That BIG thing

I’m now published at Inkling Magazine and that‘s the big thing of mine.  Inkling Magazine’s motto is: On the HUNCH that science rocks.  You pretty much know what that article of mine is all about – at least globally.

Titled, A Rose by Any Other Name Would Look as Red, the article explains how the human brain seems to calibrate colour vision against a standard, making up for differences in eye hardware.  In simpler terms, although your eyes and my eyes are different, we all see the same colours.  Or do we? Actually, our brains decide how we perceive colours.

Every person is different. Take my neighbor, for example. He has amazingly selective hearing. When his two dogs start to bark madly at 2 a.m, he is undisturbed, whereas I fall out of bed thinking that the Death-Eaters are attacking my house. Maybe his eyesight is different too. That would explain why he waters his lawn every single day, even though it looks pretty green to me. Which makes me wonder: Does he see colors differently than I do? Could our eyes be telling us different stories? 

In this lawn-watering example, the answer seems to be no. Barring color blindness, no matter how different our individual eyes may be, our brains ensure that we experience colors in the same way, according to a group of ground-breaking studies in the past decade. But those rules can change when we start mucking with vision – through colored contact lenses or even changing latitudes. But seeing as my neighbor hasn’t been on any far-fetched vacations nor does he have a fondness for red sunglasses, I can only assume that he just likes wasting water.

I took more than a week (four drafts) to come up with a decent article.  Big thanks to Anna Gosline, who edited this article and really guided me through the process.  She stuck up with me and proved to be an awesome mentor, having been a writer for New Scientist herself.  Without her support, I would never have been able to get this published.  Also, many thanks have to go to my dad for his support and suggestions.

I also have my very own profile at Inkling – with a couple of embarrassing photos – and I’m very proud about that.  I’m also proud about the fact that for the first time ever, I read actual scientific papers from scientific journals!

All in all, I’m really happy about this.

Note: This is probably the last decent post in this blog.  I’ll obviously tell you when I’ve migrated the blog to start it back from scratch.  Already working on it.  So, farewell!

Technorati Tags: inkling magazine, science, psychology, cognitive science

Moving/Hiatus

This blog is undergoing a big redesign so posts may well be kind of scarce or non-existant for some time.  I am also thinking about moving the blog from wordpress to Movable Type or maybe TypePad.  (Yeah, I know.  I’ll have to pay.)

It’s just that I’ll be at home for the next six months or so and I’ll be writing a lot during that time.  Hell, I already am writing a lot! I want to take this blog to a next level.  I want this blog to showcase my personality more and i want it to become more of a “chronicles of my life” rather than a just bunch of links.

Ultimately, I want this blog to host my writing and enable people to know about my way of seeing things and my interests.  Indeed, the blog may well become a way to market/promote my skill.

Till, then, I guess this blog is on hiatus.

UPDATE: There may be a post on Wednesday night or Thursday morning though.  About that big thing of mine.

Enjoy the Silence

Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world
Painful to me
Pierce right through me
Cant you understand
Oh my little girl

All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm

Vows are spoken
To be broken
Feelings are intense
Words are trivial
Pleasures remain
So does the pain
Words are meaningless
And forgettable

All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm

Enjoy the silence

Enjoy the Silence is a Depeche Mode song and I just love the lyrics.  It’s been covered quite a lot in the last couple of years including by popular British band, KEANE.  The cover has been released in a version of KEANE’s latest single, A Bad Dream but I already got the song months before when the band sang the song for the very first time for Yahoo! So, I should think that it’s quite legal to distribute the mp3 cover.  Just email me.

I also got a cover of the same song by Gothic Rock band, Lacuna Coil, which is part of the band’s latest album, Karmacode.  I think their version is better than KEANE’s.  IMHO.

UPDATE: And, oh Nym, if you’re reading this, tell me what you think about The Fray‘s Heaven Forbid.  (Link to the album on Amazon.)

Technorati Tags: KEANE, Lacuna Coil, Depeche Mode, Enjoy the Silence, A Bad Dream, Karmacode

Geek Wear

All these are more at Think Geek.  Or if you want.

Films I have to watch

1. Children of Men (2006)
   Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, the mastermind behind superbly-directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and starring Clive Owen, this movie recounts our world in 2027.  A world in which humans can no longer procreate.  But then there’s a pregnant woman somewhere and she has to be transported to scientists save the future of humankind.
   

2. Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
   The name of this movie has always intrigued me.  It seemed nice.  And I watched the trailer – and liked it too – but I didn’t make the connection until a couple of days ago.  It’s a comedy, written by newbie Michael Arndt, about a family’s car trip in their VW bus to get their younger daughter to the finals of the beauty pageant.

   Plus it stars hilarious Steve Carell, who leads in famous TV show, The Office.  This movie is set to shine in the Oscars.

   

3. Babel (2006)
   Golden Globe Award-winning film, Babel stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett amongst others and is directed by Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu.  The movie basically follows the torments of different families and morphs all the story lines in the end.

   It’s definitely not one of those “light” movies.  Rated R.

   

4. Happy Feet (2006)
   Cute, cute, cute animation.
   

What do you think? Any recommendations?

Technorati Tags: children of men, little miss sunshine, babel, Oscar, Cuaron, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt

The original computer game

[…]

Each player will be given an island, forested or slightly so, but intentionally inhabited so as to give your actions in the game an element of real consequence.

Without intervention, your tropical paradise is predicted to go under exactly ten years from the start of play. And lest some bothersome Republican Apologist or a second-rate SF novelist obfuscate the science, the data is irrefutable and the analysis is impeccable, unassailable.

Per island is a lone seaside village. You will notice that its plan follows the principles of New Urbanism. This is either because the executive producers have read too much Nicolai Ouroussoff and consequently have turned homicidal against anything quaint and earnest, or have been roselytised by Andrés Duany enough to have developed a raging hero complex for things wholesome and bourgeois.

But whatever.

The waters are coming, and you are tasked to prevent the island and the village from sinking.

You will have a budget of $1 trillion, of course, and have all the structures and widgets ever used in the long history of hydroengineering.

[…]

As this is being sponsored by IKEA®, the challenge will be in their assembly.

[…]

From Alexander Trevi’s Pruned.  A blog which should be on your blogroll.

My hols part 2

[Listening to: Belle, Fiori/Garou…, Notre Dame de Paris]

After the family was back to work and school, my holidays actually started.  Or did they? I had university application forms to fill and my CV to complete, amongst others.  Loads of stress.

The simple matter of writing a CV proved really tough.  I never even saw one before but thankfully my mum offered some help.  Dad then polished it and I’m proud to say that I now have a full two-pages CV, one of them entirely dedicated to a list of my published articles.

Dad thought I should be a little more ambitious with the university applications.  He thought it would be much better if I included my CV, some testimonials, things that I would be doing during my sabbatical and a sample of my published articles.  I must say that I was totally for this but, hell, it was a lot of work.

In the end, I had a (five copies actually) binded document and just to give you an idea of how enormous (relative) it was, I paid MUR700 to send it, through the Mauritius Post, to Australia.

As mentioned above, there are things I’m doing during my sabbatical, before enrolling to university in June this year.  I’m getting involved in some social work with an NGO called SOS Poverty, which basically helps needy inhabitants of Vallee Pitot, Port Louis.  I also started violin and I’m learning Solfege in the process.  But what’s really exciting is that I have commenced a distance-learning Internet Journalism course from The London School of Journalism.

It’s really cool.  I submitted by first assignment last week and I actually received a reply from my tutor today itself.  The first assignment was more of an introduce-yourself one and the tutor thought it was good work.  So far, so good.

[Listening to: Last Christmas, Wham, George Micheal]

In the same vein, I am concentrating on my writing quite a lot.  I think I mentioned this before but I’m up to something big.  If all goes well, I’ll be able to tell you everything by this Thursday.  It’s really an important thing for me.

On a side note, I am downloading episodes after episodes of The Office.  And now I only have 200Mb of free space on my hard disk! What am I going to do??

And, oh, I’m happy right now.

[Listening to: Teardrop, – , Portishead & Massive Attack]