Category Archives: Science

Victor Frankl, Seven Habits, and REBT

Between stim­u­lus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our free­dom.”
– Vic­tor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Mean­ing
As a Holo­caust sur­vivor, Vic­tor Frankl went through some of the most hor­rific expe­ri­ences ever known to man. Yet, from within the

The Real Tablet Revolution

This is the slate I used grow­ing up as a school kid. There was sib­ling rivalry over whose was shinier or had a larger “screen size”.

They are still used by some school chil­dren in India. Mil­lions of them go to school today like this (image credit):

With heavy bur­dens on their back, no won­der

Timeless vs Real Time

If I were a book, you will put me in a book­shelf after you’ve read me. Later, I’ll prob­a­bly lie in an attic and find my way to a library. My life would span a few decades, or even more. If I’m excep­tion­ally good, I’ll be a time­less clas­sic.
If I were your per­sonal diary, I

Clinical Depression in the Context of Human Evolution

If evo­lu­tion ensures sur­vival of the most adapt­able species, how did it not van­quish men­tal depres­sion in humans? This ques­tion has been on my mind for sev­eral years, and it is time to exam­ine it in the con­text of a new hypoth­e­sis pro­posed by two sci­en­tists.
Back­ground
Between 30 to 50% peo­ple suf­fer from a major depres­sive

What The Hell Is Divinity?

A few blog posts and con­ver­sa­tions with friends have made me unquiet about the con­cept of Divin­ity: What is Divin­ity and what does it mean?
Back­ground
My friend Asuph wrote about Divin­ity in 2004, when I had not even started blog­ging. He uses Pirsig’s Meta­physics of Qual­ity from Zen and The Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance to describe what

Do New Scientist’s Headlines Make Sense?

When I was in school, I was asked to par­tic­i­pate in a debate: “Sci­ence: A Cure Or A Dis­ease?”. Yes, my school sucked.
Since then, I’ve been observ­ing how the dis­ci­pline of sci­ence remains largely mis­un­der­stood or not under­stood at all.
New Sci­en­tist has just pub­lished “13 more things that don’t make sense”, a sequel to their highly

Religion in Environmentalism

In the dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing my pop­u­lar post Reli­gion vs. Gen­der Equal­ity & Fem­i­nism, there was a ref­er­ence to reli­gion and envi­ron­men­tal­ism. As if on cue, the Pope has now said:
“Is it not true that incon­sid­er­ate use of cre­ation begins where God is mar­gin­al­ized or also where his exis­tence is denied? If the human creature’s rela­tion­ship

Posturing From My New Chair

After months of sit­ting on my com­puter on a back­less set­tee, I began to real­ize that my back has a spinal cord, and that it’s made up of indi­vid­ual ver­te­brae.
But that’s not what this is about. While my new chair does indeed improve my pos­ture, this is a new pos­tur­ing using Posterous.com.

Mentally Challenged, Raped, Pregnant. Abort?

While Barack Obama pro­claims White House sup­port to the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of Peo­ple with Dis­abil­i­ties to which India is a sig­na­tory, the Indian Supreme Court has deliv­ered a land­mark judg­ment in a unique case of young woman in India. My apolo­gies, but the sub­ject neces­si­tates a lengthy post.
Back­ground
Born in 1991, this woman

My Online Social Map Visualization

A few weeks back, Hyper­Ac­tiveX asked me some­thing on Twit­ter.
“What is your data flow? Have you mapped it yet?” or some­thing to that effect. This had been on my mind for quite a few months and I always pushed it to the back burner. Quad­rant I vs. Quad­rant II. The usual story.
But his tweet pushed