thescian | June 4, 2007There was a long discussion about religion and god at home yesterday night. I ought to write it for public consumption some time. For now, I'll just post some thoughts about Hell and Hinduism. For those bought up by religious christian parents, the conception hell is probably as intimate and as vivid as their poop. This is in no small measure due to the emphasis of Christian faith on sin and confessions.
Just like christian religion, hindu religion has also exploited the notion of hell to scare the shit out of its masses but unlike christian religion it has not taken hell to its logical…
thescian | June 3, 2007Quoted at Harpers. Deliciously subversive.
Wherever religion is resorted to as a strong drink, and as an escape from the dull, monotonous round of home, those of its ministers who pepper the highest will be the surest to please. They who strew the Eternal Path with the greatest amount of brimstone, and who most ruthlessly tread down the flowers and leaves that grow by the wayside, will be voted the most righteous; and they who enlarge with the greatest pertinacity on the difficulty of getting into heaven will be considered, by all true believers, certain of going there: though it would be…
thescian | May 31, 2007iBioSeminars, a free online library of seminars aimed to spur students in India. They are soliciting feedback on the service before wider deployment. Bangalore's National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) will provide the servers.
"Many bright students in science institutes and colleges in India do not always have access to the latest breakthroughs in research in the areas that they are interested in. An exposure to this information at an earlier stage, say at the B.Sc. level, will help students get a better grasp of their subject and make decisions about future study and work," says Prof…
thescian | May 31, 2007God says no to abortion. God says no to condoms. God says no to reason and toleration. Since god has a very fragile ego and does not say all this in public, it falls upon a bishop of the catholic church in Scotland to relay god's delusions to us mortals. A friend of mine in Colorado - a woman, an atheist - used to say that most gods are men and they always talk through their penises. How true. God speaks through his penis, and that's surely why the religious knuckleheads liken abortion to preempting god's message.
Using insensitive and terrorizing language to sway the unsuspecting…
thescian | May 29, 2007A name is a mark of existence: past, present or future, real or imagined. People, places, things, non-things, every conceivable entity in this universe has a name. You may even say something is conceivable because it has a name. No wonder then that we try various things with such an important aspect of our lives.
We name a child - atleast in India - to somehow cause nominative determinism (Nominative determinism is where your name apparently determines what you become in your life). My own name, for instance, is Selvakumar. I was given this name by my parents in the hope that I would have…
thescian | May 29, 2007What does it mean to be scientifically literate in the 21st century?
How do we measure the scientific literacy of a society? How do we boost it? What is the value of this literacy? Who is responsible for fostering it?
Explore these questions in a 1200 words essay. First prize is $2,500 Prize followed by a
2nd prize of $1,000 Prize. Details here.
thescian | May 29, 2007I mean, literally. A recent APOD image shows a football ground size hole in Mars.
Quite possibly, the spots are entrances to deep underground caves capable of protecting Martian life, were it to exist... Such holes and underground caves might be prime targets for future spacecraft, robots, and even the next generation of human interplanetary explorers.
thescian | May 25, 2007I am having lunch with a couple of Italian colleagues in Milan. They speak of politics and religion - mostly in Italian. I look from face to face gathering clues about the subject matter, all the while killing pasta with a fork. The pasta tastes like shoes. I cover it up with large quantities of tomato sauce.
"Berlusconi .. Italy ...screwed..", a long pause, then laughter. I join in with the sauce sloshing in my mouth, carefully tilting my head upwards so as not to spray sauce on the gentlewoman in front who looks at my mouth nervously.
A few moments pass and I hear "...hindus ... pacifists…
thescian | May 24, 2007Category error knows no boundaries. Well, that's why it is called a category error, I hear you say. Wait. Lend me your eyeballs for a minute and I'll show you what I mean: A category error that crosses continents and technology boundaries.
This fine example of a category error was dropped into our home yesterday: a leaflet from the St. Mary's Parish of Amersham. In it was an account of how the rector who is in Amersham persuaded his daughter who was on an african safari to stay inside the car through mobile phone text messages. While on the safari she witnesses a reckless man dragged off by a…
thescian | May 24, 2007No homeopathetic cure. No idiotic dilutions and molecular memories bullshit. This is healing water. For real.
The key ingredient of the water, called Microcyn, are oxychlorine ions - electrically charged molecules which pierce the cell walls of free-living microbes.
The water can only kill cells it can completely surround so human cells are spared because they are tightly bound together in a matrix. -BBC
For comparison here's what an early homeopathy pioneer did to water: Jenichen sat or stood stripped naked to the waist, holding the bottle in his fist in an oblique direction from left to…
thescian | May 22, 2007If it is in a supermarket in the UK, here's all the rotten details from an undercover scoop by BBC. This isn't new. Those in the US have grown up with the likes of Walmart and McDonald's for years. Compared to the US giants, the UK supermarkets are toddlers, still they pack the same sick punch that's the hallmark of obscenely large businesses.
Mass production and consumption is, as everyone knows, not geared towards quality; in the case of food, quality is treated strictly as a legal issue, and is met in word, not in the spirit of the word. From the origin to it's eventual sale, there's…
thescian | May 21, 2007The past two days I've been dipping into Other People's Trades, a collection of essays by Primo Levi. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal and published in 1989, Anita Brookner called it 'The noblest book of the year'. Sadly, amazon informs us that the book is out of print and you'll have to look for a used copy. I came across mine at a local used book shop. Primo Levi was born in Italy, was deported to Auschwitz, after his release, he was a chemist, a writer, and a man who knew Life intimately. He sought his end in the house that he lived in all his life.
The essays let us glimpse into the mind…
thescian | May 20, 2007The Scene: A human is fending off a group of pathogenic bacteria.
Human: Hey you, bacteria, don't come near me. I've got a badass virus with me.
Bacteria: Oh, yeah?
Human: It is so bad, man! You try me and you'll get blisters that you may not even see in your nightmares. [unexpectedly exposes certain body parts]
Bacteria: [scream and run]
Human triumphs, ably supported by herpes virus. End of a bacterial invasion.
Herpes co-evolved with us for the past tens of millions of years. In a study reported at ScienceNow, we learn that herpes virus in mice keeps bacterial pathogens away indirectly. A…
thescian | May 18, 2007Have you wondered if the subtle and not so subtle differences in the way people, say from India and USA, conduct themselves? Differences in facial expressions, walking, use of emoticons in writing...
I have wondered often. Cultural influences contribute to many of our physical expressions and the way we perceive expressions that other wear. Indians would shake their heads from side to side in agreement and invite you to do the neck dance with them. Italians would build spires with their hands (the Duomo's influence, surely). And, American emoticons would cause Japanese ones to wrinkle their…
thescian | May 18, 2007A three minute video at NY Times of LHC, the particle accelerator in Switzerland. The video starts with the question "what's mass", and briefly describes what's at stake: fundamental nature of our world and a handful of nobel prizes.
thescian | May 17, 2007Read a New Yorker essay on Atheists with Attitude by Anthony Gottlieb where books by Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens are reviewed.
Religious belief is as diverse as the number of living species in amazon, many of them, I am sure, are yet to be discovered and evolving rapidly. It is impossible for a book to contain all the diverse beliefs in its scope. Of the three books above, I have only read Dawkins book and Dawkins clearly restricts his book to monotheistic religions that have a personal god as their central dogma. Still, diverse religious beliefs is a swamp with many lurking things that…
thescian | May 12, 2007 I visited the medieval monstrosity a few days back. Some pictures here. D H Lawrence called it "an imitation hedgehog of a cathedral". Mark Twain went all wobbly on knees, "What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful!"
Whatever the Duomo is or is not, it is surely monstrous and as captivating as a giant porcupine with sculpted spines. I went up the lift on a clear wednesday. From the top I could see the Italian Alps far away.
What strikes you the most is a sudden awareness of the inhuman effort that the Duomo represents. It is 157 metres…
thescian | May 11, 2007Reuters story.
A Hindu group in Wales are fighting to save the life of a bull they believe is sacred from slaughter after it tested positive for bovine tuberculosis.
Followers at the Skanda Vale Hindu temple in the western Welsh town of Llanpumsaint, Carmarthen, are considering forming a human chain in an attempt to save Shambo the temple bull from the abattoir, and have launched a petition on their Web site.
Appeals to the Welsh Assembly and Britain's Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs have failed, and a notice of intended slaughter has been issued.
The Hindu order at Skanda…
thescian | May 11, 2007Shit or get off the potty. In Shakespeare's words, "sink or swim". Henry IV.
Kiss my arse. Comes from Goethe's play Götz von Berlichingen. The original words: "Er kann mich im Arsche lecken". He can lick my arse.
English accents. Listen in.