A friend pointed me to what she said was the best commercial shown during the Super Bowl. I agree that it is a really good one. [Read more…]
Mano Singham
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A friend pointed me to what she said was the best commercial shown during the Super Bowl. I agree that it is a really good one. [Read more…]
You may have heard about ‘moon illusion’, the way the full moon looks much larger when it is just over the horizon than when it is high in the sky. Many people will swear that it actually does appear larger and concoct theories as to why it is so, when the reality is that the larger size is a trick our brain plays on us, though there is no consensus on how it does it. In an earlier post I examined some of the explanations. [Read more…]
My earlier post on the origins of complexity sparked an interesting and informative discussion in the comments so I thought I would pass on another article about it by Amy Maxmen that I came across later, that looked at the same question in light of what we know about the seemingly lowly amoeba. She starts by posing the problem. [Read more…]
You may recall the case of Lavabit that I have written about before where Ladar Levinson, the owner of that encrypted mail service, shut down his business to avoid giving the government the master encryption key they demanded so that they could read all his 410,000 clients’ emails. This happened last June, likely when the US government first learned of the NSA leaks and discovered that Edward Snowden used Lavabit to communicate. [Read more…]
I watched the third and final episode of Sherlock last night. Like the others, it was entertaining and kept me engaged. It also ended with a two teasers (one major and one minor) that suggest that a fourth season is in the works. The way the major teaser was presented, like the previous episode, seemed to be drawn from the film V for Vendetta. It has been two years since the previous season so one does not know how long it will be until the next one is released, especially since the two lead actors are now in high demand for other work. [Read more…]
There are two science-religion debates coming up. One is tomorrow (February 4) between ‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye and Answers in Genesis young-Earth creationist Ken Ham. The other is on February 21 between cosmologist Sean Carroll and theologian William Lane Craig. Serious concerns have been expressed by both sides about the usefulness or even the desirability of these debates. [Read more…]
News emerged today that actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his apartment apparently from a drug overdose. He had a history of drug and alcohol addiction. He was just 46 years old. [Read more…]
There was a furor when the TSA introduced its infamous body scanners at airports. Quickly dubbed the ‘porno scanners’, it was alleged that these devices could be used to see people naked. The TSA vigorously denied it, saying that it was used in such a way that only it would only be used to find weapons. [Read more…]
As I wrote recently, last Sunday the German television station ARD broadcast an interview with Edward Snowden in Moscow in which he revealed a few more details about NSA spying such as that they were also targeting big German corporations such as Siemens. I based my comments on a print report of the TV interview that appeared in the Guardian and in the comments reader Jorg was kind enough to provide a link to the actual broadcast. [Read more…]
I did not watch president Obama’s State of the Union speech. These ritualized events are almost entirely political theater with very little substance. The routine is familiar. Obama will give a speech outlining some of his extremely modest goals and the Republicans will bemoan what they claim is his pursuit of a radical agenda and his lack of willingness to engage in dialogue with them and compromise. [Read more…]