thescian | June 26, 2008I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures. - Oscar Wilde.
thescian | June 25, 2008"I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways." - G H Hardy on Ramanujan.
Let me leave you with a brief note on Hardy. Hardy was an ardent atheist that he once made a new year resolution to prove the nonexistence of God (and to murder Mussolini). His collaboration with Ramanujan and Littlewood…
thescian | June 24, 2008At the Beebs:A group of Indians are planning to present a statue of the revered Indian monkey God, Hanuman, to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The group decided to order the idol after they read a magazine report saying that Mr Obama carried a good luck 'monkey king' charm.
Let me paraphrase: Primates present magic potion to alpha male (to be fair, they would've done something similar if it was an alpha female).
Charming monkeys? I don't think so. They are so transparent. It is an embarrassment to share genetic heritage with them.
thescian | June 20, 2008I was looking for some information on the intertubes and google dropped me onto a website that it thought would help. I found a large block of ad content on the site that said "Add emoticons to your emails!" with a collection of the ever-stupid animated gif images that wink, grin, clap, and do all the other idiotic things that invariably attract the clueless. I started wondering what sort of business model would these folks - the ones who put these ad out - have. So, I clicked on the ad (I am on a Mac using Safari, which is important to note). And, no surprises here, it downloaded a windows…
thescian | June 20, 2008Modern day living is now a highly competitive sport. The field events are well established: catching a bus driven by a cynical driver, getting a promotion at job, getting good grades in college, getting a grant for research, getting your research paper published, etc. Where there is extreme competition, there is room for the use of performance enhancement drugs. Some would call this 'room for cheating' but I am ambivalent on this. Enhancing your performance to compete is simply the natural thing to do. How far can/should one go in that direction is debatable but we can't pretend that we have…
thescian | June 18, 2008reddit open-sourced!
Firefox 3. Get it. Then go check the counter!
iPlayer for UK. Zattoo for Europe. For US? Try Hulu. (to watch outside US, you want this).
thescian | June 18, 2008Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.
-Shakespeare
thescian | June 14, 2008A BBC report:More than 500 people have been killed in Assam - and half as many in neighbouring West Bengal - in the past few years because their neighbours thought they were witches.
A study on these killings by a Bengal police officer, Asit Baran Choudhury, suggests that most of those accused of practising witchcraft and then killed are "isolated families" with some landed property.
He says most of those killed are widows.
"Powerful people in the community target them to acquire the land," says the study.
Another instance of greed exploiting ignorance.
thescian | June 14, 2008 Works by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt are at Tate Liverpool. Klimt is one of Vienna's famous sons (another is Freud). He was obsessed with Sex and Death and his distillation of these quintessential human experiences is extraordinarily powerful. Consider The Kiss. It is intoxicating. One could feel the tension, power (and perhaps, responsibility too?) embodied in the male figure. Of course, if one knows Klimt's life the paintings take on more meaning (he was uncommitted to any women all through life, however, he had many relationships and supposedly fathered more than a dozen children). The…
thescian | June 14, 2008Sunil promises to send Orson Scott Card's How to write science fiction to a story with the most creative scientific content (and does not break any laws of science).
Go for it!
thescian | June 11, 2008Hear! Hear! TheScian Science Fiction Story Contest for this year has been announced! Follow this link for rules and dates and more. If all goes well, you may find your story in print next year. But first, you must compete to win. Tell your ambitious, head-in-the-galaxy friends whose speculations has amused and entertained you. Spread the word. Get going and good luck. Previous contests: 2007 , 2006.
thescian | June 6, 2008Which is easy: To maintain your balance when cycling uphill, or when cycling downhill? Assume you maintain a constant speed of 6 km/hr and the inclination is constant. If you like to challenge your proficiency in physics, assume further that you are negotiating a bend.
I don't know the answer so I am hoping someone would explain in a way I and others can understand.
This question came up when I was negotiating a small bridge over a brook on my usual cycling route. As you come off the bridge you have to veer to the right sharply. I find it harder to maintain balance on the downhill climb than…
thescian | June 2, 2008Goethe ... is a wonderful instance of the fact that the purest naïveté and the most mighty understanding can go hand in hand. -Thomas Mann on Goethe.
When I read this, it struck me as extraordinarily insightful. Perhaps, I am taking Mann out of content, but I shall talk anyway. Aren't those who pursue science to understand the world this way too - naïve but with a heart that holds the laws of the world? One could think Einstein may have been naïve when he wrote letters to President Roosevelt on the Manhattan project, but, that was not because he did not understand. Was it? It was because…
thescian | May 30, 2008I have been wondering. Do all religious explanations of Creation of the world necessarily involve narcissism and incest? If everything comes from god, Creation is an act of incest beginning with god's own self. Is that why Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine invoke god's dignity in disallowing sexual conception of Christ? If logic leads to blasphemy, fuck logic, says the religious mind. Right?
We should note that the Vedas take a more interesting approach to this impasse. They take a shock-and-awe approach. (If you can't beat them, eat them and make them a part of yourself. Hinduism's evidently…