thescian | September 26, 2006An excellent essay on the current state of physics at The New Yorker by Jim Holt.It is the best of times in physics. Physicists are on the verge of obtaining the long-sought Theory of Everything. In a few elegant equations, perhaps concise enough to be emblazoned on a T-shirt, this theory will reveal how the universe began and how it will end. The key insight is that the smallest constituents of the world are not particles, as had been supposed since ancient times, but "strings"--tiny strands of energy. By vibrating in different ways, these strings produce the essential phenomena of nature,…
thescian | September 25, 2006The God Delusion is the new book by Richard Dawkins. Readers of Dawkins would already know Dawkins position on religion. Beebs has an interview with Dawkins in it's Newsnight programme. You can watch the video online. Quite interesting. Prospect Magazine has a review which is worth a read if you want to see the kind of reactions that Dawkins evokes in some people.
thescian | September 25, 2006Over at balancinglife, Sunil has a post on a bee which runs the official air-taxi service a certain beetle larvae. The elaborate mechanism by which the beetle larvae finds a place to feed is astounding. You can also listen to one of the authors of the paper talk about this at the recent Quirks & Quarks Podcast.
thescian | September 22, 2006A gravity well is a hole dug out in space for frogs to live in. No one knows who put the frogs in there. The well keeps the frogs inside and the frogs have been suspicious of Something Beyond for a while now. They've been trying hard to see the Outside. Unfortunately, even the most athletic ones that jump three feet high cannot get out of the well. Some of the more enterprising frogs have been trying to get out of the well using a Froget. A Froget is a two feet cylinder with gunpowder at one end and a brave frog wearing goggles at the other end. Most of the time the Froget has the right end…
thescian | September 22, 2006An excellent article on the recent Fields Medal winner (the Nobel Prize for math) Terence Tao in Seed.
thescian | September 22, 2006I haven't faced it. But if you have, this discussion at Pharyngula would fill you in. I use NoScript plugin for Firefox and usually swat all scripts without mercy.
thescian | September 20, 2006Listen up. Do not reheat and eat that rice you saved in the refrigerator last year. It may harbor spores of Bacillus cereus bacteria (shown below) that is still clinging to life. The bacteria produces toxins that can unplug your bottom (it's called the state of diarreal exuberance).
A collegue of my sister's shared this info. You can find more at the Ask Sam site, part of the UK government's Food Standards Agency. There's even videos of Virtual Sam, the nutritionist. Her messages are short. I mean real short. The first time I watched the videos, I heard a 'Hi' , a blur and then a 'Bye'. So…
thescian | September 19, 2006I finally got around to watching the video of Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers discussing deceit and deception. Wonderful to watch how two very sharp minds go about thinking through things. Here's the part that grabbed my attention. Robert Trivers at one point in the conversation:"..you have the following kinds of verbal things that people do, apparently quite unconsciously. If you're a member of my group and you do something good, I make a general statement: "Noam Chomsky is an excellent person." Now if you do something bad, I give a particular statement, "Noam Chomsky stepped on my toe."…
thescian | September 18, 2006A few more days before we close the Scifi Short Story Contest. Thanks to Ramya for the nifty countdown javascript. Now, you can visit the scifi page and feel the urgency.
thescian | September 18, 2006Thanks to gaddeswarup who linked to Current Science, an academic science publication in India, I went over to read the current issue. Featured in it under "Astrology and science" is a letter from R V Karanth (of the Geological Society of India), who was commenting about an earlier article on astrology. I quote, It is true that astrology is unscientific, at least for those who do not believe in it. I being a `non-believer' vehemently used to argue against the belief in astrology and wearing stones for astrological purÂposes. Nevertheless, of late, I have a feeling that believing in…
thescian | September 18, 2006Sunil writes about Crabs in Japan that are revered because they've been selected for samurai qualities. Well, not really for all the sword wielding and harakiri skills, rather just the looks. But hey, as long as it floats the crab's boat who are we to complain. (I know, terrible pun with that crab's boat thing. I can't help it.)
thescian | September 18, 2006What's a good age to start a business of your own? 10, that's what sez Intrepid at Everyday Entrepreneurs, a blog that I would gladly recommend to all.
thescian | September 17, 2006Ladies and gentlemen! The Flounder!
If you look closely, the flounder fish has a rather remarkable head. There's something amiss with the placement of its right eye and the way its mouth opens. Its as if it was a normal fish like, say the discus fish, that lived a normal life and one day some crazy demented person came along and said, "So you are a normal fish, eh? Let's see. I'll drop you on the sea floor and make you move about on your sides flat on the floor. That eye you are now dragging in the mud, let me twist your head around to bring it to the same side as the eye facing the sky. Of…
thescian | September 17, 2006THE year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. Not to mention rumours which agitated the maritime population and excited the public mind, even in the interior of continents, seafaring men were particularly excited. Merchants, common sailors, captains of vessels, skippers, both of Europe and America, naval officers of all countries, and the Governments of several States on the two continents, were deeply interested in the matter.
For some time past vessels had been met by "an enormous thing," a long…
thescian | September 15, 2006Beebs on Claudia Mitchell, the second person to be fitted with the bionic arm. Cool video there. What is a bionic arm? From the RIC page:The "Bionic Arm," or myoelectric arm, is driven using electrical signals from the muscles of the chest, now activated by the user's own thought-generated nerve impulses. These impulses are sensed, via surface electrodes, from the pectoral muscle and carried through to the mechanical arm, causing the arm to move.
Very impressive. We can now replace hearts, eyes, ears and limbs. The list keeps growing. I personally would like to see the day when we can…
thescian | September 15, 2006From the Royal Society Press Release. The complete archive of the Royal Society journals, including some of the most significant scientific papers ever published since 1665, is to be made freely available electronically for the first time today (14th September 2006) for a two month period.
The archive contains seminal research papers including accounts of Michael Faraday's groundbreaking series of electrical experiments, Isaac Newton's invention of the reflecting telescope, and the first research paper published by Stephen Hawking.
archives link
thescian | September 14, 2006Nature is a lazy bum that it will always choose the path of least action. If we roll a ball on the floor, for instance, the ball will move in a path that requires the least action (energy multiplied by time) to get from the start to the end point. While we all accept Newtonian laws as intuitive we tend to look at Quantum Mechanics as weird and non-intuitive. Well, we are wrong. Why Quantum Mechanics Is Not So Weird after All sez Paul Qunicey. [via]
Now, once you've conquered the idea that Nature is lazy, you can move on to String Theory and its competitors that aim to show that Nature is…
thescian | September 13, 2006My reading list for the next few weeks.
The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin
I am reading this book at the moment. Smolin treats a subject that goes to the core of what constitutes scientific progress and how scientists go about their business. In the first few chapters, Smolin recounts the history of physics interspersed with his own personal story. He also discusses the most important problems that physical theories need to address. This is the first book that I have picked up on the recent 'Theories of Everything…
thescian | September 12, 2006Razib at Gene Expression talks about a recent episode where women were to be banned from praying in a Mecca Shrine.a conversation that my aunt once had with my uncle, she joked offhand asking why men should always pray before women. My uncle, a religious man, explained that if women prayed before men in the hall then when they bent over and prostrated themselves they would expose themselves to men. That would be improper. My aunt responded, "Ah, but it's fine if we see your backsides all the time?" My uncle was taken aback that he didn't respond. On another occassion my mother explained to…
thescian | September 12, 2006Contrary to my usual software updates posts where I post about updates to the blog software or to TheScian.com, this one is about the updates to the computers I use everyday. I use a PowerBook at home and a Dell Latitude with Windows XP at work. Due to a momentary lack of judgement on my part I upgraded the Adobe Acrobat Reader in the work machine to the latest version. Well, that did it. All hell broke lose. Everytime I reboot the machine, Acrobat would take over and download all of Adobe's products and would insist that I reboot once again. If I did reboot, the process would repeat again.…