Rational views on superstition

Psychologytoday gives a very rational view on superstition — Magical thinking

Other views on religion, spirituality

My previous post on Jill bolte taylor - related to spirituality - linkback

A pill of 1000 nanobots for you - Rx

If you had heard/seen articles that discuss the distant future of medicine - you would have heard of these tiny robots that get into your system, detect the problem and rectify the problem. I always thought they would be something like the transformers that would transform themselves into different things depending on where they are in the system and what they are doing. Like being a blood cell when in the blood, a neurotransmitter when in the brain etc. Watch this video, to visualize what I mean. This video will explain how it is going to be done.

When I was reading this article on Technology review that talks of a gene probe for brain damage which is present in eye drops, I thought may be my dream is not too distant.

Appendix

• For those of you who liked the cell video, youtube video, video with explanation
• The Transformers movie site

Teaching Tools

Tools to teach kids..

With all the intensity and brilliance he is known for, Alan Kay gives TEDsters a lesson in lessons. Kay has spent years envisioning better techniques for teaching kids. In this talk, after reminding us that “the world is not what it seems,” he shows us how good programming can sharpen our picture. His unique software lets children learn by doing, but also learn by computing and by creating lessons themselves.

You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling[1][2] debunks myths about the so-called “developing world” using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid — toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Rosling’s hands, global trends — life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates — become clear, intuitive and even playful. In a follow-up to his now-legendary TED2006 presentation, Hans Rosling demonstrates how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He shows us the next generation of his Trendalyzer software — which analyzes and displays data in amazingly accessible ways, allowing people to see patterns previously hidden behind mountains of stats. (Ten days later, he announced a deal with Google to acquire the software.) He also demos Dollar Street, a program that lets you peer in the windows of typical families worldwide living at different income levels. Be sure to watch straight through to the (literally) jaw-dropping finale.

In a lively show, “mathemagician” Arthur Benjamin races a team of calculators to figure out 3-digit squares in his head, performs a massive mental calculation, and guesses a few birth days. How does he do it? He’ll be happy to tell you.

What if Napster stocked textbooks? Engineering professor Richard Baraniuk talks about his vision for Connexions, an open-source system that lets teachers share digital texts and course materials, modify them and give them to their students — all free, thanks to Creative Commons licensing.

Book recommendations - 2

Origins of Neuroscience - A history of explorations into Brain Function

It is available online.. Fascinating book on how we have come to know the brain as we see it now(Not really now..)

I don’t know how long will it available for free(Thanks to Michael for the pointer).

Books Recommendation - 1

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Reasons

From Foreword…

Our traffic with the subject matter of this book involves us with three foci of phenomena: the human mind, collections of computer programs, and the computer. Every computer program is a model, hatched in the mind, of a real or mental process. These processes, arising from human experience and thought, are huge in number, intricate in detail, and at any time only partially understood. They are modeled to our permanent satisfaction rarely by our computer programs. Thus even though our programs are carefully handcrafted discrete collections of symbols, mosaics of interlocking functions, they continually evolve: we change them as our perception of the model deepens, enlarges, generalizes until the model ultimately attains a metastable place within still another model with which we struggle. The source of the exhilaration associated with computer programming is the continual unfolding within the mind and on the computer of mechanisms expressed as programs and the explosion of perception they generate. If art interprets our dreams, the computer executes them in the guise of programs!

From Preface….

Our design of this introductory computer-science subject reflects two major concerns. First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. Second, we believe that the essential material to be addressed by a subject at this level is not the syntax of particular programming-language constructs, nor clever algorithms for computing particular functions efficiently, nor even the mathematical analysis of algorithms and the foundations of computing, but rather the techniques used to control the intellectual complexity of large software systems.

• If u want to become a better programmer
• A different kind of introductory computer science text
• It is freely available online [Online copy]
• If you can’t concentrate on your work for a long time, it is a good read to stimulate your brain.
• Help you understand the brain
• Video lectures can be downloaded as well (Thanks to Vijendar)