I know them!!!

Cecilia and Stephane

New York women

Controversial 9/11 photograph

Great website

http://videolectures.net/

Steve Jobs

Glorious music

Have you ever loved a woman

My introduction to paintings

For whatever reason after studying about the life of Caravaggio I began to stare at this, my first and his last painting. 

Bill Cunningham

A man who has taken pictures of beautiful women for 60 years. A recent documentary portrays his dedication to his work. 

Nancy Kwan

Vidal Sassoon invented many haircuts in the 60's. One evening he cut Nancy Kwan's hair, resulting in this picture by Terence Donovan.

I am not pretentious enough to state my reasons for being completely besotted with this picture, but I am.

The waggle dance

Revisiting an old friend

Now this is a performance

Enough of that emotional stuff

Some of you know that I am a huge basketball fan. Others know that I love KU. Others that I love bad sports films, especially those with Al Pacino. This video combines all of the above. Rock chalk JAY HAWK!

Projections

You allow me to forget my lonesome despair

In you I find my daily repair

To be apart is unfathomable

You are perfect for me, infallible 

But we only just met, just last week

Am I so lucky, to have found what I seek

Or was I already in love before we met

Are you a comfortable image onto which I project

Will I discover you over time, and you me

Quantifying the missed-match between projections and reality

Let us avoid this ordeal outlined above 

Where it is an image and not reality that we love

D. Melan Ogast'er

This fruit fly

It reveals to us

How nature designs

Amidst all the fuss

We relentlessly study 

With all our might

The order and beauty

Of your bristles and stripes

When will you ever reveal

Your singular principles

Or will we forever feel

Ensconced with something mystical

Euler

"Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena."

Sinusoidal days

A moment of clarity

A sign of progress

My mind flutters with heated alacrity

With symbols I can't repress

"What is it that you were saying?"

Hold on but wait

What is this nagging feeling

My initial action has turned into hate

Herein are the lurking sirens

That disrupt and get in our way

I erase all the work that I had filled in

Welcome to our sinusoidal days

Coupling constants

My lonesome life is without interactions

Without any sorrow and devoid of loss

I alone prescribe by action

And which paths I criss and cross

And still I yearn for a coupling

Whose alterations are non perturbative 

These goals and dreams require renormalizing 

Without you this life is a self involved superlative

And so I must retune my constants

Look for a new kind of coupling

My ideas were so nascent

So superficial was my understanding

A half life

I go about my day, my month, my year

"it will get easier, in time...just wait" 

But the further I get away from her

The clearer it is to me that half a life awaits

These memories, they never fade

Those hopes, they never died

Half of me appears to stagnate

The other half lives to subside

I have no resolution of this strife

There is no heart to mend

Perhaps all that is left is a half life

A decay towards the end

One of the men I admire the most...and this might be his best commercial

Commercial

A brilliant movie

Especially for fans of fast and fierce bowling (trailer)

Good talk

Carlos and I took a trip to the Andes

The most beautiful experiment in biology

The Meselson-Stahl experiment - A series of two amazingly beautiful experiments gave unequivocal support for the semi-conservative replication of DNA.

But it doesn't compare the importance of the Hershey-Chase experiment that finally concluded that DNA, and not proteins, were the carriers of genetic material.

The burden of the Navier Stokes equations

Boris Shraiman, the scientist who made the most important contribution to the field of turbulence in the last 20 years, made an interesting comment to me recently. The study of turbulence is hampered by the knowledge, and blind reverence, of the Navier Stokes equations. Instead of studying the phenomena of turbulence as any other problem of physics, where simple models attempt to capture some set of observed phenomena, the field is obsessed with the governing equations of fluid mechanics. Clearly this is an avenue of research that ought to have been pursued, but after almost a century of this pursuit it is time for new ideas.

I hope to work on turbulence when I grow up. Maybe I can make a name for myself.

Onto Washington

Documentary - I learnt a lot from this documentary. I had little idea of how great this guy was, or atleast, how great people say he was.

Take-off

My first self-powered launch, and landing. Paragliding is pretty awesome! 

Dear Head...Dear Heart

Jefferson's letter to the woman he loved.

Thomas Jefferson

I decided that it was about time that I learnt about the history of the country I have lived in for the last 5 years. I am starting with a PBS documentary on Thomas Jefferson.

"The eternal mystery of the world is its (mathematical?) comprehensibility."

THE UNREASONABLE EFFECTIVENSS OF MATHEMATICS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCE

Pythagoras and Bertrand Russell

I recently read the first section of Bertrand Russell's book: The history of Western Philosophy. In it I came across a marvelous "result" attributed to Pythagoras: Since the hypotenuse of a right angle triangle with unit sides is the an the square root of 2, the axiomatic basis of geometry cannot be arithmetic and must be something independent of it.

A wonderful PBS series - Art 21

Sally Mann

A wonderful photographer I just came across. Most certainly worth a look. 

Winter night longboarding

Beautiful

The cave of forgotten dreams

Hidden gems

Ayodele Yusuf, a dear and courageous friend who has an amazing amount of talent that he keeps under wraps. 

New evidence suggesting that the Spanish chronicles of the conquest of the Incas may exaggerate Conquistadores heroism. Atleast they didn't blame the weather.

The great Inca rebellion was an attempt to defeat the Spanish in Lima. The chronicles depict the few Spaniards riding out to the 10,000 awaiting Inca warriors and defeating them. New material evidence suggests that the attacking Incas were more likely in the 1000's and the Spaniards had a massive supporting Inca force themselves. 

Tangerine waterfalls and a few wrong turns

Today's hike

Evo-devo

Recently I have taken interest in the field of evolutionary developmental biology. It is perhaps natural to get engaged in the evolutionary roots and/or evolutionary consequences of developmental processes. Another way to view this field might be the construction of a map between genotype and phenotype. The illustration above depicts such a map. It is easy to philosophize on such a topic. Even if the conversation is entirely non-scientific I find myself feeling pleased to even talk about such grand (if vague) concepts.

Following an initial surge of enthusiasm I find myself disappointed in the field. Despite interest in the field for over a century (if not more) very little science appears to have been done. To highlight this fact, a serious scientific/quantitative attempt at posing a question seems to have evaded the entire field.

Perhaps the field has been hindered by the natural disposition of scientists to take extreme points of views. Either, developmental processes, genetic circuitry and architecture etc. have been selected upon and what we see in extant species is optimized, or, everything is random and scientific enquiry, into the why questions, is futile. The former, I believe, oversimplifies natural evolution and reflects a lack of interest in really figuring it out. The latter represents a surrender and goes against the very basis of what drives science and scientists.

Currently, I find myself employing both arguments when I see fit. There are examples of optimality (vision), there also examples of neutral processes. However, I also admit to biology (encompassing developmental processes and genetic circuitry and architecture) being, perhaps, enroute to optimality. Perhaps we can shed light on biology by considering what might have the optimum been, and how does what we see compare to that. Since I don't yet know of secure and tried & tested ways of making progress in biology, I will try all reasonable routes. 

Alain Pumir

Just sitting at the KITP in Santa Barbara is enough to ensure that I bump into some of the best minds and most wonderful people. Currently, I sit across from Alain Pumir. A true scholar and gentleman. 

in the shadow of great friends

Carlos, a very dear friend of mine, presented me with this painting upon his departure. It now hangs on my bedroom wall.

Some people have the ability to create beautiful things, others can merely stand in the shadows, and marvel. 

Rob Phillips - A gentle scientific giant

Over the last few months I have had the pleasure of getting to know Rob Phillips. He is a professor at Caltech and a great man. His book - The physical biology of the cell - is a fantastic text and introduction to a new way of doing biology (one that I subscribe to). He is also a great friend.

Sitting in the company of people like Rob Phillips, Boris Shraiman, Mahadevan and Michael Brenner is an experience I am not worthy of.

The National Academy of Science - Boris Shraiman

Working with Boris has been the single most rewarding experience I have yet had. He was recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Perhaps the students of every academy member would be equally positive in their comments, however, I believe that Boris represents what is best in science. Regardless, he is a good man and a great friend.

Cambrian explosion

In the Canadian rockies a fossil field called the Burgess Shale was happened upon. Within it, and in other fossil fields (another one found, I believe, in Australia) was found evidence for an evolutionary explosion. The Cambrian explosion is believed, to not just be an artifact of it being a uniquely well preserved period in the Earth's natural history, indeed, paleontologists and the like, believe that around 500 million years ago there really was an "explosion" in the number and type of organisms inhabiting the planet.
It isn't clear, from my superficial knowledge, what aspect of this ought to be surprising. There certainly was a massive change in the Earth's climate at the time as well (a super ice-age had come to an end not so long ago). So is it just an example of where the selective pressures were "evolving" rapidly, or is there something about the organisms and their genomes at that time that suddenly allowed the exploration of a vast range of phenotypes?

Such questions of course get to the hearts of one of the deepest questions in Biology, as I see them. What are the range of phenotypes within the reach of a given genome. Can we begin to understand the tree of life in a statistical manner?

A bridge of sorts

My ignorance has yet again been revealed. I thought the Aleutian Islands formed an ice-bridge during an ice-age, allowing the movement of animals. Indeed, during an ice-age, vast amounts of water are stored as ice, leading to a drop in sea-levels. This actually created a land-bridge between the North American continent and Asia.

iBio

A wonderful resource on all manner of biological topics. I just watched one presented by Marc Kirschner, who really is a living giant in the field, on his investigations into a "new" model organism. 

Return

I was thoroughly enjoying maintaing this blog and then stopped for a period of 4 months. I am now making an attempt to re-engage with it. I have read, seen and done all manner of things during this hiatus. Instead of even attempting to recount this, I will simply try and fill my future with all manner of new things.