Helen Hunt: The Spotlight Isn't Enough This Time : NPR

Its interesting listening to Helen Hunt's interview.
Fresh Air from WHYY, April 24, 2008 · Actress Helen Hunt directed the new film Then She Found Me. She helped adapt the screenplay, as well, from the novel by Elinor Lipman. And in addition to directing, co-writing and producing, Hunt stars in the movie — alongside Colin Firth, Matthew Broderick and Bette Midler.

Growing importance of Statistical analysis

I very recently read Asimov's foundation and he describes the "science" of  psychohistory. Today morning I read these articles(1 and 2). The series of arcticle TR is carrying on emerging technologies is interesting. Anyways the point I was trying to make is that there are 2 things happening. One is our increased ability to mine data and the second is our ability to analyze data on machines with smaller and smaller sizes. While psychohistory may be a long shot, it seems to me that the emergence of statistical analysis tools, be it for prediction or even analyzing the human genome will become more and more relevant and accurate.
(asimov : what is intelligence )
While reading "foundation" it seems to make sense that psychohistory would be our initial attempt to understand our world. Too many variables in real life to fit nice engineering equations to it. The "theory of everything" if a plausible goal, might need us to move ahead in evolutionary landscape.  Or  maybe its my unprepared brain thats not able to understand our abilities as a species  :)

TED | Speakers | Jill Bolte Taylor

http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/203 --- One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor's brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness ... Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the "Singin' Scientist."

Pollution Control

Bombay is ranked 7th in the top-50 most polluted cities by this survey.


Source: forbes.com

Bombay cutting down on noise pollution : http://sify.com/news/othernews/fullstory.php?id=14638867

Days of My Life: I started to attend private lessons...

Its very moving (almost to the point of tears) to read this young girl's blog. Imagine what psychological tortures even less fortunate people would be going through. Really, can any amount of logic ever justify "war". People never seem to understand war until they have personal losses. I feel sorry for the bozos who think war and violence can solve anything. But these are the so called decisive hawks who seem to impact our affairs. Peace practitioners are very few i.e. very few can peacefully protest against injustice and other wrongs. Which is why the likes of Gandhi are so frigging great. I hope humanity can evolve to reach that state at some point. Maybe the path to nirvana goes through being a "mahatma". Maybe we need bigger brains to get there. hahaha I dont want to admit that religion got Gandhi to where he was :). He interpreted religion to suit his ideas for the most part anyways.

[Got a link to this blog from http://www.pbs.org/kcet/globalwatch/ , its a nice program]

http://livesstrong.blogspot.com/2008/04/i-started-to-attend-private-lessons.html --- Days of My Life Talk about daily life of a teenage girl in Iraq, and days of suffering and success. My nick name will be Sunshine..

Name: Sunshine 

I was born in 29/1/1992 , I grow up among well educated family.

Game theory explains dinner-party dates. - By Mark Gimein - Slate Magazine

http://www.slate.com/id/2188684/ --- game theory predicts, and empirical studies of auctions bear out, that auctions will often be won by "weak" bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the "strong" bidders will hold out for a really great deal. You can find a technical discussion of this here. (Be warned: "Bidding Behavior in Asymmetric Auctions" is not for everyone, and I certainly won't claim to have a handle on all the math.) But you can also see how this works intuitively if you just consider that with a lot at stake in getting it right in one shot, it's the women who are confident that they are holding a strong hand who are likely to hold out and wait for the perfect prospect. This is how you come to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox, which is no longer so paradoxical. The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable "strong bidders."


Also via this article an atlantic article "marry him"

Caracas | Don't stand so close to me | Economist.com

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10870071&fsrc=RSS --- Venezuelans, unless they actively dislike you (and sometimes, even if they do), use limbs to embrace and envelop rather than to ward off fellow humans. It can take some getting used to, if you move directly from one society to the other without anaesthesia or a period of adaptation. The man sitting next to you, for instance, may well put his hand on your knee in the course of a conversation—something that in a British pub might lead to a punch on the nose. And then there are the oddities of business relationships.

Whitehall Study

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehall_Study --- The Whitehall studies found a strong association between grade levels of civil servant employment and mortality rates from a range of causes. Men in the lowest grade (messengers, doorkeepers, etc.) had a mortality rate three times higher than that of men in the highest grade (administrators).

[via a sciam print article]

Ten Events

Useful set of 10 dates to remember. An interesting observation is that it seems to show us making progress(?) on an exponential scale. Or is that just human ego. maybe events like "humans travelling to the moon" are significant to just our race. In the grand scheme of things its still the same pace. Who else in this universe cares that humans took 2 million years to come up with the printing press and then just a couple of thousand more years to put man into space.

From: http://thinkzone.wlonk.com/TenEvent/TenEvent.htm --- The site has other interesting science stuff too.

Date Range	Date		Event
1010	tens of billions of years ago	13-14 billion years ago		Universe began
109	billions of years ago	4.5 billion years ago		Earth formed
108	hundreds of millions of years ago	500 million years ago		First fossilized animals
107	tens of millions of years ago	65 million years ago		Extinction of the dinosaurs
106	millions of years ago	2 million years ago		First stone tools made
105	hundreds of thousands of years ago	800 thousand years ago		First fires kindled
104	tens of thousands of years ago	30 thousand years ago		First art
103	thousands of years ago	5 thousand years ago		First writing
102	hundreds of years ago	1492		Columbus: east meets west
101	tens of years ago	1969		First people on the moon