Posted in people, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged albert einstein, atheism, einstein, God, human, interpretation, legends, metaphysics, physics, quote, reality, religion, science on May 16, 2008 | No Comments »
An excerpt from the 1954 Albert Einstein letter that was recently sold at auction for £170,000.
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) [...]
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(None of what follows is intended to be of any use to geeks, experts, macboys or linux fans. All I have attempted is to lump together some advice that might help a typical windows user. )
1. BACKUP, backup, backup! I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to do so. Not only do you get the insurance of never losing critical files, [...]
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Posted in libertarianism, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged addict, addiction, craving, drug war, drugs, food, government, health, junk food, neuroscience, obesity, regulation, war on drugs on May 10, 2008 | 1 Comment »
In that the addictions produced by both are similar.
I can see the health police salivating at the prospect of using this as a reason to regulate or ban junk food (though to me, it looks like yet another argument for drug legalization).
However, as the author of the linked article says:
Because if we really do crave junk food the way [...]
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Posted in sci, tech and gizmos, tagged amazon, book, device, electronics, gadgets, gizmo, kindle, mcardle, reader, review on May 8, 2008 | No Comments »
There has been a fair amount of hype lately about the Kindle, the electronic reader from Amazon.com. Here’s Megan McArdle’s review of it. She calls it the best thing since sliced bread.
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Posted in news and links, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged auto, automotive, cars, electric, electric car, sports car, tesla on May 5, 2008 | No Comments »
Tesla rolls out its electric sports car.
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Posted in news and links, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged ariel, atom, car, cars, driving, fast, speed, sports car on April 27, 2008 | No Comments »
Yes, thats the Ariel Atom for you. At $35,000, it is much, much cheaper than the other fancy sports cars around. And it beats them all in speed.
I would love to own one. Wouldn’t you?
(Link via Instapundit)
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Posted in politics, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged cap and trade, carbon tax, economics, environment, global warming, permit, postrel, science, virginia postrel on April 24, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Virginia Postrel writes in the dynamist blog:
It’s infuriating how all three presidential candidates prattle on about the need to fight global warming while also complaining about the high price of gasoline. The candidates treat CO2 emissions as a social issue like gay marriage, with no economic ramifications. In the real world, barring a massive buildup of [...]
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Posted in libertarianism, politics, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged animal rights, animal rights terrorism, california, crime facilitating speech, freedom of speech, law, legislation, researchers, vandalism, volokh on April 21, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Eugene Volokh has an interesting discussion about a new California law, currently under discussion, that aims to protect researchers against animal rights terrorism.
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Posted in news and links, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged bmw, cars, diesel, driving, fuel, fuel efficiency, mileage, mpg, prius, toyota, toyota prius on March 27, 2008 | 3 Comments »
In an interesting experiment, two Times correspondents drove from London to Geneva. One of the cars was a Toyota Prius hybrid while the other was a BMW 520D.
The results?
The Prius averaged 40 mpg (48.1 miles per imperial gallon) over the whole journey while the BMW achieved 41.9 mpg (50.3 miles per imperial gallon).
Admittedly, the test [...]
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Posted in education, libertarianism, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged academia, affirmative action, anti-discrimination, bias, christina sommers, freedom, gender, politics, quotas, research, science, sommers, title ix, women on March 10, 2008 | No Comments »
Here is a link to an article by Christina Sommers in which she talks about gender politics, affirmative action in higher education and recent, extremely worrying developments. Read the whole article, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
(Link via The Volokh conspiracy)
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Posted in personal, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged bias, computer, downgrade, drivers, funny, laptop, life, vista, windows, windows vista, windows xp, xp on March 1, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I have posted about the anti-Vista bias before. Now, there’s nothing wrong with not liking a product- but the strange thing is that Vista loathing seems to be strongest among those who have never used the software (or barely used it). The latest example is my officemate who bought a new laptop the other day that came pre-loaded [...]
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Posted in news and links, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged balancing scooter, home made, invention, science, scooter, segway, technology, trevor blackwell on February 9, 2008 | No Comments »
Build your own!
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Posted in India, news and links, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged cars, jamshedpur, lakshmi mittal, mittal on tatas, one lakh car, people's car, ratan tata, tata, tata car, tata nano, tatas on January 10, 2008 | No Comments »
The Tata car for 100,000 INR is here. And it is green too, with a mileage that is almost twice as good as other cars on the market.
I am an unabashed admirer of the Tatas and have been meaning to write a longer post about them for a long time. I will do that some day; for now read this note by [...]
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After much empirical evidence I have come to the following conclusion:
Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP sucks. It is insecure, clunky and really slow. And it actually gets worse with time. Go with Firefox any day.
Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Vista rocks (and is arguably superior to Firefox 2).
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Posted in India, sci, tech and gizmos, tagged alternative medicine, health care, homeopathy, placebo, quackery, ramadoss, science on November 17, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Of the many forms of alternative medicine practised in India and the rest of world, homeopathy is unique in two ways.
First, it has a huge clientele. In India alone, an estimated 100 million people depend solely upon it for their medical needs. According to a recent survey, 55 % of the population in Delhi listed homeopathy [...]
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