Recently in Science Category

Dananjay Anandan wrote this article.

Last week I bought an external drive. After doing some research online I headed to the best place in the city for computers, peripherals and other electronic goods.

In the middle of the city, located toward the end of Mount Road - the arterial that runs through Chennai - are a few intersecting streets and a dozen-odd bylanes that collectively rejoice under the anachronism of the "Radio Market". Also more popularly known as "Ritchie Street" - the name of one of the intersecting streets.

Bustling and always teeming, the Radio Market consists mostly of individual shops, some dealing in specialty products, and some that operate almost like department stores.

I headed to one of the latter and after narrowing the options down to a 160GB Western Digital pocket drive and a desktop model 250GB LaCie, decided to go for the extra space over reduced size. David's glowing review of the 2 TB helped!

How do you feel about a new "Genius List" of the "top 100 public intellectuals" that was decided by -- and then published by -- Foreign Policy in May?  Yesterday we had a curious, and oddly strange, addition to that list as voted by their readership to create the "top 20 public intellectuals." 

God believers have always held up Albert Einstein -- the World's Smartest Man -- as evidence that God exists because they believe Einstein said God was real.

The Apple science site is celebrating a 3D archaeological "find" detailing -- The Amulets of Seramon, including the Dung Beetle seen blow -- where the trinkets of an ancient priest of Thebes are now revealed for the first time in 3,000 years.

Nature reports this week there is confirmation of -- A Ruthless Gene -- proving our previously argued theory of a guilty ovum and a bad seed is, indeed, true.

Crowds are not wise.

We experienced a total lunar eclipse last night -- and this morning at 6:50am Eastern -- Janna took this image with her iPhone of a dying moon, still shining in its ghostly, copper, glory, as it falls into the horizon at the Journal Square PATH train station in Jersey City, New Jersey. The moon, if you can't see it, is dipping right below the traffic lights in the lower center of the image.

Total lunar eclipses are special because they provide a range of colors as the moon treads through the sky in the earth's shadow:

As it slips into the darkness, the moon will change colors that can range from a dull gray to a brilliant copper-red with a bright blue rim. While the earth blocks direct rays from the sun, the atmosphere refracts some of the light into the shadow.

The moon is a powerful meme. We know the Wolfman lurks under a full moon -- but is the moon a feminine energy or a masculine one?

Do you think think the moon has the power to pull and influence the water in our bodies? When a full moon blossoms, does erratic human behavior flow? The next total lunar eclipse will take place on December 21, 2010 -- mark it on your calendar right now to give it a copper memeing you will never forget.

It is our responsibility as cogent human beings to ban all handguns. We've felt the massacre at Virginia Tech. We know the horror of the gangland killings in Newark. We live with the regret of eight dead in Omaha. We're still freshly frozen from the  aftermath of last week's multiple Northern Illinois University assassinations:

Why do we crave to kill each other? Are you in any way offended that the same online gun dealer sold implements of death to both the Virgina Tech shooter and the Northern Illinois assassin?

Eric Thompson said his Web site, TopGlock.com, sold two empty 9 mm Glock magazines and a Glock holster to Steven Kazmierczak on Feb. 4, just 10 days before the 27-year-old opened fire in a classroom and killed five before committing suicide. Another Web site run by Thompson's company, TheGunStore.com, also sold a Walther .22-caliber handgun to Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people in April on the Virginia Tech campus before killing himself. "I'm still blown away by the coincidences," Thompson said Friday. "I'm shaking. I can't believe somebody would order from us again and do this."

There is no such thing as a coincidence. The Citizen's Commission on Human Rights International makes this case against shooting rampages and the dangerous dependence on psychotropic drugs to maintain chemical parity between mind and madness:

1. International drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric and other drugs causing violence/suicide/mania.
2. A list of 11 recent school/teen shooters who were on or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs in chronological order, resulting in 48 dead and 89 wounded.
3. Psychiatric drugs also have severe withdrawal effects, including aggression and anxiety, verified by numerous medical studies including a study from Professors C. Heather Ashton and Allan H Young, University of Newcastle.
4. ABC Interview with Harvard Psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Glenmullen: "The symptoms of antidepressant withdrawal can include suicidality, impulsivity, aggression, anxiety, depression, crying spells, insomnia, dizziness, vertigo, nausea, vomiting, headaches, tremors, and electric 'zap' sensations in the brain. When patients stop antidepressants cold turkey the symptoms can be so severe that they are debilitating: the patients cannot get out of bed or work."

Do psychotropic drugs keep us sane by arresting dark impulses? Or do "brain drugs" merely temporarily preclude us from picking up a gun and shooting someone?

If you bump your head and are taken to the emergency room for eight stitches -- would you expect a rectal exam to be part of the diagnosis process?

Do you have a good gut? Do you trust what your gut tells you?

Many people believe relying on your gut reaction is an unproven, emotional, response that is indecipherable and indiscernible when it comes to determining faction from fiction. In Malcolm Gladwell's brilliant book, Blink, he tries to give form to the snap-judgment of the gut feeling, and while he doesn't like the term "intuition" -- he feels it is too linked to emotion -- Gladwell does argue that a gut reaction is a trained, rational, action based on previous experience and facts that may not be able to be expressed in words beyond the gut of the body. Do you live on your gut reaction? Has your gut ever betrayed you? How do you handle the disconnect between what you gut tells you and what your mind knows?