Random Thoughts

I was 16 or so when my dad listened to me tell him about the dream I had the night before. I laughed it off and thought my dreams were for entertainment purposes only. Then he suggested that the next time I was in a dream I should try to look at my hands. I thought this was strange and asked, "Why?" He said, "I don't know. I heard someone suggest that once and I have always wanted to try it but I can never do it." Ever since he told me that, I considered it a nice challenge. My dreams seemed so foreign and strange to me in those days. I used to keep a dream diary by my bed because my dreams…

Godwin's Law says, "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."  Since I started with the comparison, we can hopefully move forward :-)  The reason I think the analogy is apt is that calling a truth claim "woo" is the least interesting choice the claimant could make.  If a claim is meritless, it should be easy to dismantle.  Further, it is important to dismantle it in as air-tight and a logical manner as possible so that those who would debunk the dangerous meme have artillery to do so and don't need to…

One scientist has recommended that decreasing tax on alcohol sold in pubs and increasing tax for the supermarket stuff will help UK spend less on alcohol abuse. Argument also goes to support struggling local pubs and restaurant. Alcohol abuse alone costs about GBP 55 billion and results in ~40k deaths in UK. This change would also help treasury gain some more revenues that can be used somewhere else. Kudos English, you keep finding ways to be more comfortable all the time... In US the hospitalization and death figures are much bigger and the money spent is exponentially higher. Why don't they…

Kate's Month at the Museum ends November 18, 2010. As the winner of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry's contest, she has been "eating, sleeping, and sciencing for 30 days" there. This morning, I browsed across this Associated Press news article about her experiences. I had been wondering how this stunt was progressing since I blogged about the contest here last summer. Well, here is a word: Kate's excellent adventure - a month at the museum still appears to be a temporary gig to envy! Of course, she is also micro-blogging this unusual sojourn on Twitter and Facebook. Photo: The…

How To Get Well And Truly Shellacked Now I'm not recommending for every future president that they take a shellacking like they, like I did last night.Barack Obama,November 07 2010,as reported byAustralian Broadcasting Corporationhttp://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2010/s3059266.htm President Obama's use of the word 'shellacking' has puzzled some folks here in England, where the term has long since fallen out of use. The term originally meant 'the application of shellac varnish', but has come to mean 'the giving of a beating or thrashing'.  The reasons behind that meaning are…

November is National Novel Writing Month--NaNoWriMo to those in the know. This year, for the first time, I am participating. Today, November 1st, I started a novel about squid racing. I have decided that Squid-A-Day will go on break for a month, so I can concentrate all my squidly energies on the novel. I hope you can forgive me for leaving you, and rest assured I shall return to my wonted non-fiction ways on December 1st. Maybe I will even write an essay about how fiction can be an excellent venue for informal science education. Meanwhile, here is a silly sketch from '02 to keep everyone…

I get that not everyone will devote two hours each night, or 10 hours over a weekend, to pumpkin carving a Death Star...  ...or watching 5 terrific Halloween movies, but even if your attention span runs more toward Twitter than IMDB, here are at least a few videos you can try: Michael Jackson's "Thriller", the short version "Ghostbusters", the Ray Parker music video instead of the actual movie I figure that's enough.    No one is watching more than two videos in a blog post.

After "Five Million Miles to Earth" and "Dead of Night" we get to something a little more modern in our 5 Days of Halloween Movies. "The 13th Warrior" had everything going for it yet got no traction at the box office.    Take a story by Michael Crichton ("Jurassic Park", "Westworld", "Andromeda Strain" and too many others to count, including the famous "ER" on television) get John McTiernan ("Predator", "The Hunt For Red October", "Die Hard" and many others) to direct it and get Antonia Banderas ("Interview with the Vampire", "Desperado", "The Mask of Zorro") to star in it, give…

After watching "Five Million Years To Earth", a terrific mix of science, horror and anthropology, it's no crime to associate British horror cinema with Hammer Films, even though that was not one of the bloody Dracula films which earned them their fame.   But the Brits had done other good horror cinema even in the immediate aftermath of World War II and they did it using atmosphere rather than special effects, a creative technique which is as rare, yet successful, today as it was then, as seen in the cult phenomenon of films like "Ringu" (and its American version, "The Ring", which…

I believe that anyone can dance.   If anyone can walk, definitely they can dance. Body has a rhythm sense. Just observe that we walk in a particular rhythm which is involuntary. Nobody taught us to keep steps at equal intervals of time and distance. Still we manage to do that all the time. So, walking can be considered as the simplest form of dancing. Respiration and heartbeat also follow a rhythm. Humans have incorporated dance as part of their lifestyle. The natives get together and sing and dance to celebrate life.  Urban people no longer do that, partying cant be…