thescian | August 6, 2007This is old news, but there are lot of people who may not know and still keep buying into the bottled water scam. Check the recent Economist article.
"SO THE emperor really isn't wearing any clothes. Last week PepsiCo announced that the label on its Aquafina brand of bottled water will soon carry the words "public water source", instead of simply the innocent looking "P.W.S.". That's right: Aquafina is to all intents and purposes tap water. Coca-Cola is under pressure to follow suit with its Dasani brand, though so far it is refusing to do so. "We don't believe that consumers are confused…
thescian | August 5, 2007 We see patterns in the clouds, in the shadows of a dark street, in the martian sands, and sometimes even in the grime of dirty vessels (I see Saturn's rings in my coffee cup right now). Like our dreams, we are free to interpret patterns in any way we want, and we usually use that freedom to get all poetic and sentimental (or violent and scary, in case you have a sinister bent of mind). On most occasions, the interpretations are bogus and devoid of any validitiy. On the occasions when it seems true, it is usualy a self-fulfilling fantasy.
I watched Batman Forever movie yesterday night for a…
thescian | August 3, 2007If you access emails from open Wifi hotspots, you want to read this at Slashdot.
"Using Gmail or most other webmail programs over an unsecured access points just got a bit more dangerous. At Black Hat Robert Graham, CEO of errata security, showed how to capture and clone session cookies very quickly over connections without encryption. He even hijacked a shocked attendee's Gmail account in the middle of his presentation. 'While Ou was typing, Graham was running Ferret and sniffing all the cookies that were being sent from Ou's laptop and Google. Graham then clicked on Ou's IP address and…
thescian | August 3, 2007Very scary, like a plague of ambulance chasers. The video quality is not very good but that should not put you off from some of the very serious issues raised. Check this video [graphic at places]
Scienceblogs posts on scientology
thescian | August 2, 2007 A while back I read an essay on Artificial Intelligence at TR by David Gelernter wherein, besides other things, he discusses where AI research stands at present (the short answer, nowhere). Like all discussions on AI, it inevitably led to the question of Consciousness. As always, I promptly got confused about it. What is it? Is it an epistemological impossibility? However much we try, will we be never sure if we have understood even a little of it?
I fear that I'll go diarrheal (verbally, with this blog post, you understand) if I continue thinking about Consciousness. I'll let you read…
thescian | August 2, 2007War, genocide
Darfur
Congo
Iraq
Climate Change, flood
China
India, Bangladesh
Britain
What shall we tell our children?
thescian | August 1, 2007Delicious illustrations by Josh Kirby of Discworld fame. Some wallpapers at the Liverpool National Museum website.
thescian | August 1, 2007
"..trying to produce such an extraordinary product as a laptop that is kid-proof and capable of working in jungles, deserts or the bush, miles from the nearest grid connection, and all for the cheapest possible price, has concentrated minds remarkably. The XO offers a lesson for laptop-makers everywhere" -link
Earlier posts on OLPC.
thescian | July 31, 2007What you have always suspected to be true is probably true. Intercourse and Intelligence at Gene Expression.
...intelligent people have lower libidos and less masculine physiques. What hormone is responsible for both sex drive and masculine builds? That's right: testosterone.
And two new papers suggest that testosterone may depress IQ. One team found that salivary testosterone levels were lower for preadolescent boys with IQs above 130 and below 70. (the same two groups most likely to be virgins in adolescence)
Another paper suggests that a gene responsible for androgen sensitivity and higher…
thescian | July 31, 2007Humans evolved over millions of years. It wasn't inevitabe, it wasn't predictable, it wasn't random either. It just was. It has taken incomprehensible amount of time to evolve the complexity needed in our neural clumps to hold reasoned representations of the world. Considering this biological history, it is safe to say that it will take imponderable time and much cumulative efforts to refine questions like 'what caused the world', and, even longer to interpret the answers. Future is an unkind place for those of us in the present. It's a mirage we'll never catch, a climax we'll never reach.…
thescian | July 31, 2007Art could be passive and contemplative, like gawking at a Dali painting and letting it drug you into a state of inexplicable weirdness. Art could also be active and participatory, like the thousands of nude cyclicts in Amsterdam.
How about Art with a cellphone and the cellular infrastructure? How about that in the beloved and beguiling city of Bombay? That, dear reader, is what DJ Fadereu and his friends have done. Armed with a cellphone, a custom built software application that translates walks into alphabets, and a pair of enthusiastic legs, the team has captured a piece of our modern…
thescian | July 31, 2007The Hindu on the Asian cup win of Iraqi team.
"In 90 minutes, 11 men on a soccer pitch thousands of miles away have made millions of Iraqis happy while 250 MPs, our government, the mullahs, imams and warlords can't provide us with a single smile. I hope this is a turning point for our country."
thescian | July 30, 2007Hop over and drink scifi till you hallucinate about strange horizons. via bb
thescian | July 29, 2007 The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Macondo was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about by the…
thescian | July 29, 2007Yesterday afternoon, I took the car out and after driving a few minutes noticed the air over the bonnet shimmering and undulating like in a mirage. I have seen this before and it's not good news. The last time I saw this sign, the car burst into flames, the birds flew away, the sky clouded up and I heard the devil. I quickly parked the car and took a look inside the bonnet. The engine had overheated and was hissing and puffing at the seams. I clearly remember adding any coolant, about four months ago. Understandably, the engine was unhappy about it. when I opened the coolant chamber lid…
thescian | July 26, 2007
A new essay has surfaced at TheScian.com. It has got pictures and you can click and hear me mumble and pretend to read it.
Whitby, a seaside town in North Yorkshire, is home to Dracula's cave, gothic gulls, and a B&B establishment that charms its guests with a roaring toilet the size of a matchbox, and a suicidal room heater that is colder than CERN's cryogenic systems. To this town, we - I and my wife Ramya - were headed for a vacation. Read on or listen to the audio.
If you want to volunteer your reading skills and have a good mic, send me an email [selvakumar @ gmail .com ]. There…