Circumcision

Other things being equal the rate of prevalence of HIV infection has been observed to be less among the circumcised populations than among whom circumcision is not a practice either for religious reasons or medical reasons. Transmission of the HIV infection is apparently cut down greatly in the case of circumcised people.

If this is a verifiable truth ,it makes a lot of sense to examine using a medically done circumcision (not a quack job) among high HIV prevalence areas as a preventive measure for combating AIDS.

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2006/08/circumcision_aids.php

Humans are a waste

Les Knight believes that the human race should stop breeding.The human race is inherently dangerous to the planet.
A single American is responsible for 22 million pounds of liquid waste, 2.2.million pounds of solid and atmospheric waste. In terms of energy the average Ethiopian uses 1/310 th of what an American uses. When an American couple stops at two kids it is like an ethiopean couple stopping at 620.

www.failure.mag

Googling for rambunctious breasts

The author googled for “rambunctious breasts” thinking that nobody would have thought of the words.There were already there before him.The iguana effect (what he calls) makes a  male think of a female at least 50 to 60 times in a day and the anonymous cover of the web helps in removing the civilizing filter and exposes the sleaze in the brain of the male.

Why we need grandmas

Scientists say that grandmas are needed to babysit and forage for food .The menopause gives a break in fertility ,which means daycare and extra nutrition for demanding human babies . In the Indian context we need grandmothers for telling bedtime stories to us!

Orangutans, not chimps are our blood relatives

It is commonly believed that our closest relative is the chimpanzee.Jeffrey Schwartz proposes that we are related more to the orangutans than to the chimps.According to him humans and chimps share only a genetic similarity but humans and orangutans share much more than that.
The science of human evolution is confronted with the popular chimpanzee theory and the earlier but largely ignored orangutan theory. There is very little in morphology to support a unique common ancestor for humans and chimpanzees. A close relationship between humans and African apes is currently supported by only eight unproblematic characters. The orangutan relationship is supported by about 28 well-supported characters, and it is also corroborated by the presence of orangutan-related features in early hominids. The uniquely shared morphology of humans and orangutans raises doubts about the almost universal belief that DNA sequence similarities necessarily demonstrate a closer evolutionary relationship between humans and chimpanzees.

The quote meme

John S.Wilkins’ random quotes that are supposed to “reflect who you are  and what you believe”:

The secret of being boring is to say everything.
Voltaire (1694 – 1778)

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
Mark Twain(1835-1910)

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
Terry Pratchett

Another one by Terry Pritchett
It is not enough to succeed.Friends must be seen to have failed.

 

powered by performancing firefox

A biography of Panini,the ancient Sanskrit grammarian

http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Panini.html

Sanskrit’s] potential for scientific use was greatly enhanced as a result of the thorough systemisation of its grammar by Panini. … On the basis of just under 4000 sutras [rules expressed as aphorisms], he built virtually the whole structure of the Sanskrit language, whose general ’shape’ hardly changed for the next two thousand years. … An indirect consequence of Panini’s efforts to increase the linguistic facility of Sanskrit soon became apparent in the character of scientific and mathematical literature. This may be brought out by comparing the grammar of Sanskrit with the geometry of Euclid – a particularly apposite comparison since, whereas mathematics grew out of philosophy in ancient Greece, it was … partly an outcome of linguistic developments in India.

A very interesting analysis. Mathematics flowing out of language !  A  fascinating biography of Panini , the greatest of the ancient  Sanscrit grammarians whose 4000 sutras(aphorisms) provide the basic structure of the Sanskrit grammar.

The chain of being

An old visual representation of the world is The Great Chain of Being (Artist Robert Fludd ,from his book  written in 1617)The hand of God emerges from cloud holding a chain linked down to Sophia (Goddess of Wisdom / the wisdom of God) who in turn holds a chain linked downward to an ape, the highest of animals due to its ability to imitate.
The classical theory of the chain of being deals with the hierarchical relationship between all stuff in the universe.It was meant to show the connections between animals including humans),vegetables , minerals,and the stuff beyond the earth,including angels and God.

Why Americans do not accept human evolution as a fact

The U.S.citizens’ acceptance of human evolution from apes is less than most of the European countries and Japan and is only less than Turkey.The New Scientist says that religious fundamentalism,partisan politics and poor science education are responsible for this state of affairs.The reason is apparently that the politicians in America have made human evolution a political issue while it is a non-issue in every other country.

Intuitive maths

6-month-old babies have been observed by scientists to be capable of detecting errors in arithmetic.Researchers have shown infants one puppet,then added a second.A board was raised to block the infant’s view of both the puppets and one was removed and only one remained. To gauge the infant’s ability to detect error ,researchers recorded the number of seconds the babies spent looking at the puppet.The babies look at the incorrect solutions longer than correct ones.The extended viewing corelated with higher acrivity in the frontal area of the brain that is known to be involved in error detection.

 http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/08/infants_may_be_able_to_detect.php

powered by performancing firefox