Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

An ancient waterway in the southern highlands of Mars breaks through the wall of a giant crater, flooding a huge lake with water and clay minerals...

Diamonds hint at 'earliest life'—by Jonathan Fildes

RY Deshpande — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:05:54 -0700

Tiny slivers of diamond forged on an infant Earth may contain the earliest traces of life, a study has shown. If the carbon was derived from primitive organisms, it would push back the date for life appearing on Earth by around 500 million years, to beyond 4.25 billion years ago. The Earth itself is just 4.6 billion years old. "When you look at the carbon isotopes, they could be interpreted as biogenic because we know that biologic processes do generate light carbon isotopes. But of course there are other processes that can do that," Dr Whitehouse told BBC News…

Hints of time before Big Bang—by Dr Chris Lintott

RY Deshpande — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:21:26 -0700

A team of physicists has claimed that our view of the early Universe may contain the signature of a time before the Big Bang. "Every time you break an egg or spill a glass of water, you're learning about the Big Bang," Professor Carroll explains.

The Baby that set off a hi-tech revolution—by Bobbie Johnson

RY Deshpande — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:48:04 -0700

Weighing in at over a tonne and comprising 1,500 valves and kilometres of wiring, it is not what most people would recognise today as a computer. Despite its antiquated appearance, however, this enormous machine—once nicknamed ‘The Baby’—was once the cutting edge of technology. Some of the pioneering engineers behind it gathered in Manchester on Friday to celebrate the birthday of what was the world’s first digital computer. Sixty years ago that day, The Baby completed its first calculation, giving birth to technologies which we are still using. The anniversary drew some of the pioneering engineers involved in its development to the city’s Museum of Science and Industry to see a replica of the machine in action. “The birth of The Baby changed the world forever,” said John Perkins, a Professor at a local university’s faculty of engineering. “We hope the celebrations will raise the profile of computer science and encourage the brightest and best of the next generation.” …

Cosmic Conundrum—by Manoj K Das

RY Deshpande — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:40:35 -0700

They say it was the mother of all cosmic explosions. The blast, which took place on June 30, 1908, in Tunguska, Siberia, also remains one of the greatest mysteries of the world. Russia is now organising an international conference in Moscow to mark the centenary of the explosion. The Siberian riddle has fascinated the world since an object entered the atmosphere over western China and whizzed north, leaving a 5,000 degree hot trail in the sky, to hit the banks of the Tunguska river. The explosion has exposed the fragility of mankind to a blitzkrieg from outer space. It has also led to a wide range of theories. A virtual search for an explanation in the company of scientists engaged in unraveling its mystique is revealing…

A cosmic insight from Stephen Hawking

RY Deshpande — Fri, 02 May 2008 02:20:47 -0700

The possibility of extraterrestrial life is a subject that has fascinated Hawking very much and on and off he speculates its possibility in a vigorous way. In fact he holds such a possibility quite firmly, perhaps more as a matter of a scientist’s faith than anything based on observed or observable facts. In one of his lectures he says: “Meeting a more advanced civilisation, at our present stage, might be a bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus. I don’t think they were better off for it.” But that will hardly be of any consequence when it comes to the procedural aspects of scientific observations and conclusions. ~ RYD

What Darwin Saw Out Back—by Cornelia Dean (NYT)

RY Deshpande — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:22:59 -0700

In 1860, while studying primroses in the garden of Down House, his home in Kent, England, Charles Darwin noticed something odd about their blooms. While all the flowers had both male and female parts — anthers and pistils — in some the anthers were prominent and in others the pistils were longer. So he experimented in his home laboratory and greenhouses, cross-pollinating some plants with their anatomical opposites. The results were striking. “He determined that if they cross-pollinate, they produce more seed and more vigorous seedlings,” said Margaret Falk, a horticulturalist and associate vice president at the New York Botanical Garden. The variation is evolution’s way of increasing cross-pollination, she said. Now the Botanical Garden is replicating this work, and more of Darwin’s Down House experiments, in a stunning, multipart exhibition called “Darwin’s Garden: An Evolutionary Adventure.” …

How Darwin’s ideas evolved—by James Randerson

RY Deshpande — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 06:16:08 -0700

Two computer screens display images of the first edition copy of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in London on Thursday.

The project began in 2002 and this is the last major set of additions. Dr John van Wyhe, Darwin Online’s director, said: “[The documents] have been known to scholars, but for the first time they are available to everyone for free online.” One set of pages that is likely to attract considerable interest is Darwin’s scrawled first draft of his theory of evolution from 1842. The scribbled argument is crammed with afterthoughts, footnotes and crossed-out text. A transcript of the text has been published previously, but few will have seen the original facsimile of Darwin’s unpolished thought process. “There is a kind of fascination about it having all the original handwriting and the places where he was making changes and was struggling with issues,” said Dr. Paul White, part of the Darwin Correspondence Project, a separate effort to catalogue Darwin’s letters. …

Kyoto has failed, we must rethink climate change policy—by Gwyn Prins

RY Deshpande — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 04:47:07 -0700

The global economy is not decarbonising—it is recarbonising. There must be a much larger commitment to fundamental energy technology R &D …

Getting down to the roots of the tree cull in the city—reported by Patrick Barkham and Jessica Aldred

RY Deshpande — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 04:36:19 -0700

Trees play an important part in regulating pollution and climate in towns and cities, but are falling foul of insurance companies and councils who are felling healthy, mature trees in their thousands. An unusual contest is taking shape during the London mayoral campaign: candidates are fighting to see who can promise to plant the most trees. Boris Johnson has pledged to put up 10,000 street trees in London while Ken Livingstone has described the Conservative candidate's target as "incredibly unambitious" and claimed he will plant 600,000 trees by 2012. All the time, however, trees are being removed from the capital, and in other cities across the country, because of health and safety issues, security fears and, most commonly, insurance claims and threats from loss adjusters.…

A century-old riddle eludes an answer—Anastasia Yelayeva

RY Deshpande — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:28:17 -0700

It has been a hundred years since the two geniuses, one an outstanding American inventor and one a great Russian writer, exchanged what we might now call “intellectual products.” However, the story still has many historical riddles associated with it.
The two men are Thomas Edison, who perfected and patented more than a thousand inventions, and Leo Tolstoy…

Edison’s album in which he kept comments by famous people on his inventions contains a note by Tolstoy: “The most powerful force in the world is thought. The more forms of expression it finds the more that force can manifest itself. The invention of printing was a milestone in human history. The appearance of the telephone and especially the phonograph, which is the most effective and impressive medium for recording and preserving not only the words, but the shades of the voice that says them, will mark another era.” [signed] ‘Leo Tolstoy.’ ...

Digging for the World War II Gold

RY Deshpande — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:46:40 -0700

Digging has resumed at a site in the southeastern German town of Deutschneudorf, where treasure hunters believe there are almost 2 tons of Nazi gold and possibly clues to the whereabouts of the legendary Amber Room, a prize taken from a Russian castle during World War II. Treasure hunters use modern technology to try to locate the lost Nazi gold. Heinz Peter Haustein, one of the two treasure hunters and a member of Germany's parliament, said: "We have already hit a hollow area under the surface, it's filled with water and we are not sure if it is the cave we are looking for." …

Asking a Judge to save the World, and maybe a whole lot More—by Dennis Overbye: NYT

RY Deshpande — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:31:10 -0700

The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” …

As part of the safety assessment report, Dr. Mangano and Steve Giddings of the University of California, Santa Barbara, have been working intensely for the last few months on a paper exploring all the possibilities of these fearsome black holes. They think there are no problems but are reluctant to talk about their findings until they have been peer reviewed, Dr. Mangano said.

Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, “Neither has any merit.” He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.” …

Gravity powered lamp generates as much light as 40 Watt bulb

RY Deshpande — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 02:32:11 -0700

The LED lamp designed by Clay Moulton and named Gravia, forming a portion of his master’s thesis, has just won second place in the Greener Gadgets Design Competition as part of the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City. ...

Japan’s Second Defeat after the Second World War

RY Deshpande — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:06:29 -0700

If we have seen the possibilities and pitfalls in Big Science given to us by the American model, we also notice its results in other places,—for example in Japan. Japan's first experience with high-level business and industrial development forms a good illustration to see how one can get trapped on the economic path when something alien enters into the system. Yoshiro Hoshino writes: “There is nothing worse than war for bringing about the destruction of nature, human beings, factories, housing, and transportation systems, and for causing starvation and sickness, the discharge of untreated factory wastes, and the destruction of farm lands. When environmental destruction is understood in its broadest and most fundamental sense, the original culprit is war.” America, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, invaded Japan in another way. It looks as though the evil found another soil to grow and flourish in a vigorous manner. The present article Japan’s Second Defeat after the Second World War forms a chapter of my yet unpublished book Big Science and its Impact on Society....

Larks are losing the ability to sing—by Graham Keeley

RY Deshpande — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 02:20:18 -0700

The poet Shelley, who immortalised the skylark, would have been saddened to know that threatened songbirds in Spain are losing their voice. A study has found Dupont’s lark, a relative of the skylark, is losing its singing range because numbers are falling. Biologists from the Donana National Park in Andalucia found that when male larks had fewer birds from which to learn new notes or ranges their repertoire decreased. The number of notes a male uses is vital in attracting females. Dupont’s lark, Chersophilus duponti, is found in Europe only in southern, central and north-east Spain and there are thought to be only 2,000 birds remaining as their natural habitat has been destroyed by man...

Earth Hour 2008

RY Deshpande — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:38:21 -0700

On 29 March 2008, people around the world will switch off lights for one hour from 8-9 pm to show a stand against global warming...

Spring comes earlier in U.S. for birds, bees and trees

RY Deshpande — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 05:36:09 -0700

The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year’s authoritative report by the Nobel Prize-awarded international climate scientists. More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in almost every state. What is happening is so noticeable that scientists can track it from space. Satellites measuring when land turns green found that spring “green-up” is arriving eight hours earlier every year on average since 1982 in the northeastern United States...

The knight of science fiction: Arthur C Clarke—by Anthony Tucker

RY Deshpande — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:53:12 -0700

Among the giants of the imaginative promotion of the ideas of interplanetary travel, the colonising by man of nearby planets and the urgent need for peaceful exploration of outer space, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who has died aged 90, was pre-eminent, because of his hard and accurate predictions of the detailed technologies of space flight and the use of near-Earth space for global communications. Yet, in spite of his deep seriousness, JB Priestley described him in the 1950s as the happiest writer he had ever known. Tallish, bespectacled, rather big-eared and thinning on top, Clarke tended to be described by friends as a beaming and highly articulate shambles of a chap, a man to whom convention meant very little. Yet his mind was like a razor. Unlike earlier writers on space travel, his imagination and creativity sprang, not from fantasy, but from sharp scientific and technical insight, unfettered by the arbitrary limitations of the perceptions of his time. His amazing career was possible largely because he was never, in any ordinary sense, quite a part of this world. Indeed, he chose to live in Sri Lanka, partly because it helped him neutralise the influence of western culture. As he approached 80, it seemed that he had done almost everything that was possible in a lifetime…

Managing climate change—by Richard Stagg

RY Deshpande — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:55:07 -0700

Managing climate change first appeared in The Hindu dated 13 March 2008 in which the claims and responsibilities of the developing and advanced societies are discussed. “The issue is often portrayed as a battle between the developed and the developing world. Wrong. It is something which affects us all and which we need to address together.” It is a matter of concern for us all—says Sir Richard Stagg who is a career diplomat and British High Commissioner to India.

High Dynamic Range Imaging—from Wikipedia

RY Deshpande — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:48:55 -0700

They take multiple pictures of the same scene under different exposures and combine them for detail. ...

Maya May Have Caused Civilization-Ending Climate Change—by Anne Minard

RY Deshpande — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:29:54 -0700

A new analysis of satellite images suggests that the ancient Maya used certain areas for agriculture, inducing drought that caused the downfall of the civilisation. The image, taken by the commercial satellite IKONOS, also reveals yellow discolorations in the dense forest canopy—probable sites of ancient Maya buildings. …

Appreciating Arabic science that predates Newton—by Jim Al-Khalili

RY Deshpande — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:07:32 -0700

Many of the achievements of Arabic science often come as a surprise. For instance, while no one can doubt the genius of Copernicus and his heliocentric model of the solar system in heralding the age of modern astronomy, it is not commonly known that he relied on work carried out by Arab astronomers many centuries earlier. Many of his diagrams and calculations were taken from manuscripts of the 14th-century Syrian astronomer Ibn al-Shatir. Why is he never mentioned in our textbooks? Likewise, we are taught that English physician William Harvey was the first to correctly describe blood circulation in 1616. He was not. The first to give the correct description was the 13th-century Andalucian physician Ibn al-Nafees… The golden age of Arabic science slowed down after the 11th century. Many have speculated on the reason for this. Some blame the Mongols’ destruction of Baghdad in 1258, others the change in attitude in Islamic theology towards science, and the lasting damage inflicted by religious conservatism upon the spirit of intellectual inquiry. But the real reason was simply the gradual fragmentation of the Abbasid empire and the indifference shown by weaker rulers towards science. …

The world's most powerful optical telescope has opened both of its eyes.

RY Deshpande — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:47:03 -0800

Giant Telescope

Astronomers at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona have released the first images taken using its two giant 8m diameter mirrors. The detailed pictures show a spiral galaxy located 102 million light-years away from the Milky Way. LBT has been 20 years in the making but promises to allow astronomers to probe the Universe further back in time and in more detail than ever before. …

Colorizing metals with femtosecond laser pulses

RY Deshpande — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:22:28 -0800

For centuries, it had been the dream of alchemists to turn inexpensive metals into gold. Certainly, it is not enough from an alchemist's point of view to transfer only the appearance of a metal to gold. However, the possibility of rendering a certain metal to a completely different color without coating can be very interesting in its own right. In this work, we demonstrate a femtosecond laser processing technique that allows us to create a variety of colors on a metal that ultimately leads us to control its optical properties from UV to terahertz.

• Towards New Age--RY Deshpande's book reviewed by Dr Joan Price Ph D

RY Deshpande — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 05:32:35 -0800

This book is a collection of twelve articles by R Y Deshpande based on Sri Aurobindo’s perspective of life and his vision of the future. The work consists of conference talks given by the author, literary praise for Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri, and refutations of criticism “levelled against” the poem. Deshpande honors some of the works by Sri Aurobindo’s closest disciples, gives an extensive critique of Kishor Gandhi’s book, Social Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the New Age, and includes informative articles about India and the new millennium and the need for an Indian science.

The book begins with an excellent overview of Sri Aurobindo’s life, emphasizing his childhood and keen ability to learn languages, his interest in literature, and his involvement in India’s struggle for political freedom. Next we are introduced to Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual experiences. Especially interesting is the explanation of the power that brought Sri Aurobindo and the Mother together as a team to perfect the Integral Yoga. Some of the Sanskrit terminology in this chapter would be difficult for a reader who is unfamiliar with Sri Aurobindo’s poetry, psychology, and philosophy. Deshpande’s words and phrasing, however, are dynamic and joyful. One can actually feel the power of his aspiration to transcend our world of ignorance when he explains how the Mother discovered the means to awaken the body’s cells to the divine reality and how, upon his passing from the physical body, Sri Aurobindo gave the Mind of Light to the Mother as a parting gift.

Deshpande gives an excellent explanation of the spiritual discipline practiced by the Mother and how Sri Aurobindo made the supramental descent possible. On April 29, 1956, the Mother announced that the manifestation of the supramental had taken place. “A new light breaks upon the earth, a new world is born.” ...

Reviewed by Joan Price, Ph.D.

Climate experts sound grim warning

RY Deshpande — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:59:01 -0800

Scientists have long agreed that climate change could have a profound impact on the planet; from melting ice sheets and withering rainforests, to flash floods and droughts. Now a team of climate experts has ranked the most fragile and vulnerable regions on the planet, and warned they are in danger of sudden and catastrophic collapse before the end of the century. In a comprehensive study published on Tuesday, the scientists identify the nine areas that are in gravest danger of passing critical thresholds or “tipping points”, beyond which they will not recover...

Chandrayaan: India’s Mission to the Moon

RY Deshpande — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 01:07:17 -0800

The coming era in space exploration is proving to be one with increased interest in the Moon, with missions from ESA, China, Japan, India, and NASA. Perhaps the most international and most ambitious of these efforts is the Chandrayaan mission, launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Chandrayaan-1 (literally "Moon" + "Craft" in Hindi, together meaning "trip to the moon") is India's first mission to the Moon. The ISRO, founded in 1969, launched its first satellite in 1975 but has not yet sent a satellite beyond Earth's orbit.

The goals of this mission are both to expand ISRO's capabilities and to help resolve longstanding questions about the Moon's history. Chandrayaan-1 will deploy a powerful suite of instruments to map the lunar surface and search for the presence of radioactive isotopes, which will help researchers determine the origins of the Moon. The mission will also build up ISRO's ground support systems, communications systems, and data reception and interpretation systems, as well as increase India's technical and scientific capabilities.

The Value of Science—by Richard Feynman

RY Deshpande — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:29:30 -0800

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant as we are. If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.

It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.

We are in the dark about Dark Matter—Carlo Rubbia

RY Deshpande — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:53:00 -0800

Empty space still contains a lot of invisible energy. The identity of 95 per cent of what constitutes the universe is not known and experiments are being conducted at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research and other places in the world to determine the constituents of Dark Matter...

Globalisation or an Integral Society?

RY Deshpande — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 05:45:44 -0800

We understand globalisation essentially in terms of economics, commerce, industry and political dynamics; but there are basic social, religious, philosophical, scientific, cultural or idealistic aspects which often get sidelined in the respective discussions. The question of humanity in its proper sense, of harmonious life of happiness as expressed by mystics, sages, rishis, enlightened thinkers is hardly raised and seen in its deeper or far-reaching implications. Globalisation today is driven by a motive force and does not have its true or authentic content offered to the larger collectivity in the enduring values of the spirit. It is a mechanistic or, to use the modern idiom, a digital phenomenon. The identity of man with things material, the appreciation of the wonder that living reality in its thousand moods is, the recognition of the all-pervasive beauty in nature, or the sweep of cosmic thought, the subtlety of creative perception and expression have to be a part of the global perception. There have to be different families and nations, there have to be different races, different languages, different arts, and even in the same kind of art different expressions, different games, different sports activities, different recreations; yet there can be a kind of genuine underlying globality in all our occupations. This world is not just a shrunken global village; it is one rich Family of God, vasudhaiva kutumbakam, as says the ancient scripture. In it each member of the family has his own unique soul, his own inalienable individuality and it is that which is valued most in the progress of the both. In the all-inclusive collective life is provided the scope for one’s own uninterrupted growth which, in turn, helps to grow itself, symbiotically helping each other. That is what true globalisation should mean. Are we nearer to it? ...

THIRD CULTURE HOLIDAY READING

ronjon — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:43:54 -0800

This is the season for year-end lists of books in which the mainstream review media steer literate culture away from deep questions about how our world works and who we are and toward celebrations of narcissism, celebrity gossip, and literary cliques. What I wrote in 1991 in "The Emerging Third Culture", still pertains today:

A 1950s education in Freud, Marx, and modernism is not a sufficient qualification for a thinking person in the 1990s. Indeed, the traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time. Their culture, which dismisses science, is often nonempirical. It uses its own jargon and washes its own laundry. It is chiefly characterized by comment on comments, the swelling spiral of commentary eventually reaching the point where the real world gets lost.

Given the well-documented challenges and issues we are facing as a nation, as a culture, how can it be that there are no science books (and hardly any books on ideas) on the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year list; no science category in the Economist Books of the Year 2007; only Oliver Sacks in the New Yorker's list of Books From Our Pages? ...

Hubble: The most amazing space photographs in the universe

RY Deshpande — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:33:51 -0800

Recently, astronauts voted on the top photographs taken by Hubble, in its 16-year journey so far. Remarking in the article from the Daily Mail, reporter Michael Hanlon says the photos "illustrate that our universe is not only deeply strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful."...

Scientists find 27 ‘teenager galaxies’

RY Deshpande — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:40:40 -0800

Young galaxies, so faint that scientists struggled to prove they were there at all, have been discovered by aiming two of the world’s most powerful telescopes at a single patch of sky. An international group of researchers has identified 27 pre-galactic fragments, dubbed teenager galaxies,” which they hope will help understand how our own Milky Way reached adulthood. Cambridge University scientist Martin Haehnelt said his team used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and the Gemini Telescope in Chile to monitor a section of the universe for 92 hours.

Remarks of Bill Gates at Harvard Commencement, Boston, Mass. on 7 June 2007

RY Deshpande — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:10:29 -0700

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair. I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences. But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement…

Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.” Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant. The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating. The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree…

Lady candidates need not apply—by Sudha Murthy

RY Deshpande — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 06:15:51 -0700

It was probably the April of 1974. Bangalore was getting warm and gulmohars were blooming at the IISc campus. I was the only girl in my postgraduate department and was staying at the ladies' hostel. Other girls were pursuing research in different departments of Science.

I was looking forward to going abroad to complete a doctorate in computer science. I had been offered scholarships from Universities in the US. I had not thought of taking up a job in India.

One day, while on the way to my hostel from our lecture-hall complex, I saw an advertisement on the notice board. It was a standard job-requirement notice from the famous automobile company Telco (now Tata Motors). It stated that the company required young, bright engineers, hardworking and with an excellent academic background, etc.

At the bottom was a small line: "Lady candidates need not apply."

I read it and was very upset. For the first time in my life I was up against gender discrimination.

Though I was not keen on taking up the job, I saw it as a challenge. I had done extremely well in academics, better than most of my male peers. Little did I know then that in real life academic excellence is not enough to be successful…

The Transformational Atomic Weapons Project of the Second World War

RY Deshpande — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:19:53 -0700

The story of development and use of the atom bomb in the Second World War marks the beginning of another age in many ways. Sinister it may look from a certain point of view, but arrive it had to. The consequences in its wake might well be called “unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous, and terrifying”, something which no man-made phenomenon had ever brought to man. But this had to happen, and it happened operationally due to the combination of two vastly different features, features associated with the academic institutions and military establishments, two very much dissimilar institutions, yet working together under the exigencies of the War circumstances.

The social transformation that we witness today had its overt roots in these remarkable developments. Today we live in the American era with all its glorious possibilities—and all its degrading pitfalls. Yet its creative spirit is something that should be recognised and applauded, creative in every walk of life, even though one may see a thousand vitalisitc and arrogant shortcomings in it. The great cycles of time needed this adventure of globalising consciousness and it is that which was effectively born on the fast lane of the Second World War. Where will this track lead us? Nobody knows; the answer to this question is not known. This zestful creative spirit has certainly opened itself to the wonderful working of Mahasaraswati, to put it in Sri Aurobindo’s terminology, but where do the other three indispensable cosmic powers stand, the luminous powers of Maheshwari, Mahakali, and Mahalakshmi? Can we have a deeper intuition of their presence and functioning in the universal order of things? If an answer to this question is to be found, the Sage must be born amongst us. Will that happen?

The Perfumes of Arabia

RY Deshpande — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:58:15 -0700

Abbasid Gardens in Baghdad and Samarra

Not Mecca the birthplace of Mohammad nor Medina where he became the Prophet and King, but Baghdad of the Abbasids was the centre of Islamic culture and civilization for five great centuries. Founded in 762 by the mighty Caliph al-Mansur on the banks of the Tigris this old Babylonian city, aptly called the Gift of God, remained in its conquering glory until the Mongols subjugated it in 1258. Baghdad as capital of the Caliphate became in the Middle Ages the seat of power and also had the distinction of being the intellectual centre of the world. A blaze of philosophical, scientific and literary creations brought to mankind another spirit of life’s opulence. The poet Anwari praised it as a seat of learning and art, with gorgeous crafts on display in streets and marts. Here were a thousand splendid mansions, villas and palaces “simple without, but within, nothing but azure and gold…. The royal palace at Baghdad had on its floors 22,000 carpets and on its walls 38,000 tapestries out of which 12,500 were of silk.”<br>
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When Mahomedanism appeared, Christianity vanished out of Asia, because it had lost its meaning. Mahomed tried to re-establish the Asiatic gospel of human equality in the spirit. All men are equal in Islam—whatever their social position or political power—nor is any man debarred from the full development of his manhood by his birth or low original station in life. All men are brothers in Islam and the bond of religious unity overrides all other divisions and differences. But Islam also was limited and imperfect, because it confined the ideal of brotherhood and equality to the limits of a single creed, and was further deflected from its true path by the rude and undeveloped races which it drew into its embrace. Another revelation of the old truth is needed ...

TED: Inspired talks by he world's greatest thinkers and doers

ronjon — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:35:39 -0700

Thanks to yatanti for recommending this site:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. -- The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 100 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted...

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. Over time, you'll see us add talks and performances from other events, and solicit submissions from you, as well. ...

After the Catastrophe is before the Catastrophe by Otto Ulrich

RY Deshpande — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 23:26:26 -0800

“Human History becomes more and more a race between Education and Catastrophe”

H.G. Wells(1866-1949) Culture of Preparedness

After the Catastrophe is before the Catastrophe

We have to start talking about catastrophes in the same way

that we are talking about our illnesses. ...

Global Warming and Economy: a Conscious Shift in Economy by Jean-Yves Lung

Debashish — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 04:28:26 -0800

This is a slightly reworked transcript of a talk given by Jean-Yves Lung at the conference on "The Collective Yoga of Man: A World in Process" held at Auroville from Jan. 12-14, 2007. Here, Jean-Yves sees the direction towards the restoration of the ecological balance of the earth in a reformulated economics.

...Each time we give our time and work instead of selling it, we interrupt the heating system or slow it down. And it doesn’t mean that nothing has been produced or consumed, it means only that it has not been egoistically done so. And this is why it doesn’t count. We have to remember the basic assumption of Adam Smith who created the capitalist model of the invisible hand of the market resolving spontaneously our egoistic activities into a collective harmony: by pursuing egoistic aims, people tend to specialize into what they do best, thus creating a diversified economy of complementary activities, and unknowingly contributing to the general good. That was the good news of the century: “Yes, your egoism can make a difference!” Kama is the only dharma and even the only moksha, the only thing to be released (mukta) in man. Here is the rajasic component of Dana: “Don’t give, take! Bargain!”. This theory has been very seriously accepted as a realistic model in the West (and that means now everywhere) but from the point of view of Indian psychology, it would be unthinkable, except in some obscurity of the mind and soul, dreamed maybe by the slayers of the soul âtmahanah, as the Upanishad says, to build up such a fallacious theory, so contrary to all the established facts of life and consciousness. ...

The End Is Nearer, Say Atomic Scientists

ronjon — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 13:21:43 -0800

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which 60 years ago began keeping tabs on humanity’s temporal distance from self-annihilation with the concept of a “Doomsday Clock,” apparently found things sufficiently dire to nudge the minute hand forward two clicks, indicating that we are now “five minutes to midnight” — or Doomsday.

The clock had last been adjusted in 2002, when it was moved from 9 minutes off to 7 minutes. The current position is the closest the group has put the planet to Doomsday since 1953, when the Soviets and the United States were first playing with their newfangled thermonuclear weaponry, and things looked mighty bleak indeed. ...

Instruments of Knowledge and Post-Human Destinies

Debashish — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 15:23:26 -0800

The two postings on Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies (I and II) generated a thread on the relationship between physical instruments of observation and knowledge in the scientific sense (microscopes, telescopes, nuclear accelerators), human organs of observation and knowledge (mind, intelligence, sense organs) in the cognitive / psychological sense and possible mutations of human consciousness in the ontological / phenomenological / epistemological sense (change of being, change of consciousness, change of modalities of knowledge). The last (possibilities of a change of modalities of knowledge) opened up a consideration of Sri Aurobindo’s phenomenology of supramental knowledge and its subsidiary action in human forms and instruments of knowledge – specifically sense-knowledge through the sense organs with the “sixth-sense” of the “sense mind,” manas in the Indian Sankhya formulation behind them at/as their origin and the supramental Samjnana further behind/beyond but with a concealed and subsidiary operation in/through manas. Here we are reproducing the relevant parts of this very fertile thread for focused consideration.

New High Tech 3D Look at ‘Mona Lisa’ Yields Some New Secrets

ronjon — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:33:33 -0700

The first major scientific analysis of the “Mona Lisa” in 50 years has uncovered some unexpected secrets, including signs that Leonardo da Vinci changed his mind about his composition, French and Canadian researchers said Tuesday.

An Infared photograph suggests that Leonardo originally painted the Mona Lisa with a gauzy overdress for nursing (visible, at right), and a tiny bonnet (vague outline visible about the sitter's head). ...

The Developmental Spiral - An Unexplained Physical Phenomenon

ronjon — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 07:12:33 -0700

This one's for you Rich..! :-P

What is it about the spiral shape that the human mind finds so intellectually and visually enticing? Has the universe tuned us to develop a deep intuitive understanding of its importance? ...

While my own best current intuition expects a 2060 A.D. singularity, Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil, Marvin Minsky, Richard Coren, James Wesley, Damien Broderick, Robin Hansen, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom, and a number of other careful thinkers have proposed a range of ETA's between 2020 and 2140, with 2020-2060 presently representing the majority of predictions, clustering around a 2040 mean. ...