Octopuses and Coconuts.

Now, for the life of me, I would never dreamed of linking a coconut shell and an Octopus in the same sentence. Maybe I am a poor creative writer or sci-fi writer.

But as is always the case with Nature, here is a bizarre story of Veined Octopuses, which not only use the coconut shells to hide in (see picture above), but actually "walk" around with them. National Geographic has this all covered in an interesting article complete with video. Here.

Saturn's Double Light Show

HubbleSite has this wonderful photograph as well this excellent video that showed Saturn with its rings nearly edge-on, resulting in the ability to view a symmetrical light show on both poles. According to the site, the geometry of the solar system allows a simultaneous view of both poles only twice during one revolution of Saturn around the Sun.

Watch the video to appreciate the symmetrical light show. And enjoy.

Random Randomness

Things that I can never stop pondering about - well, there are always too many things. But the one thing that always fascinates me is the true measure of randomness. In short, how random is random?

For all practical purposes, we use calculated randomness - a random generator that has an initial seed. And that is the bias that prevents it from being truly random. It is like approaching infinity. Once you feel you are there, there is always something more. And more. And more. So, how do we actually achieve randomness?

Well, I suppose one way is to not strive for randomness at all. (Gulp! That is not a solution is it?). Well, maybe if we shrunk our perspective to something smaller, then events happening in that purview just might appear to be random. Note the keyword. Appear. Maybe that is all there is to it. True randomness doesn't really matter as much as the appearance of it. So typically human isn't it - the reality does not matter as much as the appearance of reality.

One final word I suppose - lack of bias or randomness maybe is crucial for a lot of our current applications and things, but in the grand cosmic scale of things, maybe everything is truly random and yet really programmed. Yes. Programmed, and random. Together. And yet disparate. Now I am totally confused. Heck. Who cares. Its 07/07/07 07:07:07 PM. Now, I have exactly one year, one month, one day, one hour, one minute and one second to come up with another such random tripe disguised as a blog-post. Boy, the summer heat is really causing my brains to go awry :)

Summer of movies

Wifey and I both love to watch good movies. We both get bugged with typical run-of-the-mill movies (read: most desi movies). So while Netflix and public libraries contribute to satisfying the thirst to watch good movies, there is still the occasional indulgence towards typical summer blockbusters. So far, we're two into the summer movie season. Pirates of the Carribean - At World's End, and Ocean's 13.

Loved Pirates. Loved being able to loudly guffaw in the theaters. (Side note: Only Ocean's 11, Ice Age, and Pirates of the Carribean - Curse of the Black Pearl have provided for totally, utterly, and completely satisfying movie-going experiences. These three movies were a perfect synergy of disparate sources of joy - all coming together at the right place at the right time.). Granted that both movies sorta-kinda-desparately tried to live up to the glib-tongued smart-a** feel of their original versions, they were still good in their own merit. Weirdly enough, we've missed the third installment of two other successful movie franchises of the recent decade - Spiderman, and Shrek. And even more weird, we don't even care we have missed it. I guess you can only flog a dead horse ever so much.

Oh well...I am working up the reasons to convince her to go with me to see Ratatouille from Disney-Pixar, and maybe she won't need nudging to see HP-OotP.

Netflix is providing the nature-fix through the Planet Earth series from BBC/Discovery. Thankfully, they are shipping the Sir David Attenborough narrated version. No offense to Sigourney Weaver (she did a very excellent job in another amazing documentary - Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry), but in Planet Earth, her narrative is, to say the least, awful. Well, maybe the reality is that I am biased towards Sir David Attenborough's clear, concise and involved narrative. Maybe it is watching series after series of Sir Attenborough's works including Life of Birds, Life of Mammals, Blue Planet - Seas of Life etc. Maybe it is also the knowledge that he is actually a field guy (an expert even) in wild-life reporting. Whatever it maybe, watching Planet Earth seems that much more complete with his narrative.

You can experience the difference for yourself here in the US - watch Planet Earth Wednesday nights on Animal Planet, and then get your hands on the Attenborough-narrated DVDs selling through retailers or available to rent at your neighborhood or internet video store.

Next up on the 2-do-list - classics and yesteryear black & white features...afterall, "our" movie is one such b&w classic - the evergreen (or should it be ever-black-and-white???) "The Shop Around The Corner".

Washington Post: Gender? It's A Gray Area.

Here we go again. Another attempt at reasoning out why women are, well, women, and men are, shall we say, men.

See the single-page, printer-friendly view of the article and you can as well decide if you are going to agree or disagree.

Louann Brizendine, a Bay-area shrink, writes in her book "The Female Brain" that men and women have different systems for the brain. And her choices are rather telling. Women have Mac. And men? PC. (Sniffle. No wonder my girl thinks I am on the verge of a memory-overloading crash all the time. Atleast, now I know and have my excuse. It's my circuits. )

Some of the stuff that's apparently discussed in the book (hey, it's on my library check-out list, so can't say for sure without actually seeing it) does actually seem like tired-old rehashing of stereotypes, and the Wash Post article does make it appear like it's just a tired-old rehash with out basis in truth. But none-the-less, they make for one hilarious read. To wit...(quoted verbatim from the Wash Post along with added commentary of my own in green)

- Men think about sex every 52 seconds while women think about it about once a day. Man, I gotto wonder how they decided to estimate or measure that one.
- Women speak faster on the average - 250 words a minute to 125 for a typical male (now, I know a few women that are quite good at speed talking, but then, if you tune in to the typical radio network, you hear men that are quite adept at speed talking as well. Makes you wonder about the legitimacy of this specific comparison...but then I digress) and also adds that women use 20000 words a day while men use about 7000. This does make me realize what some men complain about when they say their wives talk too much. Its not that they talk for longer time as much as they cram too much in the time they speak...
- A woman knows what people are feeling while a man can't spot emotion unless someone cries or threatens bodily harm. Oh boy. I surely can't complain or contradict this one. Because I for one surely refuse to "interpret" what other people are thinking, without any external sign of it. But then, what do I know? I am a man.

But at the very least, it does add fuel to the gender stereotypes prevalent in our societies, and maybe, at its remotely best possibility, has stumbled onto something that is really significant. I doubt this latter possibility, but I am just willing to keep an open mind until proven otherwise. Definitely worth a peep from your local lending library, if only to laugh at the hilarity of "reasoned deductions" that are likely nothing more than convenient twisting of facts.

Science Top 10

"Evolution is not just something that scientists study as an esoteric enterprise." - Colin Norman, Science

This quote prefaces the BBC's article on the Science magazine's article featuring the Top 10 scientific breakthroughs of 2005.

Curiously enough, experiments and studies that furthered the understanding of evolution (Evolution in action) were named as the top breakthrough of 2005. [Curiously, because of the "debate" over the validity of evolutions' claims, and because of the alternate "theory" purporting to supernatural forces designing life reached tipping point in multitudes of court cases in the US. Heck, even the White House had comments on it. The debate, and its associated contrasts deserve their own post]

Wise-ass comments aside, this is the year that saw the Huygens land on Saturn, and the founding of the ITER (International Themo-nuclear Experimental Reactor).

More year-wise top breakthroughs from the Beeb(back to 1999's stem-cells breakthrough)
2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999

And Science Mag's what to expect in 2006. Interesting. Very interesting.

Global Warming

Interesting reads.

- Science Mag - NASA

- Real Climate - (more)

- (even more)

Am not sure what to make of the noise in Washington, dismissing the existence of global warming, but it sure smells more like rotten eggs, much like the rotten eggs that are stinking up Kansas with its intelligent-design as Science crap. Thank God I am not a teacher.