Lately there have been some really insidous TEDtalks. First there was Justin-Hall Tipping (a journalist by profession) talking about how we should take energy off the grid. If his dramatic self-assured tone isn't enough to tell you that something is fishy, let me enlighten you about the current state of power generation: the bottleneck we have now is in the ...

Here's a conversation between the author of "Singled Out", Bella DePaulo, and Taxi driver she chanced to meet in Chicago:"So, you're single?""Um-hmm.""Have you ever been married?""No, never.""Why not?""I love being single.""Some guy treat you badly? They're not all like that, you know.""No, no, nothing like that.""Maybe it's not guys you like. Nothing wrong with that.""What I like is being single.""I ...

Technically I don't have a macro lens, I'm using one of those cheapo workaround lens attachments to get higher magnification, and so far it seems to be working. There's a bit of chromatic aberration here and there and softening at the edges, but meh, it's the thought that counts..

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.At least that was what Edward Abbey thought. Whistleblowers, activists, liberal journalists, usually have this mindset. At the other extreme there are the people who don't understand the difference between a country and a government. Usually cardiologists and other conservatives fall into this category. Then there are the ...

1.) Death cab for Cutie - You are a TouristI went to see them live at Nashville, and they were outstanding. But this song strikes a chord personally due to the lyrics. I felt like a tourist that doesn't belong the last time I went to Sri Lanka, and this is exactly what I needed. 2.) Loreena Mckennit - The ...

And this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to a Materials Scientist! Yay! (*Does a small inappropriate dance*) Dan Shechtman at the Israel Institute of Technology was credited today for his discovery of Quasi-crystals in 1982. To appreciate the significance of Quasi-crystals, you really need to know a bit about the mathematics of symmetry. Indeed most scientists rejected Shechtman's idea ...

The summer in Pittsburgh is highly underrated. This post is intended to fix that. Note: Please do not steal my pictures. It's not nice. If you ask nicely, I'll probably give you a high-res version.

Amazon previewed it's most awaited tablet - Kindle Fire - yesterday and geeks all over the world rejoiced. While I do see the appeal of a color ebook reader that tackles webbrowising, movie streaming and magazine viewing, I personally am not inclined to buy one. But that's just me,

Apparently the group Anonymous have started their own leak site. And rather than concentrating on political leaks, they seem to be focused on investigating financial frauds. Their first leak comes from the major Chinese agricultural company Chaoda. The report exposes how Chaoda's management has deceived shareholders, how several high level executives have resigned due to "personal reasons" through the past ...

Seriously people, stop with this madness. Everywhere I look, people are making a big fuss out of the results from one of CERN's experiments. People are claiming that "Science is wrong", "Einstein was wrong", "It's time to rewrite the science books".Have you people forgotten how many times the theory of relativity has been proven right in real world applications? Global ...

I'm glad that you updated the design, even though it was way overdue and you had a little push from Google+. Ignore the technophobic conservatives who are afraid of change, and keep on improving yourself. Here are a few suggestions that you might want to consider for the next redesign. 1.) Have an option to disable comments. This includes status ...

It's a curious thing, our preferences. We tend to like somethings and tend to dislike others. And sometimes we don't know why that exactly is. For me, Science Fiction is one of those things. I love it terribly, but I'm still not sure why.At first, I thought it was a form of escapism. But then I'm not a huge fan ...

Watching science enrich our lives is still one thing I like about living in the 21st century. As technology will continue to change our lives, so will our self-deceptive morality. Yes, I did link to David Livingstone Smith's webpage; I'm currently reading his book on "Why We Lie", where he uses evolutionary psychology to persuade the reader that our sense ...

Out of all the friends and family I met, I don't think anyone sincerely wanted to know what life in Pittsburgh is like. Instead they had their own preconceptions and prejudices and held a moral high ground which I'm not sure was due to denial or ignorance. I neither had the time nor patience to retaliate and bring things to ...

When Louann Brizendine infamous book "The Female Brain" came out a couple of years ago, I was excited about knowing once-and-for-all what women think/want. And as I read page by page, amazed at all the scientific studies she's cited, as well as the empirical examples she cleverly incorporates into the narrative, I found myself falling into a sudden appreciation of ...

...and nothing has changed. Even the music on Yes FM and TNL are the same. And I'm not even kidding. For some reason I'd forgotten that Taunting was a requirement while driving in Colombo. But that doesn't need a lot of time to internalize.

The above is picture floating around the Internet as a reminder to how classy Americans can be. If you haven't figured it out already, it's a montage of facebook statuses posted at the defeat of the American Woman's soccer team to Japan.I mean, this is not a purely an American issue. In every country there's ...

1.) Add mum and dad to your network.Most of us have good relationships with our parents. And as children we share a lot of lives (even some of the most intimate details, our greatest fears and immeasurable joys) with our parents. But when you give such a person the ability to comment on every status you post, link you share ...

Stumbled upon this noteworthy study from 1976 [1]. A group of nursing home residents were given a plant to take care of, and they were divided in to two groups. The low-control group was told by the staff when they could water the plant and tend to it's care. The high-control group was given the freedom to choose when they ...