thescian
Posts by this author
June 18, 2010
Douglas Rushkoff responding to Steven Pinker at Edge.org: Facebook -- as a way for college kids to meet and greet one another -- was a terrific program. As a mirror through which young people forge an identity, however, the program is lacking the nuance of real life. Facebook -- more than a program…
June 15, 2010
Apparently there may not be just one God particle but perhaps five of 'em. Shall we say physicists are testing Many Gods Hypothesis. See this Beebs report.
Here's a question that has assailed our collective primate head all through its history: Do truly fundamental constituents of matter exist…
June 14, 2010
TheScian Science Fiction Anthology - a collectible very first paperback edition is now available for purchase.
For eye-candy, preview and to buy visit the book page.
Shipping to US is 2-3 days (one day with Amazon Prime), to Europe and UK takes about 5 days. Kindle eBook edition and an Indian…
June 10, 2010
A New Scientist note (points to PNAS paper):Post-mortems of binge-drinking adolescent monkeys have produced the best evidence yet that heavy drinking at an early age can do lasting damage to the brain.
The worst damage was to stem cells destined to become neurons in the hippocampus, the brain area…
June 8, 2010
Over the weekend dug and tilled a patch of land in the garden to plant some herbs. It took an hour and the effort was rewarded with a rich harvest of pebbles, worms and roots of various sizes that ran underground like highways carrying nutrients to far away places (one can imagine trees as cities…
June 7, 2010
A fabulous article on potato fries at Serious Eats. For the sheer depth and mad commitment, this is surely one of the best food hacking I have come across so far this year.
June 2, 2010
A report on BBC on a psychology study done in Australia.The University of New South Wales researcher says a grumpy person can cope with more demanding situations than a happy one because of the way the brain "promotes information processing strategies".
Information processing strategies! That…
June 1, 2010
Watched the match between Soderling and Federer. Soderling is a brute, and he played a brilliant game. Distastefully aggressive play that never let Federer in the game.
A quick tech note that may be of some interest to geeks. I am at a place where there is no TV and no broadband internet. I carry a…
May 26, 2010
A little poem I wrote for the little ones (5 year old niece Nethra and 2 1/2 year old daughter Nidhi).
Small Finger of a Lady SingerI am the small finger
Of a lovely lady singer.
When her voice goes south
She puts me in her mouth
Or strikes up a pose
And puts me in her nose.
May 25, 2010
Behold this book title: Traveller's Manual for French Persons in Germany and German Persons in France. Such clarity of purpose! This was a French-German phrase book Published in 1799 in France by one Caroline-Stephanie-Felicite Du Crest de Saint-Aubin.
Learnt about this remarkable manual from…
May 21, 2010
I hear this phrase often from people and immediately start wondering if their normal mode of speech is dishonesty and in this instance they are favoring me with honesty.
The phrase itself is usually just a verbal tick--a watered down conspirational tone--to draw others to one's side. To be honest,…
May 17, 2010
I feel obliged to inform you of the reason for the paucity of posts on this blog. I have been busy for the past six months on a startup (software) which has swallowed all my spare time like a blackhole eating light. The gravitational well I have fallen seems to be too deep to send any signals…
May 17, 2010
When we are young, we have it easy. Unfounded confidence and untested convictions informed much of my muddling through as I tried growing up. Whether I have grown up or have just aged is open to interpretation. In any case, I am not young anymore. As I near middle-age, inevitably, I keep looking…
May 15, 2010
The name Facebook comes from college yearbooks where photos of classmates are stuck and things are scribbled on. The scribblings are some(many?)times deeply regretted later in life. As most of you who read this may already know, Zuckerberg who started Facebook is young and reckless (not unusual in…
May 6, 2010
Trying to place science and literature in their proper places in my head. The story so far...
If Science is an undertaking to find Absolute Truths, then what is Literature with a dominant scientific theme (like Ian McEwan's Solar or E. O. Wilson's Anthill)? Literature can't take the place of…
April 27, 2010
Crab Nebula
Caesium-133 atom has 551,557,906,200 heartbeats per minute
Humans have 70 heartbeats per minute
Sun has 1 heartbeat every 11 years
Crab Nebula pulsar has 1812 heartbeats per minute
Wondering what's the purpose of all this time keeping.
April 24, 2010
Still alive. Still listening to music. Here's a few from my playlist this morning.
Sophia by Nerina Pallot
Les Etoiles (The Stars) by Melody Gargot (check out her lickable website and who she is).
A Sunday Smile by Zach Condon (wish he made more music)
Pourquoi me réveiller (Why do you wake me?)…
April 10, 2010
Self portrait
The american poet E. E. Cummings' poems usually have mashed-up capitalization, punctuation and are constructed on the page with words as visual art. Consider the below poems where he presents his (typical early 20th century) views on science and technology as having a rather callous…
April 1, 2010
From The Four Quartets:
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed,…
April 1, 2010
A fascinating presentation. The logical conclusion of a world singing to the tune of commerce. Life as a game. A gloriusly simplified abstraction over the complexities of real life. What's gonna stop it? You and me? Cue in uproarious laughter.
Well, Mr. Schell does throw in a bit of optimism in…
March 27, 2010
Jesus survived the crucifixion and spent his remaining years in Kashmir. Yes, he did. I don't doubt it for a moment.
March 26, 2010
Perelman quit the world of mathematics in disgust four years ago. His decision to spurn the Fields Medal may have been driven by a sense that his fellow mathematicians were not worthy to award it. -Reported in Guardian
"his fellow mathematicians were not worthy to award it" Ah. If so, you go,…
March 25, 2010
As you may know, we are publishing a Science fiction anthology with the stories from the yearly SF contest. In latest news on that, Proof copy has arrived from both CreateSpace and Lulu. I like the CreateSpace copy better because the dimensions look right. Lulu has done good job as well.
March 18, 2010
In The Hindu.
NL: But in a society like India, how can we ignore the divisiveness, the poverty?
Pamuk: You don't ignore it. It is part of the picture, but it's not the only thing. That's how I see it. My kind of novel is about balancing of the whole picture. I think... I always argue that living in…
March 18, 2010
Fished from the internets for printing and framing.
Larger size at TheScian Photos
Larger size at TheScian Photos
March 16, 2010
I had been a apple computer user for the past 5 years and immensely enjoyed the hardware and the software. But, all good things come at a price. Apple's price for a polished user experience has lately turned out to be user freedom. The inability to take out and use the content stored in apple's…
March 12, 2010
Lack of understanding [is] called stupidity; deficiency in the application of the faculty of reason to what is practical we [recognize] as foolishness; deficiency in power of judgement as silliness; finally, partial or even complete lack of memory as madness... That which is correctly known through…