Sunday, February 17, 2013

Goa and I

Moving to Goa has been so nice. We (Snigdha, Radha, and Jaya) reached on December 2 to scout around. Where to live. How to live. Who to live.

Nash had his hands and house full with Guru, Sniggy, Rads, Vicky, Joana, Ana, and me (and Ann for a little while) all meshed up into community style chilling at Nashville in Soccor. Nashville is one of the most beautiful homes you ever will visit.


In week 2, for some learning fun, we turned the whole of Nashville into a giant digestive system with each room being an organ (or set of organs). We made some posters and prepared some nice, fun activities and invited folks from the neighborhood to come and learn about it. The concept, "Where's my pav gone", started with pav (bread) at the top through the mouth moving down the esophagus (about 200 bottles strung together) into the stomach where it was dipped into coca cola (acidic) to break it down, with further help from our enzyme friends. The kids then went through the small intensities (tarpoline tunnels) and then through the large intestines to land up into the toilet (their pav :)). We rounded off the evening with some tea and story telling with Snigdha, our resident chai expert. About 17 kids and 17 adults came to enjoy the experience.



The rest of the month went lazying around, exploring Goa, finding a house and in new year celebrations.


On Jan 1 I came to Mumbai with Ann to show her this crazy city in 2 days! I wrapped up my work thingis in Mumbai and headed back to set up home with Snigdha later in the month :) We picked a lovely breezy house in Donapaula near Panjim.


Now that everything's settled, work life too is on in full swing. Way too many plans for 2013 and the new TT table at Nashville is a big distraction :) So is the sea :)






Thursday, February 14, 2013

"Help Astronomers Name Pluto’s Tiniest Moons"

Credit: NASA

Wired Science put up an article on a poll to name Pluto's newest-found moons: P4 and P5.
Here are the options:


The reasoning behind the greeky names is:
But beware: Naming astronomical objects isn’t as simple as deciding whether to name your dog “Dog.” According to conventions set forth by the International Astronomical Union, moons must not be given a name that’s already been bestowed upon an asteroid (though spelling variants are acceptable). And, in the Pluto system, the names must be mythological and related to the dominion of Hades.
Very scientific no?

How about starting to name astronomical objects after some other mythologies: Latin American, Indian, Chinese?

It's a bit confusing no? What are the guidelines to calling something "International"?

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

"I Have Always Confused Desire With Apocalypse"

We met over a small
earthquake. Now, my knees
shake whenever
you come around
and I've noticed your hand
has a slight tremor.
Daphne Gottlieb

Monday, February 11, 2013

On Time

Time is like a marker, for humans to perceive the difference between moments of life. The scale of track is down to 10–46 seconds (that’s 1 divided by 1 followed by 46 zeroes) up to 14.6 billion years (or so). But this view of time is changing. I’m slowly understanding that it is a relative speed (and I say speed, because speed is defined in terms of time) reduced to human perception.

The irony of the relationship between technology and idleness

One of the purposes of everyday technology (mobiles, laptops, etc.) is to make us more efficient. But we rarely use our 'freed up&...