Over the years, it has been debated in the meta-popular culture that we might be living in a simulation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality#We_are_living_in_a_simulation]. I wrote [https://www.nilkanth.com/archives/2007/07/05/are-you-tuned-to-the-godcast/] about this “Matrixical” notion earlier. And again,…
It takes truly magical thinking to imagine we will keep resolutions [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1699853,00.html] that experience suggests are generally impossible. One study found that nearly a quarter of us lapse within a week, the vast majority before the year is out.…
A pigment in the skin, melanin, determines the skin color in all of us. Melanin itself, however, is red (pheomelanin), or dark-brown to nearly black (eumelanin). Skin color selection is more genetic at birth, but what intrigues me is that as we “evolve” we get selective, in a vastly wasteful…
Books on history and sociology tell us that as civilization grew, we created rules. A group of “powerful” people introduced governments. Then a smaller group of “wealthy” people made corporations. And gradually, the dynamics changed from democracy to corpocracy [http://www.amazon.com/Corpocracy-Business-Roundtable-Hijacked-Greatest/dp/0470145099/ref=pd_bbs_sr_…
> My mind is a garden. My thoughts are the seeds. My harvest will be either flower or weeds. It’s an interesting observation that if people believe that their life (or society, or their work-place for that matter) will be the best that can be, they will do everything…
So I’ve been unwell for the past 3-4 days, and it feels like I’m under house arrest. There’s the Twenty20 Cricket [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty20] World Cup (which btw is becoming more like baseball in terms of ambience) on TV, but besides that I’ve…
It’s no surprise that women like men who make them laugh, and men like women who think they are funny. Wait a minute. Isn’t that the same thing. Well, not exactly. See, most women aren’t [http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701?printable=true&…
The dictionary defines mythology [http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=mythology] as “the science which treats of myths.” But what happens when science collides with mythology? In a classic example, a national project in India is amidst controversy due to its defiance of the…