Archive for March, 2006
Religious identity and violence
Slate has published an essay of Amartya Sen, What clash of Civilizations? adapted from his new book Identity and Violence.
“The difficulty with the clash of civilizations thesis begins with the presumption of the unique relevance of a singular classification. Indeed, the question “Do civilizations clash?” is founded on the presumption that humanity can be [...]
Accelerated Evolution: in-vitro conversion of RNA Enzyme to DNA Enzyme
The Scripps Research Institute reports in-vitro catalytic conversion of RNA enzyme to DNA enzyme providing a snapshot of early evolutionary process.
“This “evolutionary conversion” provides a modern-day snapshot of how life as we understand it may have first evolved out of the earliest primordial mix of RNA-like molecules—sometimes referred to as the “pre-RNA world”—into a more [...]
Stanislaw Lem - In Poetry
I came across this excellent poem written by Stanislaw Lem today.
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It [...]
The best Sci-Fi concept albums
Wired recommends The best SF concept albums;
The Man-Machine, Kraftwerk (1977): It’s a six-song techno-fueled meditation on the fusion of flesh and bot. Übergroovy.
Deltron 3030 (2000): Dan the Automator, Kid Koala, and Del tha Funkee Homosapien kick it in a 31st-century world rife with computer viruses and rap battles.
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. [...]
Tools - Greatest of them all
Forbes: The 20 Most important tools ever
From dawn to dusk, humans rely on tools to get us through the day. And from the beginning of civilization, we’ve used them to build and shape our world. In order to celebrate these devices, and so we might reflect upon the ways that we are the tools we [...]
IISc campus at Mysore University
This one is a real shocker, to say the least.
Deccan Herald reports, quoting the Mysore University VC,
IISc and University of Mysore will ink a five-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) next month for the setting up of the campus, which, in all probability, will be located near the Academic Staff College in Manasagangotri.
The [...]
Azim Premji on parimary education in India
Times of India has this Leader Article: Education For All by Azim Premji.
It starts with a bit of statistics, which is hurting. “It is disconcerting to know that there are still around 12 million children in the age group of 6-14 who are out of school; or that only one out of three [...]
Kissinger evaluates India-America Relation
Thanks to Srikanth Meenakshi for pointing to this article, INDIA AND AMERICA: PROSPECTS FOR A PARTNERSHIP By Henry A. Kissinger.
As Srikanth points out it is really fascinating to see how this mind thinks. Read it with what was revealed just 9 months ago. (BBC - Kissinger regrets India comments). [...]
Flaunting their masculitinty by american politicians
Linda Colley, a history professor at Princeton University analyses why the current breed of (republican) american politicians try overboard to flaunt their bogus musculinity in The star-spangled fantasyland of the fake and home of the bogus
“It wasn’t Cheney’s involvement in masculine pursuits that was noteworthy; it was that the mode of masculinity on show was [...]
Scientists Don’t Want to become Desktop Publishers
David K Lynch, who himself was former section editor of Journal of Optical Society of America is angry that publishing houses are more and more pushing scientists to do the work of typesetting. In a letter to the editor of Physics Today titled Scientists Dont Want New Careers in Desktop Publishing (Physics Today 20 March [...]