thescian | August 27, 2008How would you explain digital computation and binary math/logic to someone who does not have a mathematics or computer science background? I had about two minutes to think when my brother-in-law asked how computers work. I went with the first useful thought that came to my mind.
Explain what's counting, since counting is where all mathematics begins. Then explain positional representation of numerical values. (As an aside, I should mention this: Until zero and positional representation of values reached Europe through Arabs, clerks in Venice were sullen and bitter as they had to write shitty…
thescian | August 21, 2008Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity.
How refreshing! That was from The Paris Reviews, the finest set of interviews with writers in all the world. You can read more about The Paris Reviews from an article Orhan Pamuk wrote for The Guardian last year. (see)
I started to post a…
thescian | August 21, 2008Suvrat Kher, a geologist, has given answers to questions from a muddled engineer and wannabe astrologer. Suvrat Kher is a patient bloke. Instead of hitting the questioner on the head repeatedly with Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit, he has done the nicer thing.
Why do so many seemingly educated people - people who have been trained in the scientific method - have a soft spot for astrology in India.
thescian | August 19, 2008How does one deal with those who do not understand the rational way of living, those who follow unreasonable dogma like religion and give in to superstitions?
There are two different approaches marked by the diametric positions that they take. One is to shame the irrational person so that they are persuaded or forced to go into hiding. They other is to engage with them in conversations about agreements and disagreements and try to win them over to the side of rationality. There are other approaches besides these two, most are usually a varying mix of these two contrasting approaches. (We will…
thescian | August 15, 2008Leaping Shampoo Fascinating effect. Even more fascinating is how the experimenters are able to produce a cascade effect (towards the end of the video).
[via reddit]
thescian | August 14, 2008LiveScience has a nifty list. From an artificial hippocampus - the part of the brain that helps with short-term memory-, to Retinal Prosthesis or bionic eyes - electrodes implanted in the eye that help people who've lost some of their retinal function see again.
thescian | August 13, 2008An article in NY Times about an immigrant who has lived half his life in the US dies in custody due to systemic negligence and apathy. This is not a one off case, if you are tempted to dismiss it.Mr. Ng's death follows a succession of cases that have drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of inadequate medical care, human rights violations and a lack of oversight in immigration detention, a rapidly growing network of publicly and privately run jails where the government held more than 300,000 people in the last year while deciding whether to deport them.
Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm…
thescian | August 11, 2008Anand Giridharadas (his blog) writes at IHT:many of the people who are making the new India new - from the stockbrokers to the bedecked socialites - are responsible for preserving a certain gloomy element of the Indian past: a tendency to treat the hired help like chattel, to taunt and humiliate and condescend to them, to behave as though some humans were born to serve and others to be served.
"Indians are perhaps the world's most undemocratic people, living in the world's largest and most plural democracy," as Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar, two well-known scholars of Indian culture, put…
thescian | August 6, 2008What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias. -Vikram Seth, From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet.
thescian | August 6, 2008A Screensaver of moving dots. Sure you can see it, but can you hear it? [Mo at Neurophilosophy]
What do you think is the sate of science? More important, do you like iPhone 3G, MacBook Air or 40GB Apple TV? Take this Seed/Sb survey.
Family is all one has got. That goes for all primates. Photos of Western gorillas [Brian Switek at Laelaps].
So, what does global Warming lead to? Flooding, famine, mayhem. We can survive that. But, more religions?! How does one survive a lunacy pandemic....[Razib at Gene Expression]
thescian | August 5, 2008 Shakespeare really does something to our inner reality, making me feel more alive in more unpredictable mental ways when I read or see his work. I am also getting a sense of an underlying shape to experience, as though the syntax in front of my eyes were keying into mental pathways behind them, and shifting and reconfiguring them dramatically in the theatre of the brain.
Thus concludes Philip Davis in Literary Review after some studies of how the brain responds to Shakespeare's extraordinary play with the English language.
A few days back, wife was flipping through a book of quotes. She…
thescian | August 4, 2008A collection of scifi speculation ranging from robocracy to anarchy at io9.
thescian | August 3, 2008Go here for some stunning time-lapse video of Britons living, moving about and talking - seen through the world of satellite and communication imagery.
Nifty new modes of perception. If some day, things beyond biology come alive, this is how they may be perceived?
thescian | August 3, 2008Today. 140 dead. 40 children. Stampede at the Nainadevi temple, Himachal Pradesh.
July. 6 dead. Stampede at Jagannath temple, Orissa.
March. 10 dead. Stampede at temple, Madhya Pradesh.
January. 5 dead. Stampede at Durga Malleswara temple, Andra Pradesh.
thescian | August 1, 20083D printing is here. Try RepRap, Shapeways, Fab @ Home. I've been messing around with Blender and PyTopMod to make some designs for printing off at Shapeways. Worth learning these two if you are into things like this (I love this stuff), although PyTopMod may be too mathematical.
RepRap
Darwin: Optoswitch bracket timelapse build from eD Sells on Vimeo.
Fab @ Home
Shapeways
thescian | July 30, 2008Read an article about Glass at NY Times. It seems to have coalesced some scattered thoughts between my ears (the word coagulated probably fits too, you decide).
Some weeks back I was looking through the window at the sky. An airplane was gliding slowly across my field of vision from right to left. When it reached the edge, it vanished. Although one part of my mind anticipated it, in another part, at a quiet dark corner, a little spark flashed. Why! If the window was not made of glass, I'd be staring at a blank wall and there would be no airplane! Or, if the whole room was made of glass I'd…
thescian | July 29, 2008Orwell is a hero of mine, and of many. This news at the BBC caught my eyes.
His diary entries are to be published on a special blog - one entry at a time by The Orwell Prize."From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell's face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries. The Orwell Prize is delighted to announce that, to mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell's recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK,…
thescian | July 28, 2008I'd love to see us stop the suffocating Vedic flatulence. Among my country men and women, there's a tendency to inflate the past beyond reasonable limits. If someone can draw a thread from Vedic literature, Vedic mathematics, Vedic astronomy, Vedic quantum mechanics and Vedic levitation it's considered a mark of distinction - or so it is assumed. So, let me call it what it is: Bullshit.
I am not an iconoclast. Past casts a long shadow. Without respect for history, without empathy for those who lived before us, we'll never understand the present. However, getting irrationally and romantically…
thescian | July 22, 2008I have a few invites to give away for Dropbox (private beta). Leave a comment with your email if you want one (first-come first-served).
I have been using it for a week now to keep my notes, pictures, etc synchronized between two computers. Very fast and unobtrusive. Recommended.
thescian | July 22, 2008The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
--Ernest Hemingway