Re: [silk] WSF time again
On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 12:21:46AM +0530, Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote: But never mind that. Look! Here's a shiny little bird! http://toroid.org/misc/shiny-little-bird.jpeg Pretty. Ours down here are not nearly that colorful. There has been almost no snow this winter, and bird feeders are mostly unfrequented. Btw, do you see any anecdotal precipitation shifts, apart from the usual periodic El Nino stuff? -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [silk] Arundhati Roy [Was: WSF time again]
On Thursday 15 Feb 2007 10:30 am, Divya Sampath wrote: Her writing is replete with sentiment in lieu of passion, fiction instead of fact, with little substance and less style. As for her behaviour outside of her writings, I can only say that she often does more damage to the causes she ostensibly supports than good - for example, her immature tirade against the Supreme Court just before a critical judgement in the dam case annoyed the Narmada Bachao Andolan more than anyone else. Divya - if you are in need of an army of men who will love you dearly forever - just let me know I'll inform the right people. :) shiv
[silk] Got this from an 18-year-old's LJ
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19325853.200?DCMP=NLC-nletternsref=mg19325853.200 Comments? Deepa.
Re: [silk] [Re: Fwd: tongee tued digest #1]
On Thursday 15 Feb 2007 10:35 am, Binand Sethumadhavan wrote: Food World supermarket and a Foot World shoe store on either sides of the road. Both names are written identically in Tamil, Lends a new meaning to foot in mouth shiv
[silk] Anecdotal precipitation shifts from the Gulf
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 Eugen Leitl asked on 15/02/2007 12:14: Btw, do you see any anecdotal precipitation shifts, apart from the usual periodic El Nino stuff? I presume that's a general question, not just targeted to ams. Here, in the UAE, we've had the wettest year in (officially) ten years. In my experience, we've had more rain this last three months than in the last four years combined. Winter started late, but became colder than ever, going down to 5 degrees C at night for about a week, in the cities. A coupe of years ago, it snowed in the hills in Ras al Khaimah - for the first time ever. We stupidly went camping in the same hills a week after the snow melted - and it was minus 5 at night. We froze. Serious snow in Lebanon too this year - more than most Lebanese can recall seeing. I'm worried about the world my six-year old is going to face. Ram BTW, anyone knows where I can get a cheap max-min thermometer, hygrometer and so on? I don't want digital stuff. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32) iD8DBQFF1CNGRQoToz9njMgRCK6mAJ4iz7/08VVe01yuXKL1W7EDNKlFGQCfRb47 pMem+mOz5hvWVjOWoJdPFk4= =shSX -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [silk] [Re: Fwd: tongee tued digest #1]
On Thursday 15 Feb 2007 10:22 am, Eugen Leitl wrote: Take a sign like, say, Fast Food. Now, break it down into it's constituent parts: Fa St Fu D (I'm exaggerating to make the point.) Now find the nearest Tamil letters that match the sound of the constituent parts (this is the point where I stop giving examples :-). String them together and place on your sign. The word in Tamil is complete nonsense, but if you speak it out, it sounds like the English expression Fast Food. Let's get some phonetics right for starters - because all our names are spelt wrong (am open to correction) Shiwa-shunker Shars-three - that's me Oo dha-ee Shunker - Udhay Shankar Sreenee Rah-muh-krish-none - Srini Ramakrishnan Rah-muh-krish-none Soon-dher-um : Ramakrishanan Sundaram Thee-pah Mow-hun - Deep Mohan Ah-dh-ith-ya Cup-ill : Aditya Kapil Wenke-tesh Hurry-hur-run - Venkatesh Hariharan Ub-hish-ache Harz-rah: Abhishek Hazra Ub-hij-ith Men-un Sen -Abhijit Menon Sen Bidh-arn-undh Say-thoomar-the-one - Bidanand Sethumadhavan Kee-run John-ulla-gud-dah - Kiran Jonalagadda The French in Pondicherry did a much better job of writing Indian names in French - but then again, French is much more strict and demanding than English. Sinnakirouchenane can be accurately pronounced as Sinnakrishnan Bouvanaratchagane - Buvanaratchagan Mangayar Carassou - Mangairkarasi Batmanabane - Padmanabhan shiv
Re: [silk] [Re: Fwd: tongee tued digest #1]
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 shiv sastry said the following on 15/02/2007 13:16: Batmanabane - Padmanabhan Mobilise the masses! DC Comics stole our ancient IPRs. Ram -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32) iD8DBQFF1CXnRQoToz9njMgRCH4UAKDRs4yVKwRS1MhX3B+GIgG+IPY9HwCdEBXu 9T4u7eZuP8XnOlTZqzbvtG8= =EQ49 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [silk] Anecdotal precipitation shifts from the Gulf
At 2007-02-15 13:12:25 +0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I presume that's a general question, not just targeted to ams. Even if it was, ams was going to mention the unexpectedly heavy rainfall in Delhi (and elsewhere in North India, I read) in the recent weeks. A coupe of years ago, it snowed in the hills in Ras al Khaimah How odd it is to think Ras al Khaimah not only exists, but has hills. I always thought its stamps were totally fake when I was little. BTW, anyone knows where I can get a cheap max-min thermometer, hygrometer and so on? I don't want digital stuff. Actually, I do, but it's in Calcutta. I wonder if those shops even exist any more. I hear there aren't any roadside book shops on College Street these days. -- ams
Re: [silk] Anecdotal precipitation shifts from the Gulf
On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 01:12:25PM +0400, Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote: I presume that's a general question, not just targeted to ams. Yes. Thank you for the report. I'm worried about the world my six-year old is going to face. We need to figure out how to get a handle on the climate, whether anthropogenic forcing, or natural excursions (they contributed to collapse of many ancient and not-so-ancient high cultures). The longer we wait, the more muscle it will take, in case there's a runaway there might be not enough muscle. I wondering whether the Earth simulator was built for that specific reason. Ram BTW, anyone knows where I can get a cheap max-min thermometer, hygrometer and so on? I don't want digital stuff. The nice part about the digital stuff is that you can do logs, and run a statistics analysis on it. It would be really nice to build a solar-powered waterproof weather station with WiFi, which links up to the Internet. That way you can get very fine mesh resolution for weather models, albeit admittedly mostly in urban areas. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [silk] Anecdotal precipitation shifts from the Gulf
Here in east africa there is a major outbreak of rift valley fever which normally precedes or follows extremely heavy el-nino type rainfall... just this time the virus has popped up in some instances near areas of high population. the market for beef has collapsed here since nobody is eating any beef (or other red meats), this despite beef being a staple food. apart from that there has been a problem of unusually high sea levels along the coast...and heavy unpredictable rainfall in parts of the country where it usually doesnt rain much... then there is the usual stuff of the disappearing glaciers on mt.kenya and kilimanjaro.
Re: [silk] Anecdotal precipitation shifts from the Gulf
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 Abhijit Menon-Sen said the following on 15/02/2007 13:30: How odd it is to think Ras al Khaimah not only exists, but has hills. I always thought its stamps were totally fake when I was little. Well, the whole country is a bit fake. It's probably the most scenic of the emirates. The Hazar mountain range runs through it, and eons of flashfloods have cut deep wadis though them. The most spectacular of these is Wadi Bih which lies partly in UAE and partly in Oman, where you can go from sealevel to a 1000 meters in a few km. Great for rockclimbing, trekking and camping. Even more scenic is the coastline of the tip of the Mussandam peninsula, just beyond RAK in Oman. There are fjords like in Norway. I personally think Slartibartfast had something to do with it. And hardly anyone goes there. Actually, I do, but it's in Calcutta. I wonder if those shops even exist any more. Don't schools in India use these to teach these days? If they still do, there must be shops supplying them. I should be in Bangalore in a couple of weeks - shall try my luck there. Ram -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32) iD8DBQFF1C4zRQoToz9njMgRCH+tAKCrZ3FpjTT2U2P0TkSIlsizVcOTzwCghNQi CYKg1g+f8nGrPDXg/01RI3o= =41tU -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [silk] Got this from an 18-year-old's LJ
I agree.. quite pointless. This is research for the sake of it. Adit. On 2/15/07, Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not particularly surprising (that some sequences just don't work in some species is well known among gene plumbers), and not at all exciting. Kauffman would probably just shrug his shoulders, and do a told you so. I do not see the point in using these sequences as tags (combinatorial explosions makes even short random sequences unique), and as to a suicide gene, there are plenty of toxins. They're a bit larger, admittedly.
[silk] deccan trap co2 absorption
A couple of days i back while listening to the bbc world service i caught bits of a documentary about a research project being done by the geological survey of india and columbia univeristy. it was quite interesting, and was about trapping greenhouse co2 inside the basalt rock formations on the deccan i didnt quite catch the part of how they were going to actually trap the co2 inside the rock, but they mentioned practical feasibility in the next 20 years. I couldnt find any links online about this technologyanybody ever heard of this?
Re: [silk] Anecdotal precipitation shifts from the Gulf
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 Eugen Leitl said the following on 15/02/2007 13:42: On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 01:12:25PM +0400, Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote: The longer we wait, the more muscle it will take, in case there's a runaway there might be not enough muscle. Aren't we there already? The nice part about the digital stuff is that you can do logs, and run a statistics analysis on it. So can I. I plan to have this stuff out on my balcony and compare with the official stats. Max-min requires one reading daily, and for my purposes, two humidity readings a day should be fine. I can easily log this. The digital stuff is more expensive, and from what I see on the net, needlessly complicated / integrated / unhackable, so I don't get any benefits other than automated logging. Ram -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32) iD8DBQFF1Db1RQoToz9njMgRCGUQAKCQhrxLSvufIi94oOeUg6zP+TQdEACfZMHH DIjyPaLBRWXSsObQtEuh6o4= =iUgo -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [silk] Anecdotal precipitation shifts from the Gulf
On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 02:34:42PM +0400, Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote: Aren't we there already? Some of the models show a positive-feedback, some of the more outlandish ones are positively alarming (hints of sulfides in the great extinction sediment horizonts, this can be very bad news). The jury is out, but given the worst-case outcomes it's criminally negligent to ignore. Of course, if something takes cooperation of the whole species, and runs contrary to short-term commercial interest, *and* is complicated, or at least nonobvious... ...we better hope it's not true, because otherwise we're quite screwed. As to CO2 sequestering, biomass growth in 1/3rd of the oceans seems to be iron-limited, so beating the effect of a few kilotons (or megatons) of iron salts sprinkled in specific locations at specific times would be hard (that's some smart muscle). Of course, large scale plankton blooms in places where it never happens might become a worse problem than the one it attempts to solve. Or not. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [silk] Anecdotal precipitation shifts from the Gulf
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 Eugen Leitl said the following on 15/02/2007 14:49: Aren't we there already? Of course, if something takes cooperation of the whole species, and runs contrary to short-term commercial interest, *and* is complicated, or at least nonobvious... ...we better hope it's not true, because otherwise we're quite screwed. So we are there already. Ram -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32) iD8DBQFF1D1xRQoToz9njMgRCEg0AJ9kPOYGbD1IIhP9qr4RWr8YKzq96ACg/Lgs CejI2kkwf0Il2Z19hyszGvk= =ysTR -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [silk] deccan trap co2 absorption
On 2/15/07, ashok _ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] I couldnt find any links online about this technologyanybody ever heard of this? Well, it does sound like a lot of hot air ;-) Cheeni
Re: [silk] Anecdotal precipitation shifts from the Gulf
--- Ramakrishnan Sundaram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Eugen Leitl asked on 15/02/2007 12:14: Btw, do you see any anecdotal precipitation shifts, apart from the usual periodic El Nino stuff? I presume that's a general question, not just targeted to ams. Here in Pittsburgh, the TV weather folks were reporting that December was the warmest month in 30 years and now February is the coldest month in 30 years. On average the temperatures are probably the same as 30 years ago as Bush would probably say and so we don't have to worry. It will be interesting to see if the oil-based infrastructure will crumble in the coming decade in the northern US as the oil supply dwindles and Asian giants consume more and more of it. shyam The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php
Re: [silk] Anecdotal precipitation shifts from the Gulf
Shyam Visweswaran wrote: [ on 05:28 PM 2/15/2007 ] It will be interesting to see if the oil-based infrastructure will crumble in the coming decade in the northern US as the oil supply dwindles and Asian giants consume more and more of it. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633 Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] deccan trap co2 absorption
On 2/15/07, ashok _ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: i didnt quite catch the part of how they were going to actually trap the co2 inside the rock, but they mentioned practical feasibility in the next 20 years. Tangentially, a lot of the granite in the Deccan traps is being strip mined at an alarming rate. Thaths -- Homer: He has all the money in the world, but there's one thing he can't buy. Marge: What's that? Homer: (pause) A dinosaur. -- Homer J. Simpson Sudhakar ChandraSlacker Without Borders
[silk] $100 PC
I thought this project would never see the light of day, but they have started shipping. Has anyone on this list seen / used any prototypes of this ? When I look at the features, it seems to have the bare minimums of everything - color screen, email, browser, word processor... something that the average user might be satisfied with. Eight Countries to Receive 2,500 OLPC Test Machines http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/480 DesktopLinux.com reports that eight countries will receive a share of the initial 2,500 OLPC machines in February. The experiment is a prelude to mass production of the kid-friendly, lime-green-and-white laptops scheduled to begin in July, when 5 million will be built. State educators in Brazil, Uruguay, Libya, Rwanda, Pakistan, Thailand and possibly Ethiopia and the West Bank will receive the first of the machines in February's pilot before a wider rollout to Indonesia and a handful of other countries. With a goal of 150 million delivered by 2010, OLPC will alter the landscape of computing around the world. Further, it could help Linux marketshare reach 20% or more globally, entirely as a side effect of the project's primary purpose.
Re: [silk] Anecdotal precipitation shifts from the Gulf
On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 06:45:45PM +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: It will be interesting to see if the oil-based infrastructure will crumble in the coming decade That would be a very good thing -- in case it happens slowly enough to adopt sustainable alternatives. I.e. Germany has officialy commited to obtain 20% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Less official sources assume that goal could be reached by 2012, and 2020 could see a 50%. in the northern US as the oil supply dwindles and Asian giants consume more and more of it. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633 Not a very good article, but not entirely incorrect, either. Oil (especially sweet crude) is sure limited, as is uranium (excluding breeders, which are nasty, and ditto fuel recycling). Coal, methane (especially from clathrates) and oil shale (kerogen) and thorium would last effectively forever. All these are non-renewable. Methane is the energy carrier with the least carbon content/J of output, so it's the most important to develop. Hydro, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and tidal are all renewable. Hydro has been cost-effective since forever, but is also mostly saturated. Wind has become cost-effective relatively recently, in specific regions. Solar (PV) is rapidly approaching crossover (it has first reached crossover in realtime large scale electricity markets in the summer 2006 in Germany). Such niches where crossover already happened will only grow, until they blanket everything. The hydrogen economy is by no means a hoax (but bioethanol sure is), but methanol and electricity economies are as viable, and have their specific niches. Breeders and thorium could become an option, though I hope not. There is really no need for them, but perhaps politically. Transformation to a fully sustainable regime could happen within 20-30 years -- if we really want it, and are prepared to invest large fractions of our GNP into infrastructure. Doing things short-term is impossible, regardless of how much money you have at your disposal -- of course, there is not that much of it available, especially on short notice. War economies are never happy economies. Some things are dead easy, and can be done simply by regulations. Price ratchet for fossils via tax, all gains directly piped into renewable budget, check. Cap on CO2 emitted/km for cars, check. Mandate all new ICEs can do M90, check. Mandate insulation for all new houses and retrofitting old ones, check. Mandate thermal solar collectors and/or PV facades and roofs, check. There dozens of such simple laws that would create entire new markets. There are of course lots of relatively easy RD to do, which would need an increase of GNP fraction and budget reallocation. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [silk] $100 PC
I saw it, used it and like it. I was skeptical prior to seeing this. i also have a video clip, and am waiting to get the green light. it is a rugged little PC, but works like a charm. It looks a lot like etch a sketch..except it is green in color. it has no moving parts, no disk drive. but has 3-4 USB drives. you can instant connect with others on the network. it takes a while to boot up but once it is up and running it is pretty neat and if they sold it in India, i would probably buy one given the power cut and other hassles here. kamla ashok _ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I thought this project would never see the light of day, but they have started shipping. Has anyone on this list seen / used any prototypes of this ? When I look at the features, it seems to have the bare minimums of everything - color screen, email, browser, word processor... something that the average user might be satisfied with. Eight Countries to Receive 2,500 OLPC Test Machines DesktopLinux.com reports that eight countries will receive a share of the initial 2,500 OLPC machines in February. The experiment is a prelude to mass production of the kid-friendly, lime-green-and-white laptops scheduled to begin in July, when 5 million will be built. State educators in Brazil, Uruguay, Libya, Rwanda, Pakistan, Thailand and possibly Ethiopia and the West Bank will receive the first of the machines in February's pilot before a wider rollout to Indonesia and a handful of other countries. With a goal of 150 million delivered by 2010, OLPC will alter the landscape of computing around the world. Further, it could help Linux marketshare reach 20% or more globally, entirely as a side effect of the project's primary purpose. Did you listen to the latest interview at The Kamla Bhatt Show? | Blog Fax: 206-337-0761
