thescian
Posts by this author
May 24, 2007
No 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…
May 22, 2007
If 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…
May 21, 2007
The 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…
May 20, 2007
The 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…
May 18, 2007
Have 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…
May 18, 2007
A 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.
May 17, 2007
Read 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…
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…
May 11, 2007
Reuters 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…
May 11, 2007
Shit 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.
May 10, 2007
The secret revealed at Technology Review.
May 10, 2007
I was trying to view a tamil magazine website. The scrawny bouncers at the door of Sloppy Coders Paradise stop me with a message: "Use Internet Explorer only please". Huh, my firefox fingers bristle at the affront. Still I am not unduely surprised. I was aware the website was probably the work of a…
May 9, 2007
A news story at BBC on the Australian city of Perth.The Australian of the year 2007, environmentalist Tim Flannery, once predicted that Perth in Western Australia could become the world's first ghost metropolis, its population forced to abandon the city due to lack of water.
...
People consume a…
May 8, 2007
A soldier could take no more of the plight of a robot getting blown up by bombs and pulling itself with one leg forward. [via] The question "What's human" will be redefined one day in the far future. Today is not that day however much we would like it to be. The harware and software aren't there…
May 8, 2007
Panta Rei? Sounds like Greek, you say. In fact, it is greek. Panta Rei means "everything flows" in Greek, explain Arunn and Lakshmi. It's a party where science flows free, like beer. Join the the party. Please divert all beer to the Chemical Sciences Special edition to be hosted at nonoscience on…
May 7, 2007
I was reading New Scientist and flipped through to the Last Word column to find this question: How long would it take an average cow to fill the Grand Canyon with milk?
Bob from New York city answers thus: It all depends upon the size of the tanker truck the cow chooses to drive, the time it would…
May 5, 2007
Courtesy of BioVisions at Harvard University. [link via Scientia Natura. Thanks Janny].
Beautifully done. After watching the video I wondered if I could get some explanations on what I saw. I vaguely recognised in the video the cellular machinery that build and dismantle all the cell structures.…
May 4, 2007
Arunn has collected thoughts from folks who could talk science but do not do so. He concludes with the question "Is science blogging in India yet to have its time?"
Hop over and make your point. Come back and read the below in leisure.
Every week I do a search to find science blogs by Indians…
May 4, 2007
TOI has a story about the Indian government preparing to create a ten dollar computer. [via /.] No details about the hardware, software. I am all for cheap computers that have some prabablility of becoming real. But what the heck is this? A joke?
May 3, 2007
A BBC News Video I saw yesterday.A growing number of Indian women are being used as egg donors and surrogate mothers
The motivations are clear. For many childless couples surrogacy is one clear option (the other is adoption). For the poor women who agree to be surrogate mothers, it is a way out of…
May 3, 2007
A two year old kid runs about, trips and crashes to the floor. She is in pain and starts crying. The adults console her saying, "Uh..oh, now, now, don't cry.. you hurt yourself.. come on..". As an adult, when you hurt yourself, the unwritten rule is: you should not compain. (In other words, you…
May 2, 2007
Robert Wright who runs Bloggingheads.tv writes Darwinism isn't depressing in IHT:...survival machines are unfairly maligned. The name suggests, well, machines devoted to their survival. In truth, though, natural selection builds machines devoted ultimately to the survival of their genes, not…
May 1, 2007
Indian Express reports: To crack down on sex-selection facilities offered on the Net, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has written to the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology to block websites providing access to such facilities and even search engines like Google from…
April 30, 2007
It emerged from behind the overflowing garbage bin at the street corner: a two-headed eight-legged mammalian apparition. It hobbled clumsily into the middle of the street: Evolution's artless rendering of two naked dogs copulating; Fluffy's underprevileged brother.
"Why are they joined at the hip…
April 30, 2007
A nifty blog, Denialism, added to sb. Your first stop: Unified theory of the crank.
April 27, 2007
Poor man's VR. Bought a few pairs of Red-Blue 3D Glasses (you can buy them online, I paid five pounds for five glasses) to view the 3D images of Sun produced by NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) satellites. This image is nifty.
April 26, 2007
A discussion at nonoscience.There is something missing here, something very simple, impalpable, profound, sacred. There is a void which can only be felt and hard to demonstrate. You can call it "scientific fervor", "fire in the belly," "passion" or use any other overworked word, which ultimately is…
April 25, 2007
Smart people suck when it comes to financial health. One study* has apparently showed that although smart people earn more, they spend more too thus justifying this blog post's title.
Posting this has been therapeutic. The study* and its conclusions make me somewhat happy considering the level of…