Random Thoughts

Because occasionally, it's important to stop and enjoy the flowers.

What I Had For Breakfast - Not Really A short history of blogging In the early days of blogging, a lot of people seemed to feel the need to share boring stuff about what they did all day.  A typical blogger would write stuff about what they'd eaten, where they had been, what their cat dragged in, etc.  And then came the bloggers who wrote some real cool stuff: Do I know good science?Not really, but I have watched a lot of Mr. Wizard and Quantum Leap, and I also worked at Sea World of Ohio (when it existed) for a summer. Hey, cleaning duck poop off the pavement taught me a lot about…

Walking through the main campus of Reading University, where they have been planting a lot of saplings recently, I came across this: With the sun getting stronger, and the leaves not yet out, one gets some very picturesque views at this time.  These, on a young Plane Tree (Platanus), are probably its first fruits.  They did, however, remind me of this: This is the Atom Tree at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in England.  It was planted in 2007 to celebrate 50 years of the laboratory, and if you count you can see it has 50 atom-like balls.  However, they can’t have…

I went to an old link to the Kids Science Zone ("Awesome Science for Kids"), kidssciencezone.com/astronomy.  It said "Nothing found!" Oh, wait, the top-level structure had changed, so I clicked on the "Space" link: kidssciencezone.com/category/space, empty.  kidssciencezone.com/category/space-travel, empty.  In fact, all the top-level sections were empty, even when their sublevels were populated. Which leads to the idea that we could simply add tumbleweeds, and make it like a ghost town.  Intentionally, I mean, not as it is now. But what really amused me were the entries…

I'm Back - With an Apology I have been absent from science20.com for some time due to illness.  I apologize for not reponding to the many comments and emails I have received in my absence. I was diagnosed with very high blood pressure last year - a worrying state of affairs linked to high cholesterol levels.  I have attacked the problem with diet change and exercise to supplement the effect of the medicines.  I used to indulge in the sport of cycle racing, so the need for exercise naturally led me to think of buying a bike.  My first recent bike was a battery-assisted '…

Despite my chronic lack of time these days, I always manage to find ten minutes for a blitz chess game on the internet. It is a total waste of time and brain energy, but it never fails to provide some adrenaline shot in my veins. And at times some real satisfaction, when I play a good game and/or I get the better hand with a titled player. Today I got a little of both, when I won with black against Grandmaster Lars Karlsson (elo 2466), a Swedish player. Not a super-Grandmaster, admittedly, but still a dangerous player with an expected score above 90% against me (I am rated in the 2050 range.…

If a site like the Huffington Post takes a fair use snippet of your article here and then links to you, their snippet will rank higher in Google than your actual article in keywords related to your article. A little crazy but okay, you might say, they earned that, right?   With content and quality. Well, not really.   If, as Jason Calcanis, CEO of Mahalo claims, 80% of the Huffington Post is simply rehashing of other people’s content, then they basically earned their status by being a content farm - taking things that are out there and rebranding them to make them look like real…

Balancing the demands of work, parenting, blogging, autism advocacy and more can at times be daunting. My mind is a whirring jumble of thoughts, pinching worries that eat away at me, and an apparently failing memory. I'll start with the failing memory, as it, at least, is amusing in a terrifying "oh you might have more on your plate than you can handle" way. I had two spectacular memory dumps this week, both on Tuesday. I posted the reading assignment on the American Lit blog on Friday, where I told the students I'd post some notes onto blackboard the next day and promptly forgot (so I…

Finally, it looks like Silvio Berlusconi will be tried. The judge for preliminary investigations has accepted the request of an immediate trial, put forth by the magistrates who collected a large body of evidence on the recent crimes of the Italian premier. The trial will be held on April 6th... Unless Berlusconi manages to produce the umpteenth law to protect himself from the charges of unlawful conduct he has collected in the past 20 years, effectively putting him above Italian law. The charges he will face are of exaction ("concussione" is the Italian juridical term) and induction to…

If I were to brag about the most exciting and defining moments of India's proud and enriching sporting past, like any other Indian, I too would choose from this willow game. May be I deserve to owe an apology to the magical Dhayanchand and Co, Sprint Queen P.T.Usha and the ever growing Saina Nehwal. Such was the domination of those willow game winning moments in our hearts ever since the magical 1983 world cup victory. Slow and steadied progress since 1975 resulted in a victorious Indian Team in 1983. The elevated energy level was indeed visible during the 1985 World Series. If 1983 world cup…