Here's the NASA briefing. And a video: Saw a couple of news sites deciding to headline this variously as: Sun unleashes stuff on earth, Sun declares war on earth (ok, I made that up), etc. If these headlines are indications of our self-importance, then we can surmise that the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and others to show our place in the scheme of things still has a long way to go. We are yet to acknowledge that the universe and the events in it don't give a damn about us.
What's he doing in the 21st century? Well, the same thing of course, only with a more contemporary vocabulary. Michael Shermer on Deepak Chopra's "quantum flapdoodle"
over here. This is around 1817 when he is around 8 or 9 years old:By the time I went to this day-school my taste for natural history, and more especially for collecting, was well developed. I tried to make out the names of plants, and collected all sorts of things, shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for collecting, which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso or a miser, was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or brother ever had this taste. One little event during this year has fixed itself very firmly in my mind, and I hope…
Some weekend geek read. (May not be for everyone's taste. You have been warned.)
Natural organisms never had anything like source code. The genetic code of an organism is more comparable to a binary (in fact, quaternary) executable. Imagine a C compiler made by patching the binary of hello.c a billion times in a genetic algorithm and you'll see how hard this is to understand. -in an answer to a question (question 14). That's a nifty insight that compares software and wetware!
India's Aakanksha Sarda, 18 year old from Bombay.
An economist article on the unjust justice system in USA. Here's a case ACLU is defending: Sixteen Years in Prison for Videotaping the Police? A Slashdot comment with some rather painful statistics. Isn't this something that Alexis de Tocqueville saw a long time ago? Tocqueville was a snob, one among the French privileged who was afraid of democracy in France. But he was a very smart and perceptive man and his observations and intuitions about America have been proven right in many ways. The above events are but a few of many. I fervently wish to be proven wrong in thinking that the tyranny…
Genius penetrates this world well and a humbled genius penetrates even better. Professor Jim Al-Khalili programme on BBC4 "Science and Islam" was an eye-opener for me, especially the details of the life of ibn al-Haytham, a medieval genius. The opening sentence of this post alludes to the fact that he thought he could tame the river Nile and realized shortly that he could not. This got him into trouble with the king (to whom he had promised a tamer Nile) who ordered his death. Ibn al-Haytham had to feign madness to escape death. Much humbled, al-Haytham dedicated his life to scientific…
There are simulations and then there are simulations. This video is all over the intertubes. A simulation rendered by the Lagoa Multiphysics engine developed by Thiago Costa (works for Ubisoft).
Hitchens in Slate:A hereditary head of state, as Thomas Paine so crisply phrased it, is as absurd a proposition as a hereditary physician or a hereditary astronomer. To this innate absurdity, Prince Charles manages to bring fatuities that are entirely his own.
I am not sayin it. Northwestern dudes say so.
A court in Russia has convicted two people for offending religion. So, I ask the same question that Richard Dawkins and others have been asking for a while: What exactly is special about religion that it requires unquestioning respect? Why can't we criticise god for asking us to keep women as slaves, throw our first-born into fire? I mean, if you ask me to burn my child, I will send a stake so high up your bottom that you'd wish you weren't born. Isn't the idea of respect for religion one that of a bully who can't take criticism, when exposed for what it is, these high priests of bullying…
STUDSAT - Satellite designed by Indian students to be launched on Monday.
A powerful and deeply shocking artistic rendition by Isao Hashimoto. From here. The perverse Danse Macabre of our own times. When we see human folly rendered on a compressed historical canvas, it is all the more clear how precarious our personal survival is. Nidhi, my 3 year old daughter, saw me watching this and asked: What music is that, Dad? What shall I say. This is the nightmare I hope she doesn't have to wake up to.
Prayer, according to Martha, a clever girl, and therefore not a believer. From Julian Barnes novel "England, England": Alfalfa, who farts in Devon, Bellowed be thy name. Thy wigwam come. Thy swill be scum In Bath, which is near the Severn. Give us this day our sandwich spread, And give us our bus-passes, As we give those who bus-pass against us, And lead us not into Penn station, Butter the liver and the weevil. For thine is the wigwam, the flowers and the story, For ever and ever ARE MEN.
Admirable restraint from a 16-year old. The policemen involved in the incident have no clue about their own guidance? A mighty stink must be raised.
An interesting article at WSJ by Brian Caplan of Econlog that weighs the various aspects of having children.
So, the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church wants "the monopoly of Darwinism and the deceptive idea that science in general contradicts religion" to end, just as his friends in the US. [New Scientist blog] This is like saying we can't let cleverness have a monopoly, stupidity must have an equal saying in our lives. Excuse me while I knock my head on my desk so I can get stupid enough to understand this. Let us be clear. There is no relativism in some things: Creationism is stupid. Evolution is clever. However this Universe came into being, I would think that it was by some clever…
Bhopal. The recent court verdict is a horrid reflection on the fundamental indecency of humanity. 7000 dead and 25 years later a verdict that is all but a fucking whitewash, thanks to Union Carbide, a US company. American tragedies sink the hearts of everyone everywhere. Their president knows which ass to kick (btw, half of BP directors are american so half the ass to be kicked is made of sons of the soil). That's good. Meanwhile let us not forget the people of Bhopal who are still waiting for justice.