Random Thoughts

Some books you read and forget about before you've even put it down. Some you cast aside midway through. Every now and then, though, you find a rare gift of a book that continues to move you days, weeks (and those really wonderful ones: years) later. Priscilla Gilman's book is certainly one of those rare ones with the power to move a person days and weeks later. It's too early to tell whether that will remain so, but I strongly suspect it will be one that remains a treasured book years from now for me. And sure, I'm biased: I sense a kindred spirit in Priscilla, a kindred love of words, of…

Events of International Year of Chemistry kept me from writing for some while. I was so absorbed with all the research writing these days, that I could not find space and time to read anything happening around the world. Coming back, I really enjoyed reading Dave Deamer's article post on the issues of authoring a book. Well, I noted a few excerpts from it, but I really wonder if I shall ever find time for the same. This is because I live in Mumbai, where people just are always tangled in deadlines and the pressing onus just to reach the workplace seems altogether a battle. However, these…

Mike Rangers has a post called "14 signs that the collapse of our modern world has already begun." If it weren't so scary to think of how easily people can be conned, it would almost be funny that he's so wide-ranging in his all-knowingness. That's the beauty of instant expertise, isn't it? Just google it, or even better, just pronounce it on your blog with complete and utter confidence in your competence, regardless of your knowledge-base. After all, isn't that why those heavy hitters at AoA believe they understand complex science that most experts, in order to be experts, spend a decade or…

Have you ever noticed that you function better when you feel comfortable and confident in your surroundings and that when you are unsure of yourself, you are more likely to stumble? The same is true for our kids. In their element, where they are sure of all the important variables and comfortable expressing themselves, they make better eye contact, engage more willingly in communication, show attachment, and function at their best. Remove them from their comfort zones and we have vastly different children. We have children who may have been singing at the top of their lungs only an hour…

What kind of funeral should one as a semi rational person insist on? My immediate reflexive answer is “don’t give a something, stuff me in the thrash chute if you must”. However, a burial or cremation is not about the deceased but about those left behind. I thought something up, but before writing a post, one better searches the internet - surely somebody has covered this already much better. What I found searching for “Atheist Funeral” and similar however was a bunch of crap, like replacing religious themes with 'spiritual' ones. Toss the bible out to roll the crystal ball in – great.…

"Dutch capital was employed to purchase goods in one country and sell them in another: so that the Dutch became carriers for others, instead of manufacturing and carrying for themselves.  Thus circumstanced, Holland was gradually sinking, when political troubles, the end of which it is not easy to foresee, put her at the feet of France.  When Holland was not rich it resisted Spain in all her glory; when Holland was wealthy, it did not even attempt to resist France." "In America, where the inhabitants have been sufficiently hardy, and rash to overturn every ancient institution,…

David Crotty at the scholarly kitchen says that Science 2.0 is a failure.   Like many who use it off-the-cuff, I don't know how he is using the term - I usually do a global replace of 'Smurf' for Science 2.0 in these instances because Science 2.0, like Smurfs(1), seems to be whatever people want it to be.   If you are not old enough to remember the mythology of Smurfs, it makes less sense, but you can more topically replace Science 2.0 with "jobs created or saved" in the stimulus package last year and get an idea what I mean about definitions tailored to suit the environment that…

Science 2.0 Featured Author Greg Critser isn't satisfied being a respected journalist for the LA Times, the Times of London and the New York Times along with selling a lot of books, so he has branched out into the world of being a celebrity chef. Yes, I said celebrity chef.   In television, actors and managers generally tell the talent it is a bad idea to be in a show with kids and dogs.   I suspect celebrity chefs have a similar rule, namely that you don't try to make pasta live. I hate making pasta to such an extent I actually spent $100 on a pasta making extension for our food…

Last night on PBS's NewsHour, Robert MacNeil answered viewers' questions. ROBERT MACNEIL: Well, perhaps he's right.We tried to concentrate on what we thought were urgent issues, urgent problems. And a lot of adults with autism, particularly those who describe themselves as a kind of neurodiversity community, are high-functioning people with autism, who have busy and productive lives in the world, who serve a wonderful purpose of helping the community at large to understand and witness autism and be tolerant of it.But they speak for themselves. And we didn't see them as an urgent issue,…