Category: Public Service Announcement

Civil War Inevitable: Musk

M31 The Andromeda Galaxy (Click to see full size)

I am generally not impressed by the many hugely popular media celebrities on YouTube and on social media. Many of them are, IMNSHO, overexposed midwits and in some cases they are positively harmful because their millions of followers don’t have the cognitive capacity to distinguish chalk from cheese.

I could be accused of being elitist and correctly so for observing that the masses are stupid. The wise and the intelligent have never been in the majority.

All opinions are not equally valid or justified. People (present company not exempted) are more often wrong than right. The saving grace is that most of us don’t have the enormous reach that celebrities have, and therefore our ability to mislead is severely limited. Continue reading “Civil War Inevitable: Musk”

2024 Total Solar Eclipse

21st August, 2017. NASA image.

Of all the amazing phenomena of the natural world, total solar eclipses are my favorite. They are as rare — around one every 100 years at any particular location — as they are spectacular and awe inspiring. The continental US saw a total solar eclipse on August 21st, 2017. (Click on the image above to see the path of totality.)

On August 21st, 2017, I drove to Carbondale, IL, from Chicago, IL to catch that one. Carbondale is called the “Solar Eclipse capital of the US” because amazingly the path of the next total solar eclipse of April 8th, 2024 will also pass through that town in southern Illinois. Continue reading “2024 Total Solar Eclipse”

Vitamin D

This is a public service announcement: Take vitamin D supplement.

Fun fact: most people are deficient in D. People in higher latitudes naturally receive less sun during winter months and therefore produce low amounts of D of course, but even in tropical countries like India, people are D deficient.

I’ve been taking daily vit D3 supplements for the past 10+ years. (Image of the D3 I get from Costco.) I like to think that fact may be causally related to the fact that I’ve not contracted the Chinese corona virus yet.

Good news is that D3 is pretty safe. Here’s Dr John Campbell on the topic. I’m a big fan ever since the pandemic started. Watch: Continue reading “Vitamin D”

Starship

What a stunning beauty!

An historic event is likely to happen tomorrow — the attempted orbital launch of SpaceX’s Starship from Boca Chica, TX.

Elon Musk is cautious in his expectation. He believes that if it does not blow up on the launch pad, it’ll be a success. It could blow up. As he put it, “Success maybe; excitement guaranteed.”

I am already excited.

(Click on the image to embiggen. Credit: SpaceX.)

When will be the launch? The launch window opens tomorrow 17th April, Monday, 7 AM Central. See end of post for details.[1] (For viewers in India, that will be Monday 5:30 PM.) Set your alarms for the webcast which beings 45 minutes before launch. Continue reading “Starship”

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

Kurzgesagt - In a NutshellThe internet is incredible in every sense of that word, defined variously as “so implausible as to elicit disbelief; not credible; astonishing, extraordinary; surpassing the possibility of belief as to what is possible; unimaginable; inconceivable; too extraordinary and improbable to admit of belief; marvelous; fabulous; amazing;  awe-inspiring; profoundly affecting” etc.

But of course the internet is not literally incredible today — because it actually exists and therefore is not a matter of belief. However just a few decades ago it would have been incredible in the literal sense of the word. If someone had claimed as recently as the mid-1980s that in a few decades the average human would be carrying in his hands a device (costing a couple of hundred $$) which would be more powerful than the existing supercomputers (which cost hundreds of millions of $$), and that he would have access to a vast store of audio, video, text and graphics information, and have the ability to communicate with billions of others in an instant for practically zero (marginal) cost, that someone would have been considered slightly nutty, if not outright delusional. The revolution in computing and communications technologies have transformed the world beyond anyone’s imagination. Continue reading “Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell”

Anuj Dhar’s talk on Netaji Bose @ Pune, Sep 23, 2017

“Who Killed Bose: Mystery behind Netaji’s Death”.

Public talk by Anuj Dhar. Author and researcher of events connected to Netaji’s life and times. Students, professionals and anyone interested in the history of post-independence India are welcome to the talk.

About Anuj Dhar (wiki): Indian author and former journalist, Dhar has published several books on the death of Subhas Chandra Bose which (according to official and academic views) occurred on 18 August 1945, when a Japanese plane carrying him crashed in Japanese-occupied Taiwan. Dhar claims in his books that there was no air crash and that Bose actually died in the 1980s after living as hermit monk named “Gumnami Baba Bhagwanji” in Faizabad. Dhar is also the founder-trustee of New Delhi-based not for profit organisation Mission Netaji.

The event is free.

Sep 23, 2017, 10 AM to Noon.
Venue: Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies [SIMS]
Range Hills Road, Khadki, Near Military Hospital, Pune – 411020, India

This public service announcement brought to you courtesy of Loknath Rao.

Post script: I have no interest in the matter. Perhaps NSCB died in 1945 or maybe he did not. I am not familiar with Anuj Dhar’s work. But I am mystified by one thing: why would NSCB do what Dhar claims he did? If he indeed was alive all those decades when Nehru and his spawn ruled India, why did he not oppose their misgovernance? For all the effect he had over those years that Dhar claims NSCB was alive, it basically amounts to the same thing as he having perished in a plane crash. In fact Gamnami Baba Bhagwanji appears to have had the same impact on India as I had over those years — namely zero.

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine

One of the best ways to “capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future” is the Internet Archive Wayback machine. It’s an awesome handy tool. You’ll be glad you know how to use it.

Publications sometimes change their minds and “unpublish” pieces. It is often under government pressure and sometimes under public pressure from special interest groups. When a publication retracts an article or an opinion piece, it is usually because the management (editors and owners) realize that they have published something that on second thoughts they should not have — the equivalent of “oops, did I say that aloud?” The way to do a hurried retraction is to delete the piece from the website. This happens quite frequently in the twitter world. But the incriminating evidence remains if some people do a screen-capture of the relevant tweet.
Continue reading “The Internet Archive Wayback Machine”

Justice for Preeti Rathi #acidattack #cbimustinvestigate

Preeti Rathi was the victim of an acid attack on May 2nd at Bandra Station in Mumbai. After excruciating pain and suffering, she died on June 1st. I signed the justice for Preeti Rathi petition. Please consider adding your support. Thank you.

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Freedom Team of India Policy Writing Competition

Sanjeev Sabhlok of FTI — Freedom Team of India — announces a policy writing competition. Details below the fold.
Continue reading “Freedom Team of India Policy Writing Competition”

The 2012 Transit of Venus

These few weeks have been exciting for celestial phenomena. First there was the annular solar eclipse of May 20th a couple of week ago. I took some pictures of that one. I will post those as soon as I download them from the trusty old camera. Second, yesterday there was a partial eclipse of “the strawberry moon” — so called because during June they harvest strawberries. I missed it (not the harvest but the moon) because it has been cloudy and raining around here. In any case, here’s a video explaining the strawberry moon eclipse.
Continue reading “The 2012 Transit of Venus”