thescian | January 23, 2007Vindaloo and tandoori, of course. A comprehensive summary of current scientific research about the medical properties of turmeric.
thescian | January 22, 2007
Lord hanuman needs your help. Here's the list of pleas that I received from his tailiness.
1. Ganesha is a fat bugger. Send the damned milk my way.
2. Anyone without a tail must wear one.
3. Don't eat the banana in front of me, you insensitive clod!
4. Send all your money to the blogger called Selvakumar Ganesan.
5. When you are inside my shrine, plug it. I have had enough from farting devotees. My nose hurts.
Dear Hanuman is crying for god's sake! Won't someone help console him... if not the others, atleast the fourth plea... May his tailiness be with you all.
(thanks Sunil)
thescian | January 22, 2007"Got milk?", asks Sunil. A delicious post on lactose intolerance in humans and how evolution has herded (so to speak) our silly genes into overcoming it.
thescian | January 22, 2007
One small capsule in the ocean, a giant leap for ISRO.In a pathbreaking event heralding its arrival as a space power with capability to recover an orbiting satellite, India today successfully brought back a spacecraft to earth, giving a new impetus to the proposed manned mission to space in the next decade.
A 550-kg recoverable space capsule that was launched by a home-built rocket on January 10 returned to earth's atmosphere, splashing down in the Bay of Bengal, about 140 km east of Sriharikota coast at 9.46 am, as planned, Indian Space Research Organisation officials said.-The Hindu (…
thescian | January 22, 2007The magnificient Sombrero galaxy in infrared taken by Spitzer. A suitable hat for that wandering one-eyed turtle, perhaps.
thescian | January 17, 2007Yes. You read that right. A really big bother. It's all over the BBC here. People in the UK and India have suddenly discovered reality shows. Racist slur on Shilpa! The Indian movie star has found herself on a show that is insulting! And, there are women who insult other women! Surprise, surprise.
Reality shows are not new. It is a great format to present certain shows. Say, the life of a marginal farmer in India or Africa. It can enlighten us, move us to tears and spur us into action. It can change lives. But, in the hands of monkeys, as they would say in tamil, it is like a garland whose…
thescian | January 17, 2007"For market economies, and the Western model of democracy with which they have been associated, the existential challenge for the foreseeable future will be global warming. Other threats like terrorism may well be damaging, but no other conceivable threat or combination of threats can possibly destroy our entire system. As the recent British official commission chaired by Sir Nicholas Stern correctly stated, climate change "is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen."
An essay titled The end of the West as we know it? at IHT.
thescian | January 16, 2007Over here. There are some hilarious hate mails there for your amusement.
If you want some serious stuff about google, our future and whatever would become of it all, go here.
thescian | January 16, 2007 The Science Blogging Anthology - collection of some of the finest science blogging in a book form edited by our very own sleepless blogger.
thescian | January 16, 2007Historians in future will be heartbroken as they won't find paper letters to recreate history. Apparently, everyone is going all emaily on them. No Instant messages, no blogs are mentioned in the essay. What?!! We are not making history with our blogs! D'oh!
thescian | January 16, 2007A million dollars has been donated! Ain't this cool! Send some money the Wikipedia way.
thescian | January 15, 2007"He who rejects with scorn the belief that the shape of his canines, and their occasional great development in other men, are due to our early forefathers having been provided with these formidable weapons, will probably reveal, by sneering, the line of his own descent."
That's a quite hilarious jibe from someone I thought was a serious dude. Guess who. The quote is via a New Scientist article (subscription-only) on evolution running backwards (i.e, supposing it had a direction, which it doesn't). The propensity for organisms to go backwards on their evolutionary path is also known as…
thescian | January 13, 2007If you are a UK resident, I urge you to consider not dealing with ebuyer.com. Their website did not allow registrations to happen on Firefox (you can login with firefox after registering. I registered using Internet Explorer to give them a try. I should have known). They send you the wrong product (twice in my case, the same product. that's what I call anal) and charge you for the postage. When you return an incorrect product and ask for a replacement, they take in the returned product and go all quiet about it until you call them and urge them to send the correct product. Am sure there are…
thescian | January 11, 2007When I was young, I used to wonder why my father insisted on watching news channels on TV all the time instead of the wonderful sexless cartoon characters. I don't wonder anymore. I've started doing it myself now. The joys of gettin old.
News that caught my distracted eyes (I've been distracted by work, for those who are curious).
The "Ashley Treatment". Can harmonal intervention be used on a severely disabled child to limit her growth? It brings so many vexing questions to the fore. I admire the parents for coming out and educating us all. We may agree with their decision; we may not. That's…
thescian | January 10, 2007Check this out. Apostle of Hustle's "My Sword Hands Anger". Dark and delicious. (Use good speakers to appreciate the song properly. Laptop speakers may make the music suck.)
thescian | January 9, 2007Sex helps with public speaking says a BBC report that talks about the research findings of Mr Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley. Apparently, harmless masturbating won't do. You have to really do it by having intercourse. Nature is a tough taskmaster - not that I am complaining.
The important learning to take away from the study is this: "... greater frequency of intercourse is associated with greater benefits." Alright! Am off, you say? Wait! I have some more to say.
Dr Peter Bull doesn't agree. Before a stressful activity - like public speaking, he recommends better…
thescian | January 7, 2007Yes. It's that plant that flowers every twelve years. Grows in the south of my beloved country. Once it flowers - after twelve years - what do you think it would do? Die. That's what. We are already killing it and now it has given up. Sukumar has a story for you.
thescian | January 4, 2007A girl in India watches the hanging of Saddam. She obsesses over it. Two days later her brother chides her for not studying. She locks herself up in her room and hangs herself. The Saddam connection is alleged as having been the influence. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Whatever it is, it is unfortunate.
Someone commits suicide every five minutes in India (source). One suicide every forty seconds in the world (source: WHO). Someone near to you. Someone you never met. I've heard and known first-hand many cases of suicide. They all speak of a small misunderstanding taken too seriously.
The most…