Prime Stream
thescian | January 3, 2011So, wife asked me what's with connectedness of the stuff in this world, synchronicity and such. Well, there is much to say. Let's take this, for instance: Place the picture of a BZ reaction snapshot and a CMB picture side by side. One is a chemical reaction in a small dish, the other is a seven year long snap of the universe. Why do they look similar. Such strangeness, like galactic superclusters are waves of matter... (just a wee bit bigger than our lab reactions).
Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction
CMB Image of the Sky
thescian | December 30, 2010I find myself scrubbing (my own person, that is, please read on) vigorously without being aware only to realize later that I am listening to a fast-paced music while bathing. Most of you would have experienced the connection between music and pace of physical action. Amateur observations made while listening to music during bathing, driving and writing software have naturally led me to wonder about the kinds of resonance between brain's biochemical processes (a.k.a rhythms) and music. The new year's edition of New Scientist supplied a word for this that I had not known before: Entrainment.…
thescian | September 9, 2010Here's the thing about Google Instant: it's a rather nifty thing but that's not what is important. What is crucial is the introduction of 'a new kind of "conversational" search interaction'. So, now you can talk to the search engine. Microsoft tried this paradigm some years ago, I think, with some eminently forgettable avatar character and it was a fine failure (to be fair, the technology and research was not mature then). Google is now poised, I believe, to succeed.
A few key technical things have come together to make Google Instant happen, particularly speed and the ability to predict…
thescian | August 20, 2010A seemingly simple question. It's what a hot or cold body--any body, for that matter--has. And, the perfectly valid answer. But, Nature, as we have learnt over the course of humanity's scientific discoveries, is like an onion without a core, it's layers all the way. So, after we peel the question what-is-heat another layer reveals itself. Now, things get a little interesting and a little misty. Macroscopic properties. That's the new layer. Shape is an macroscopic property. Sound is another. These are things we perceive which are caused by a collection of stuff. Shape is caused by a lot of…
thescian | August 18, 2010Plug Computer
Every hackers dream (certainly my dream, in any case) is a dozen of these chugging away quietly in the basement, in the living room, in the bathroom, in the car, in the bike... providing all the services that make living a thrill. What services, you ask. Let's see. Here's a few I can think of right away for my home use:-
-check the electrical devices not in use and switch them off
-optimize water use by throttling inlet at appropriate times (that means collect usage statistics and run an optimizing algorithm), and water the plants
-cache all data to reduce bandwidth use
-run…
thescian | August 13, 2010The story so far: We really don't know much. This being from a very very smart person (she's the most cited physicist?), I look forward to an exciting future in physics.
thescian | August 12, 2010Am sure many of you are following the latest developments [Geomblog , Lipton] with interest. P vs NP is one of The Millennium Problems. Here's a neat explanation of the problem with the use of Minesweeper game.
thescian | August 10, 2010 Alfred Russel Wallace was a great traveller, observer, collector and naturalist who lived at the same time as Darwin. He sent Darwin his thoughts on evolution of species after extensive observations around the world, especially in and around Borneo. This accelarated Darwin to publish his conclusions on origin of species along with Wallace's. What struck me was the exceptional insight with which he talks about the so-called Wallace line. This is the imaginary line that divides the Asian coast from Australian. Wallace observed a dramatic change in plant and animal lives when one goes from the…
thescian | August 3, 2010Here's the NASA briefing. And a video:
Saw a couple of news sites deciding to headline this variously as: Sun unleashes stuff on earth, Sun declares war on earth (ok, I made that up), etc. If these headlines are indications of our self-importance, then we can surmise that the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and others to show our place in the scheme of things still has a long way to go. We are yet to acknowledge that the universe and the events in it don't give a damn about us.
thescian | July 26, 2010
Genius penetrates this world well and a humbled genius penetrates even better. Professor Jim Al-Khalili programme on BBC4 "Science and Islam" was an eye-opener for me, especially the details of the life of ibn al-Haytham, a medieval genius. The opening sentence of this post alludes to the fact that he thought he could tame the river Nile and realized shortly that he could not. This got him into trouble with the king (to whom he had promised a tamer Nile) who ordered his death. Ibn al-Haytham had to feign madness to escape death. Much humbled, al-Haytham dedicated his life to scientific…
thescian | July 12, 2010A court in Russia has convicted two people for offending religion. So, I ask the same question that Richard Dawkins and others have been asking for a while: What exactly is special about religion that it requires unquestioning respect? Why can't we criticise god for asking us to keep women as slaves, throw our first-born into fire? I mean, if you ask me to burn my child, I will send a stake so high up your bottom that you'd wish you weren't born. Isn't the idea of respect for religion one that of a bully who can't take criticism, when exposed for what it is, these high priests of bullying…
thescian | June 21, 2010So, the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church wants "the monopoly of Darwinism and the deceptive idea that science in general contradicts religion" to end, just as his friends in the US. [New Scientist blog]
This is like saying we can't let cleverness have a monopoly, stupidity must have an equal saying in our lives. Excuse me while I knock my head on my desk so I can get stupid enough to understand this.
Let us be clear. There is no relativism in some things: Creationism is stupid. Evolution is clever.
However this Universe came into being, I would think that it was by some clever…
thescian | June 18, 2010Douglas Rushkoff responding to Steven Pinker at Edge.org:
Facebook -- as a way for college kids to meet and greet one another -- was a terrific program. As a mirror through which young people forge an identity, however, the program is lacking the nuance of real life. Facebook -- more than a program to be feared for its code -- is a business plan to be feared for its ubiquity. The object of Facebook is to monetize social interactions. This is the bias of the program, and a bias of which most people are painfully unaware.
thescian | June 15, 2010Apparently there may not be just one God particle but perhaps five of 'em. Shall we say physicists are testing Many Gods Hypothesis. See this Beebs report.
Here's a question that has assailed our collective primate head all through its history: Do truly fundamental constituents of matter exist or is it turles all the way? Some ancient Greeks took a bold and bogus stand. They abstracted the idea as Atom and said it's the end of all matter splitting but we now know better (or maybe not). We have been continuing that splitting tradition. Is it possible to think that there are no fundamental…
thescian | June 10, 2010A New Scientist note (points to PNAS paper):
Post-mortems of binge-drinking adolescent monkeys have produced the best evidence yet that heavy drinking at an early age can do lasting damage to the brain.
The worst damage was to stem cells destined to become neurons in the hippocampus, the brain area responsible for memory and spatial awareness.
thescian | June 2, 2010A report on BBC on a psychology study done in Australia.
The University of New South Wales researcher says a grumpy person can cope with more demanding situations than a happy one because of the way the brain "promotes information processing strategies".
Information processing strategies! That rings the bullshit bell in my grumpy head, loudly and clearly. I don't intend to discredit the study. It is unfortunate that everything in psychology seems questionable. Many of these studies appear misleading even when they may lead us down a useful path. That's this subject's bane.
thescian | April 27, 2010Crab Nebula
Caesium-133 atom has 551,557,906,200 heartbeats per minute
Humans have 70 heartbeats per minute
Sun has 1 heartbeat every 11 years
Crab Nebula pulsar has 1812 heartbeats per minute
Wondering what's the purpose of all this time keeping.