Prime Stream
thescian | April 1, 2010A fascinating presentation. The logical conclusion of a world singing to the tune of commerce. Life as a game. A gloriusly simplified abstraction over the complexities of real life. What's gonna stop it? You and me? Cue in uproarious laughter.
Well, Mr. Schell does throw in a bit of optimism in the end. If we think all our actions are recorded and left behind as our legacy, maybe we'll change our behavior. Maybe, but probably not. The optimism seems contrived.
In any case, all the world will not become a game. The world is too complex a place for us (acting as corporations and government)…
thescian | March 12, 2010Lack of understanding [is] called stupidity; deficiency in the application of the faculty of reason to what is practical we [recognize] as foolishness; deficiency in power of judgement as silliness; finally, partial or even complete lack of memory as madness... That which is correctly known through the faculty of reason is truth. -From The World as Will and Representation, First Book, Section 6.
As moralizing as it sounds, Schopenhauer is not being so here. This is his way of defining the terms of discussion. As I continue reading, it is remarkable to notice how he uses the Principle of…
thescian | February 26, 2010The aspiration to truth is more precious than its assured possession. -German playwright and philosopher Gotthold Lessing.
From TheScian Photos
Einstein noted this quote in an autobiographical note he wrote a month before he died [Chapter 26, Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pias]. The later part of his life was spent in search of a deterministic unified theory to replace the probabilistic quantum theory which he was convinced was incomplete. He did not succeed in his quest.
An old post about the picture.
thescian | February 17, 2010G H Hardy once said numbers would exist even if the universe did not. The zoom below takes us into that alternate mathethematical reality which appears to be more richer and deeper than our physical one.
Mandelbrot Fractal Set Trip To e214 HD from teamfresh on Vimeo.
Via kottke
thescian | February 8, 2010
Silence the expression of two pesky genes, and hey presto! you've got a tomato that stays fresh for as long as a month or more. Clearly this is a very useful trait for fruits and vegetables in India where Things Fall ApartTM--even when they are inside the freezer. Kudos to the scientists at National Institute of Plant Genome Research in Delhi.
thescian | February 7, 2010You get a square! More exciting mathematical thoughts in the latest edition of Steven Strogatz NY Times column.
thescian | January 31, 2010Steven Strogatz is beginning a column in NY Times aimed at you and me. Not to be missed.
I have a friend who gets a tremendous kick out of science, even though he's an artist. Whenever we get together all he wants to do is chat about the latest thing in evolution or quantum mechanics. But when it comes to math, he feels at sea, and it saddens him. The strange symbols keep him out. He says he doesn't even know how to pronounce them.
In fact, his alienation runs a lot deeper. He's not sure what mathematicians do all day, or what they mean when they say a proof is elegant. Sometimes we joke that…
thescian | January 20, 2010 "Brain 'entanglement' could explain memories"[New Scientist] is a bit of a hyperbolic title. Oh, what's in a title, you ask. Quite a lot. For instance, you can be mislead into thinking that there is a connection between quantum entanglement and the phenomenon of human memory. Aforementioned New Scientist article co-opts quantum mechanics terms for a neurological process (which is fine in itself, of course.) However, neural firing described in the article has nothing to do with quantum entanglement--this hasn't been made clear (in fact, the opposite seems to have been done with phrases like "…
thescian | January 18, 2010Chesnut School Lane, Amersham.
A few days back when England was covered in a bit of snow, an image on the television screen caught my eye. An aerial camera was showing a highway from above--for a moment the snow covered trees and houses looked like they were engulfed in thick white clouds. Snow looks like clouds: this is so obvious that I thought nothing of it until later, when I started having a nagging feeling that it wasn't so obvious.
Why should snow and clouds look the same to us? I mean, is there a way to find some way to measure the two on some aspect and say, right, this is why they…
thescian | January 11, 2010Seems it does. I hear a distinct change of sound outside now that there is a lot of snow covering up things.
thescian | December 8, 2009A passionate and poetic talk by Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor about the nature of our brain and what it entails. She describes her very own perception of a stroke she had. Quite extraordinary. Here's an old post about split brain for some more background.
thescian | November 8, 2009Read an interesting interview with Roger Penrose at Discover Magazine. Found this part fascinating:
So Schrödinger himself never believed that the cat analogy reflected the nature of reality?
Oh yes, I think he was pointing this out. I mean, look at three of the biggest figures in quantum mechanics, Schrödinger, Einstein, and Paul Dirac. They were all quantum skeptics in a sense. Dirac is the one whom people find most surprising, because he set up the whole foundation, the general framework of quantum mechanics. People think of him as this hard-liner, but he was very cautious in what he…
thescian | November 6, 2009As I was stuffing my face today, I wondered if the Universe cared. The short answer is no. The slightly longer and more depressing answer is: my existence is more marginal than a speck of stray DNA on a grain of sand staring at vast oceans (that's literally true, oh the irony...). Clearly, there's no point to existence except amusement. So, here's some:
On average, each of us human beings from birth till death consume about (2000 per day x 365 days x 70 years) calories. That is a pretty big number (51,100,000 calories).Big, of course, is a relative term. The big calories translates to about…
thescian | October 12, 2009They are already here, they are amidst us, they zip through our heads affecting LHC funding, they come from future and cunningly prevent their production at LHC by affecting the present. Meet Bosons from the future.
So, this in short, is the paper by two physicists discussed in this NY Times article.
Dr. Nielson said of the theory, "Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God." It is their guess, he went on, "that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them."
This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States…
thescian | October 9, 2009Let's see if we can figure this out from first principles. Limiting ourselves to biological evolution, evolution needs a few things to work in practice:-
-a mechanism of inheritance. Genes in our case. Consider stones. Stones don't have genes. Stones don't evolve (biologically, that is. I know a pebble back in my village river that somehow manages to accumulate little pebbles around it that are more smooth. I think it's cheating.)
-one or more heritable characteristics. For instance, Lactose tolerance. Our ancestors couldn't stomach milk--until about 30,000 years ago. Lactose tolerance…
thescian | October 2, 2009Loads of them reports the Beebs. Quite a remarkable find and it seems already some information has been gleaned of their past.
"The leader of the team, MU Ramkumar, told the BBC the finding is significant and could help to unravel the mystery about the extinction of dinosaurs.
The important finding is that these eggs have been found in different layers that means the dinosaurs came to the place over and over year after year," he said.
"The second important thing is that we have got volcanic ash deposits on the eggs which suggests that volcanic activity could have caused their extinction.
"The…
thescian | September 13, 2009
via BBC. Norman Borlaug is the Father of Green Revolution whose research has saved many many millions from starvation. To me, he defines effective compassion like no other. It is a shame his work is not as well known among the general population as it should be. We would do well to be inspired by him. Read more about him at Wikipedia.
thescian | September 7, 2009Paul Krugman on How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? in today's NY Times.
India's Moon Mission is over, somewhat prematurely--on 28 August, after nearly 10 months in moon orbit, Chandrayan-I stopped talking and ISRO had to declare the mission over. Nevertheless, this is an immense achievement for ISRO and no one can suggest otherwise.