common sense, the most uncommon of all senses. Please don't flatter yourself by imagining that it may hurt your creativity.
On the second, a few years of…
thescian | December 30, 2007Astonishing story at Beebs.
They share an easy intimacy that belies the fact that identical twins Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein spent their first 35 years in total ignorance of the other's existence. They were given up for adoption to separate families as part of an experiment in the US to discover how identical twins would react to being raised in different family backgrounds.
Neither set of adoptive parents knew the babies were part of a study or that they had been born twins.
...
"We both felt like asking: 'So what have you done with this body, with this DNA?'" says Elyse, "Or, 'So what…
thescian | December 27, 2007 Measuring the world is a novel by the young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann who has been hailed as one of the most promising new generation of writers. This novel is the first to be translated into english (by Carol Brown Janeway) and has become a international sensation.
The novel examines the themes of Genius and Freedom through the extraordinary lives of two great Enlightenment era scientists: Gauss and Humboldt. Gauss is a consummate genius who is considered to be the greatest mathematician since Newton. Humboldt is one of the greatest naturalist and explorer the world has ever seen.…
thescian | December 26, 2007From The Independent:
Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom.
When they found sanctuary one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of the pickers had a nasty, untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him escaping, leaving his wrists…
thescian | December 23, 2007Coincidentally, I read two contrasting poems on the same day: Shakespeare's sonnet in the Oxford book and Philip Larkin in The Nation's Favourite Twentieth Century Poems.
Shakespeare's famous 12th sonnet that urges us to procreate
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy…
thescian | December 18, 2007We needed a secular name. Some day, I hope considerations like secular names would be irrelevant. But, this is not that day. As a parent, I did not wish my child to bear a name that leans on blind faith.
What's in a name, we wondered at times, as we ruled out name after name which were biased in favor of religious outlook. Perhaps, we should just pick a sufficiently popular and sufficiently unique - that strange balance all new parents seek in a child's name - and be done with it. But, identity is all a person is, and name is an overarching part of that identity. Name is a label, a marker on…
thescian | December 10, 2007Nidhi Nova was born on 7th Dec early morning after a marathon labor (24 hrs) when she and her mother tried to negotiate the rites of passage. In the end, Nidhi had to be operated out as her head was turned improperly disallowing natural birth. Mother and daughter are fine.
You can expect a series of posts on childbirth and related aspects in the coming weeks and months. Needless to say, during the birth there were some scary moments and some moments that I am still coming to terms with. We'll talk. For the moment, my daughter awaits a nappy change. See you in a bit.
thescian | December 2, 2007Hooray! After days of anticipation, they are finally out!
First Prize - A Story in Blue by J Ramanand
Joint Second Prize - Call of the Running Tide by Anita Murthy
Joint Second Prize - The Going Got Tough by Dr Shantala
Congratulations to the winners!
A few words on the stories. Ramanand's story is a thoughtful take on the effects of religion on what is probably the most momentous event in human history: meeting a whole new lifeform. I enjoyed it greatly and it made me think.
Call of the Running Tide by Anitha Murthy is a gentle story about childcare in a world that relies increasingly on…
thescian | November 30, 2007Murphy's Body Snatchers Law states that if a body can be snatched, it will be. Watch a wasp turn a cockroach into a zombie by blocking a neurotransmitter and then leading it by its antenna to the dining table to be eaten [via Slashdot]
Reminds me of a recent short story I read. Greg Egan's Steve Fever at MIT Technology Review.
The brain is such a strange playground!