Category Archives: Culture
Lord of the Rings Day
Here’s wishing you a Happy Lord of the Rings Day! (Previous editions: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014.) On this day in the book, Frodo, Sam and Smeagol (with help from Gandalf, Aragon, Gimli, Legolas, Faramir, Eowyn, Theoden, Eomer, Treebeard and … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Life notes
Tagged Dungeons & Dragons, everything is fiction, fantasy fiction, fiction, Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings day, Mount Doom, One Ring
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Slate Star Codex: No time for malice
This post benefited from valuable input and feedback from Thomas Manuel. To the uninitiated: Scott Alexander Siskind is a noted member of the international community of rationalists and wrote the once-celebrated blog Slate Star Codex. I use the past tense because … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Culture
Tagged Cade Metz, doxxing, Elizabeth Spiers, fascism-curious, New York Times, rationalism, rationalists, Scott Aaronson, Scott Alexander, Scott Alexander Siskind, Slate Star Codex, view from nowhere, will wilkinson
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Tech bloggers and the poverty of style
I created my writing habit by performing it over a decade (and still continuing). When I first started blogging in 2008, I told myself I would write at least 2,000 words a week. By some conspiracy of circumstances, but particularly … Continue reading
Posted in Culture
Tagged blogging, creativity, Silicon Valley, tech blogging, tech bros, writing, writing style, writing voice
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The forgotten first lives of India’s fauna
Prof. Biju said the Rohanixalus is the 20th recognised genus of the family Rhacophoridae that comprises 422 known Old World tree frog species found in Asia and Africa. He said there are eight frog species in this genus Rohanixalus, which … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science
Tagged Adivasi, biodiversity hotspot, frogs, old world, Rohanixalus, scientific literature, treefrogs, tribal communities
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Christopher Nolan’s explosion
In May, Total Film reported that the production team of Tenet, led by director Christopher Nolan, found that using a second-hand Boeing 747 was better than recreating a scene involving an exploding plane with miniatures and CGI. I’m not clear … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Culture, Scicomm
Tagged AMD, AMD FirePro, carbon credits, carbon emissions, CGI, Christopher Nolan, climate change, Furmark benchmark, fx, GPU, graphics processing units, Interstellar, negative externalities, Nvidia, Nvidia Quadro, One Health, special effects, Tenet
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An Upanishadic lesson for modern science?
Do the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads lack the “baggage of biography” – to borrow Amit Chaudhuri’s words – because we don’t know who the authors, outside of the mythology, are or – as Chaudhuri writes in a new essay … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Culture, Science
Tagged Amit Chaudhuri, Bhagavad Gita, causality, creation, creator, disinterestedness, Eastern Philosophy, genius, genius construct, Gita Chadha, Immanuel Kant, impersonality, Isa Upanishad, Kena Upanishad, Lawrence M Krauss, modern science, New Critical, Philosophy of Science, power, Richard Feynman, scientific genius, The Life of Science, TS Eliot, Upanishads, Western philosophy
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To read or not a bad man’s book
The Life of Science team uploaded the video of their webinar on July 10, about the construct of the genius in science, on YouTube on July 14. Please watch it if you haven’t already. I had also blogged about it. … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science
Tagged #MeToo, Enrico Fermi, genius, Geoffrey Marcy, Georges Lemaître, Gita Chadha, Jeffrey Epstein, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Feynman, scientific genius, The Life of Science
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Redeeming art v. redeeming science
Recently, someone shared the cover of a soon to be released book, entitled The Physics of Climate Change, authored by Lawrence M. Krauss and expressed excitement about the book’s impending publication and the prospect of their reading it. I instinctively … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Culture, Science
Tagged diversity, Enrico Feri, Erik Shapiro, Geoffrey Marcy, Georges Lemaître, Jeffrey Epstein, Lawrence Krauss, passing the trash, Richard Feynman, separate art from artist, separate scholar from scholarship, sexual harassment, social anthropology
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