Scientific American has for, I would assume, the sake of posterity collated articles of scientific achievements and feats that have had [maximum impact in the year 2006] on the ever decreasing frontier of the known and unknown. These articles are a must read.

post reading realization: The amount of science that I ever knew (or claimed to know) and have forgotten is but a speck of cosmic dust in the vast cosmos of scientific knowledge.

With Thanksgiving around the corner, many are, I am sure, already drooling at whats on sale either in the electronics store or wherever it is that they get high. Just remember that most items that are on sale are available at that price because of a retailer rebate. Yes, the great rebate scam- this is what I am getting at. [article]  enlightens us and maybe (?) will put some sense in those of us who go weak in the knees when looking at their favorite new toy on sale at the store.

[link]
Absolutely wonderful!!

side note: some of them definitely look like they have been polished with photoshop but the composition is stunning nonetheless.

[link]
Not for the squeamish. Great aperture skills and color capture, though I suspect they might have been processed later. Nonetheless, great stuff.

HUGE number of absolutely top notch extensions for Firefox [here]

If anything, DO get the del.icio.us extension, I love it.

[Top 100 Hubble Images]

Absolutely amazing!! What else can one say?

No, its not the surface of a post-apocalyptic Earth but that of an embryonic stem cell. Yes, this is the center of all the controversy. Go [over] and vote for your choice of best biomedical image. Though many of them are pseudo colored, they are stunning. Super macro photography at its best!!

And you thought only Indian politicians spend money to scratch personal itches? junkets, villas and suchlike.
Think again!
You have to check [this] out - the excessive tax payer money thrown at avant-garde projects that befuddle the mind is quite befuddling! huh? what did I just say?

huh? goes you.
Yes, there is such a [society] and it features clouds of all shapes, sizes, color and altitudes. Superb photographs and rich information on how to spot and identify various cloud formations. If anything, atleast the photographs out to be worth a look see.

a sample off their main page: (click to enlarge)

AnandTech [article] - interesting and serves up the basics of SLR photography in general. Good read.

Edit: If you want general tips on improving your digital photography skills, the resources that this [article] points to are pretty good.

How does a geek walk the walk? how about a GPS enabled trail map for hikers, bikers and suchlike? sound interesting to you? It wow'ed me - me got to make meself one of these!
[Link]

How many of us as kids read Indrajal comics? How many of us spent our early childhood summer holidays engrossed in the world of the Phantom, Mandrake the magician, Bahadur etc etc. Before I lost touch with them a.k.a growing out of them I used to read them quite frequently. I recently found this blog run by Indrajal Comic fans and the good samaritans on that blog actually scan entire comic books and post them online to satisfy our guilty pleasures. It was quite a trip really, perusing through their archives, downloading a few strips and of course, reading and reliving my glorious past. So, head on out there and support those indrajalites - The Comic Project.

Awesome YouTube video on an awful lot of crazy monkeys!

Hat Tip: India Uncut

Cafe Hayek points to a podcast of an outstanding lecture by Nobel prize winning economist Vernon Smith on how humanity as a whole benefits from globalization. A very rewarding listen, I must say. Recommended.

Whenever I've used a coin operated laundry machine, for some reason I've always wondered what the ratio of quarters (that are liquid in the market) to the population would be. Thinking of the uses of quarters to the average Joe - parking meters (the single biggest need, I think), laundry, slot machines at casinos (the largest, in terms of sheer volume of transactions),.......(please feel free to add more uses in the comments) - I guesstimated that Joe requires around 10-12 quarters per week. Of course, at the end of the week he might end up with more than he started with but he still would have traded around 10.

Anyway, after another week of pondering on this number I decided to look online and see if there were any figures on liquid cash in the economy that was available to the public (not tied up by banking institutions). Here is an interesting article on how much cash is floating around, who has it, why is it floating etc. I will add my thoughts as an update to this post.

NY Times report of a paralyzed individual who was able to control a cursor, a robotoc arm and a television set with just his thoughts. More articles here - [1] [2] [3]

Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc., a company out of Foxborough MA, is responsible for developing this implantable chip and its interface - a permanent port in the skull into which a cable from a computer is inserted whenever the subject wishes to perform tasks. Sounds familiar?

 These researchers have tapped into motor cortex neural activity meaning that the subject just imagines that he is moving an imaginary limb and the embedded chip transmits these signals (corresponding to neural activity for actuating motion and its perpeptuation through the duration of the task) through the port in the skull to a computer on the outside. Though the potential of this development is enormous,  the accuracy and other statistics of task completion are no better than non-intrusive methods(using electroencephalography) developed by another group of researchers out of NY. What is interesting to note is that another set of researchers have developed techniques to detect and transmit neural activity(in monkeys at present) that represents the intention of the brain to perform a task. A brain-computer interface of this sort - one that drives a task with just the thought of doing it and not actually thinking through the physical motions involved, represents, in my opinion, a true brain-computer interface. Any advance in this field is welcome though!

I am moving the "All that glitters is not gold" thread to my main blog. Its grown to be more than just linking to numerous other articles/columns/reports. I will keep up the variety of posts in this blog It aligns better with the philosophy of a link blog and also makes for a varied and interesting read.

Part 2 in the series is up!

I am, quite frankly, tired of reading and hearing about how India and China are the next global economic superpowers - the cliched contrasts of abject poverty juxtaposed to astounding wealth, how inspite of the education and health sectors being in disarray India churns out "world class" graduates who are spearheading this breakout. But what exactly are these graduates good for? For joining the workforce as customer service agents? For seemingly to shine as part of technical support? Thats the impression I get from reading all thats out there on India's economic boom. I know better than to believe everything I read but in order to improve the abysmal signal to noise ratio I have decided to link to articles/commentary/essays/blogs of eminent scholars who call it like it is.

Tomes have been written about their socio-economic growth and scholars have endlessly exchanged letters and written countless books opining what they see about their (India and China) future. Though all this makes for fascinating reading, most of the recent ones have become rather cliched and often just regurgigate thoughts and ideas that have long since been accepted as the state of affairs. Of course, once an objective effort is made into investigating the claims to superior economic status of the two nations, social indices and a whole lot of other measures of development in industrial and allied areas follow suit. It is in these numbers and their interpretations that the truth lies. Hope follows closely.

In response to Smitha's comment and before I introduce commentary on developmental policies, I reiterate the importance of hanging back a second to take a closer look at various indices of social and economic development will give us a better picture than just outrightly denouncing India's apparent economic advances (whether it is as notable as it is made out to be is a matter to be seen). India is a nation that houses most of the world's poor people, life in India is stained with poverty but when a country makes rapid strides (India's growth being a documented 7% - 8%) it is important that this growth be reflected in all sections of society. Policies that try to ensure that this growth be reflected more or less equally across social strata rein in the growth rates of forward sections and invest more resources (effort, money and time) in trying to improve the lot of the lower classes.But there exist certain drawbacks of equality centric policies as they aim to improve the lot of the masses under the working assumption that the masses can be banded together as a collective. It is my personal opinion that there are deepset inherent inequalities in Indian society that preclude any attempt to address the society as though it was one. Also judging by the sheer mass of Indian society, lifting them collectively out of poverty is a monumental task both effort and time wise. As opposed to equality centric policies there exist progressive policies that recognize that rapid growth first benefits only certain sections of society and only certain regions of the country but they aim to share this growth and wealth by allowing it percolate down to the lowest classes. These policies work on the assumption that no section of sociey is denied access to this growth or denied partaking in it. The reservation I have about these policies is that by ensuring that all sections partake in the nation's growth they might be able to lift the lower sections out of poverty (poverty as defined by world bodies), but since they don't ensure equal access to growth/wealth the more progressive sections, on account of their greater accessibilty to wealth and resources pull away much faster from other poorer sections resulting in greater inequality - greater inequality even though the masses are progressively moving out of poverty. A little irony eh?

[hat tip: The Middle Stage, Pankaj Mishra's resistance to temptation]
With that I introduce few links to some excellent commentary on the very same topic. To coincide with the release of his book "Temptations of the West : How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond", Pankaj Mishra argues that the value system of the free market model that heralds us as emerging economic powers is a western one that assumes that the end result of economic growth is a western lifestyle with its attendant consumerism. Though his arguments get a little less convincing as he progresses, The Middle Stage attributes this to the difficulty of a comprehensive analysis of a topic of this magnitude. In reponse to Mishra's column, Salil Tripathi replies with his own piece arguing for a progressive economic policy. Mishra replies and Tripathi counters. I urge everyone to carefully read these essays/letters and follow up on most if not all embedded links so that you are aware of the complete picture. These essays are instructional to the novice (like me) and showcase opposing theories of India's  (and China's) economic explosion.
More articles by Pankaj Mishra and Salil Tripathi.