thescian
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April 24, 2007
A contest [via]. I like the interface that streams the photos depending on your mouse movements. A browser barely manages to contain such interfaces. We need VR, 3D interfaces, holographic projections, cranial data accessories...
April 24, 2007
Sunil writes about the physics festival he visited.
April 24, 2007
Jonathan Gottschall writes in The Age:
At exactly the same time I was reading The Naked Ape I was re-reading Homer's Iliad for a graduate seminar on the great epics. As always, Homer made my bones flex and ache with the terror and beauty of the human condition. But this time around I also…
April 24, 2007
From ISRO press release.
In its eleventh flight, conducted from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota, this afternoon (April 23, 2007), ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV-C8, successfully launched the 352 kg Italian astronomical satellite, AGILE, into a 550 km circular orbit…
April 23, 2007
Bill O' Reilly supposedly interviewed Richard Dawkins. Bill had the mike, the studio and the buttons and so Bill jumped on the pulpit and delivered his sermon without having the decency to treat the guest properly (he didn't allow Dawkins to say much).
O'Reilly referred to the tides and the (…
April 21, 2007
I was reading The Telegraph Magazine today [paper copy]. Salmon Rushdie introduces Taryn Simon's An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamilar - a collection of portraits that capture the hidden reality: bushmeat, fruits and other items confiscated by US Customs; playboy Braille Edition;…
April 20, 2007
Look to the left under Suggestions. The suggestions were shamelessly copied from Kenny Craig, the hypnotist in Little Britain (My three year old niece calls it the Vomit Show). I have Senegal Fast Food on the wishlist, if you are feeling charitable today.
April 19, 2007
They are on the left column and come out of Picasa servers. Yet another part of my life inexorably eaten by the Google Monster.
For those who are wondering where were the photos in the first place: it was in Flickr. I used to login with my gmail login name into Flickr. Not anymore. Yahoo guys…
April 19, 2007
A english language style quiz. Give it a go. I failed miserably. I should've RTFM. [via a reddit story]
Before the style guide, Orwell's essay on english writing would be a good refresher.
Since you've come this far, you might as well let Strunk give you a good beating.
April 18, 2007
Found via RichardDawkins.net. A commenter there had linked to the video below.
April 18, 2007
All the talk of citizen heros who could've killed the VT shooter is misleading at the very least. A discussion at Daily Kos. There are sociopaths everywhere: US, India, Iraq, Sudan. How dangerous a weapon they get and how easily they get those weapons makes a big difference in what headlines you…
April 17, 2007
I Am John by Emil Svanängen.
What did the pope say? Ask gawker.
Darfur.
Keeping cool and waiting for strange things to leap out of a seething sea.
The real deal. A Romantic or more appropriately Anarcho-Environmentalist in India. A review of his Manifesto. I read some chapters. The prose is not…
April 16, 2007
Cheer now! The pulpit is in the hands of the godless says WSJ.
April 15, 2007
National Study on Child Abuse here (200 pages report). I haven't read it fully. A few things I noted: My home state Tamilnadu was not part of the survey - of the southern states, Andhra and Kerala are. The summary shown below is a slap in the face of any society that lets such atrocities happen to…
April 15, 2007
One of the most emailed stories in the Beebs today is about a man in Sudan who has started a family with a goat, involuntarily, it seems. If the Swan (undercover Zeus, one of the numerous horny greek gods) can, the Sudan man can too. Is there an equivalent Indian mythology? I am not aware of any,…
April 12, 2007
It was the very first time. Her optic nerve sparked like a benevolent thunderbolt. The lucky photon came bouncing off the dining room light. It penetrated layers of stretched biological tissue, the amniotic sac, the translucent fluid inside, and reached the photo-sensitive cell at the precise…
April 10, 2007
Sure, you have read it already. Read it again. The author answers questions here. A previous post (you'll find NPR link there to Bell's Vocalise).
April 7, 2007
Wade Davis, National Geographic explorer, gives a talk on ethonsphere and the perils facing cultural diversity in this increasingly monocultural world. He ends his talk with the narration of an Innuit grandfather: The Innuit family were being resettled by the Canadian government from their icy land…
April 4, 2007
This year's scifi contest at TheScian.com will open for submissions in June and end in September as it did last year. There will be a few important changes to the contest from last year. This year the story contest will have a theme. The theme is this: "Living on Earth and Elsewhere". I imagine the…
April 4, 2007
In other words, it's so fractal! Here's the what and why. One is a brain cell of a mouse and the other is a simulation of our universe [via reddit] What a weird Universe we inhabit.
April 4, 2007
Anna Deavere-Smith at TED. When she began she said she wanted to inspire. She did.
April 4, 2007
From A History of Violence by Pinker at Edge.org
In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens,…
April 2, 2007
Ruth Gledhill - she is the Times newspaper correspondent for Religion - writes in her blog about a recent debate on Religion organized by the Times. A section that put a smile on my face:
Nigel Spivey, who teaches classical art and archaeology at Cambridge and Rabbi Neuberger were particularly…
April 2, 2007
How can I not point out a study that says coffee is good for the liver. Read this in a New Scientist article on Liver troubles:
"Doctors have a saying that everything you enjoy is either illegal, immoral or bad for you, so it's nice to discover that coffee is good for you," says Arthur Klatsky, an…
March 30, 2007
So, Bono is knighted. But, hey, don't call him Sir and displease the Queen. He's Irish and shall not be sir'd. Know who else was knighted by a Queen? John Hawkins. John Hawkins who? John Hawkins, the first slave trader. He began his business of capturing and selling african people in 1562. Queen…
March 29, 2007
Google is busy building it, scanning books and scaring publishers off their pants. An article at Speigel:
The little Google search window would be the gateway to the content of the 32 million books, 750 million articles, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 films, 3 million television…
March 28, 2007
You may know by now what Kathy Sierra, a wonderfully smart blogger at CPU, has gone through. She has been the target of disturbing and sexually loaded comments, images with death threats.
She is a writer I greatly admire. She and her team has done more with her books and her blog to raise the…
March 28, 2007
The Albert Einstein Memorial in Washington DC. Light played on the puckered bronze figure that seemed to be at the cusp of another enlightening idea. A majestic triumph for Robert Berks, the sculptor who created this work of art. The posture is relaxed, mellow and exudes subdued happiness that…
March 26, 2007
I was having breakfast with a friend last week. I noticed him avoiding sugar substitutes and asked why. He didn't know of any scientific studies but said he preferred food that doesn't pretend. His reasoning went like this: Sweeteners mimic natural taste. This is dishonest and not the way we…
March 19, 2007
Yours truly will be away from the blog this week, makin money and all. While am away, here's something to think about.
Fake fights on Climate crisis. Alan Thorpe writes in New Scientist.
Scepticism is one thing; cynicism and conspiracy-theorising are quite another. These are the hallmarks of a…