Carbon and Silicon

Read on to understand the importance of these two elements that we see at every corner of the world.

Carbon lies at the centre of life, its ubiquitous and indispensable ingredient. Carbon atoms link together in chains, and bind with other atoms, to make the whole array of organic chemicals that constitute life itself, from DNA to toenails. Only one other atom is as versatile as carbon, and that is silicon, which comprises the essential ingredient of many rock-forming minerals. It, too, can hold hands with its neighbours through large molecules. Silicon chip technology exploits its properties, and it is not a coincidence that silicon intelligence is portrayed as the only possible rival to that of our own carbon-based brain. You do not have to be a fanatical reductionist to understand that the soul of life is carbonaceous and the soul of rock siliceous.

Seela Veerraju - Poetry

Way back in eighty's Sri Veerraju made blocks out of his hand written poetry.
Poetry also is his own.
He bound the volumes himself.
It was a unique effort.
Here is a sampler of that book.
The Title of the book si Kitiki Kannu (The Window Eye)

  Kitiki Kannu, Anthology of Poetry

Soon the complete book would be made available.

History or Herstory?

There can never be a herstory!
It is the story of everyone.
The word History is not based on Him or Her!
Is hernia a female problem?
Never!

Read along!

When the word history was first used (by the late 1300s), it could
mean any kind of recounting—true or false. A history could be
false, and still be a history. So let’s take a look at the history, both
true and false, of the word history (which I would like to call historysquared
or meta-history, except for the fact that we are looking at
the word and not the study).
We’ve all heard of herstory, a clever but perhaps overused play on
word. The word in question is, of course history, regenderized for a
feminist twist. Many if not most people who use herstory know that
the his in history is not the complement of hers; they’re simply
employing the same sort of wordplay that has given us such
frequent and less-serious constructions as hersterectomy,
himnia/hisnia, womenopause and womenstruation, and galnocologist.
On the other hand, others promote the folk etymology that history
compounds his and story seriously, whether or not they actually
believe it. I like what I spotted on a blog entry about the word: “It
should be history . . . for reasons of historiography (or, if you will—
though I hope you won’t—herstoriography: but can anyone say
herstoriography with a straight face?).”
The truth is that history traces back through Latin as historia,
which was borrowed from the Greek word meaning “narrative,
recounting, or something learned by inquiring.”
So you can see that there’s no maleness to the word, despite the
masculine disguise of the syllable his . . . though let’s be true to the
word history by learning something else by inquiring. If we take an
additional step back, we find that the Greek historia is derived from 
the word histor, which had such meanings as “knowledge,” “learning,”
and . . . um . . .“wise man.” So, the wise man told . . . his story.

Family name! Japanese Style

You just cannot believe this!

There was a man in Sekiguchi who went every day to enjoy himself in the pleasure quarter (ura-machi) of Tono with its restaurants and brothels. The brothel he frequented was named Sankoro (the sun, moon, and stars brothel). So the locals called him Sankoro. Eventually, Sankoro became the family name, and it remains that way even now. 

Experience!

Failure is instructive.

The person who really thinks learns quite as much

from his failures as from his successes.

- John Dewey

What is Science?

No explanations needed!!