Writing Tips from Maria Gardiner & Hugh Kearns

From the article of Maria Gardiner & Hugh Kearns in Nature:

1. Write before you feel ready — because you might never feel ready. It's amazing how people magically feel ready when there is an imminent deadline.
2. Don't wait to have a clear picture of the paper. As you start putting down your ideas, you may actually clarify them.
3. Snack write — work in short, frequent bursts instead of waiting to sit down for big blocks of time. Those blocks hardly ever come, and when they do, they don't usually get used very productively.
4. Set specific times in your schedule for writing — don't leave it to chance, because chances are it won't happen.
5. Writing means putting new words on the page or substantially rewriting old words. It does not mean editing, reading, referencing or formatting — and it definitely does not mean composing e-mails.
6. If you refrain from writing because you worry that what you write won't be good enough, try noting the adage that to write well, you first have to write.
7. To really increase the quality and quantity of your writing, get feedback from mentors and colleagues — it can be painful, but it works.

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Sufi comics

Muhammed Ali Vakil's book on Sufi comics:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Sufi-stories-in-comic-format/Article1-691927.aspx

http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/40-sufi-comics-mohammed-ali-book-1456461273

His website: http://www.vakil.org/

You can read online here: http://issuu.com/mohammedalivakil/docs/40_sufi_comics

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Human body 3D visual search tool

Healthline and GE have launched Bodymaps - Human body 3D visual search tool.

http://www.healthline.com/human-body-maps/

http://www.healthymagination.com/blog/healthline-bodymaps-the-human-body-in-3-d/

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US Senate Report on Financial Crisis

The United States Senate released a report yesterday titled, "Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse". According to The New York Times, the report has a description about business practices and reckless activities among firms, banks, federal regulators that has a bearing on the crisis.

The pdf file of the 650-page report can be downloaded from this link at FT:

www.ft.com/cms/fc7d55c8-661a-11e0-9d40-00144feab49a.pdf

NYT also has an interactive page for the report.

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Modern Science Writings

In the book "The Oxford book of modern science writing", edited by Richard Dawkins, the selections are from the following books (some are articles or just poems). You may want to see how many of them you can finish in 2011 in its original glory. Please comment if there are any typos and errors in the compilation.

 

Alan Turing:::::Computing machinery and intelligence

Albert Einstein:::::Ideas and opinions

Alister Hardy:::::The open sea

Arthur Eddington:::::The expanding universe

Barbara & George Gamow:::::Said Ryle to Hoyle

Brian Greene:::::The elegant universe

C P Snow:::::Foreword to Hardy's Apology

Carl Sagan:::::The demon-haunted world

Carl Sagan:::::Pale blue dot

Claude E Shannon & Warren Weaver:::::The mathematical theory of communication

Colin Blakemore:::::The mind machine

D'Arcy Thompson:::::On growth and form

Daniel Dennett:::::Darwin's dangerous idea

Daniel Dennett:::::Consciousness explained

David Deutsch:::::The fabric of reality

David Lack:::::The life of the robin

Donald C Johanson & Maitland A Edey:::::Lucy-Beginnings of humankind

Douglas Hofstadter:::::Godel, Escher, Bach-The eternal golden braid

Edward O. Wilson:::::The diversity of life

Ernst Mayr:::::The growth of biological thought

Erwin Schrodinger:::::What is life?

Francis Crick:::::Life itself

Francis Crick:::::What mad pursuit

Fred Hoyle:::::Man in the universe

Freeman Dyson:::::Disturbing the universe

G C Williams:::::Adaptation and natural selection

G G Simpson:::::The meaning of evolution

G H Hardy:::::A mathematician's apology

Garrett Hardin:::::The tragedy of the commons

George Gamow:::::Mr. Tompkins

George Gaylord Simpson:::::The meaning of evolution

Helena Cronin:::::The ant and the peacock

Ian Stewart:::::The miraculous jar

J A Wheeler & Kenneth Ford:::::Geons, black holes and quantum foam

J B S Haldane:::::On being the right size

J B S Haldane:::::Cancer's a funny thing

J Robert Oppenheimer:::::War and the nations

Jacob Bronowski:::::The identity of man

James Jeans:::::The mysterious universe

James Watson:::::Avoid boring people

Jared Diamond:::::The rise and fall of the third chimpanzee

John Maynard Smith:::::The importance of the nervous system in the evolution of animal flight

John Tyleer Bonner:::::Life cycles

Jonathan Kingdon:::::Self-made man

Julian Huxley:::::Essays of a biologist

Lancelot Hogden:::::Mathematics for the million

Lee Smolin:::::The life of the cosmos

Lewis Thomas:::::Seven wonders

Lewis Wolpert:::::The unnatural nature of science

Loren Eiseley:::::The immense journey

Mark Ridley:::::The explanation of organic diversity

Martin Gardner:::::The fantastic combinations of John Conway's new solitaire game 'Life'

Martin Rees:::::Just six numbers

Matt Ridley:::::Genome

Max F Perutz:::::A passion for crystals

Nicholas Humphrey:::::One self - a meditation on the unity of consciousness

Niko Tinbergen:::::Curious Naturalists

Oliver Sacks:::::Uncle Tungsten

Paul Davies:::::The goldilocks enigma

Per Bak:::::How nature works

Peter Atkins:::::Creation revisited

Peter Medawar:::::Science and literature

Peter Medawar:::::Darwin's illness

Peter Medawar:::::The phenomenon of mind

Primo Levi:::::The periodic table

R A Fisher:::::The genetical theory of natural selection

Rachel Carson:::::The sea around us

Richard Feynman:::::The character of physical law

Richard Fortey:::::Trilobite!

Richard Fortey:::::Life - an unauthorized biography

Richard Gregory:::::Mirrors in mind

Richard Leakey & Roger Lewin:::::Origins reconsidered

Robert Trivers:::::Social Evolution

Roger Penrose:::::The emperor's new mind

Russell Stannard:::::The time and space of uncle Albert

S Chandrasekhar:::::Truth and beauty

Stephan Hawking:::::A brief history of time

Stephan Jay Gould:::::Hen's teeth and horse's toes

Steve Jones:::::The language of the genes

Steven Pinker:::::The language instinct

Steven Pinker:::::How the mind works

Steven Weinberg:::::Dreams of a final theory

Sydney Brenner:::::Theortical biology in the third millennium

Theodosius Dobzhansky:::::Mankind evolving

W D Hamilton:::::Geometry for the selfish herd

W D Hamilton:::::Narrow roads of geneland

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Happy New Year 2011

Dear Readers,
I wish you all a very happy new year. Do come again.
Shencottah

Create E-books from Wikipedia

You can create e-books from Wikipedia pages. This article in Business Line talks about it. These are help pages from Wikipedia:
1. For beginners
2. For experts
3. FAQ
The tool is "Book Creator".

Old knowledge, Old revelations, New Society

Well, I am posting after a long silence. The word 'silence' brings me this SMS joke which Gurumurthy also mentioned in his article - Sonia's certificate, PM's ultimate humiliation.

First, the joke:

Manmohan Singh breaks his silence on 2G (after a push from CAG and SC) by stating that he knows a lot about 2G - SoniaG and RahulG.

Jokes apart, some excerpts from that article.

... PM admitted that Raja had told him that he was only following the policy laid down previously — virtually approving the fraud. It needs no seer to say that to say the loot was no secret affair. It was daylight robbery; as transparent as the PM had wanted it to be. Not just Raja, the PM also must be questioned on why he objected first; why he fell into silence later; why he acquiesced subsequently and why he defended it finally...

... there were demands that Raja resign, he retorted, “why should I resign? I had done everything in consultation with the PM”.The PM did not deny that statement. But, months later, on May 24, 2010, the PM said that Raja had “discussed” the issue with him. Any difference between Raja asserting that he had “consulted” the PM and the PM admitting that Raja “discussed” with him? ...
... There is no other way PM’s November objection could become a meek non-objection in January. Who except Sonia Gandhi could turn the PM’s strong objection into a meek non-objection? And who else could make the PM defend Raja in May 2010...
... The loot is too huge for Raja. The main beneficiaries are obviously hiding behind him. Raja could never have defied the PM on the strength of the DMK alone. The DMK could never have ditched the UPA on this issue. The fear that the DMK would walk out of UPA could not be the reason for the PM to acquiesce. The fraudulent venture must have had the backing of someone more powerful than the PM. That only explains Raja’s defiance of the PM; and the PM acquiescence first and finally his defence of the deal itself...

If looks-like-Mr.Clean is like this, think of people who are not so "clean". Oh! that includes the citizens too!!!
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You think you know how to respond?

Supreme Court: Hey Centre! Distribute food grains for free to the poorest instead of allowing it to rot due to lack of storage facility.

Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar: Oops! We cannot distribute them freely.

That was the response!!! What about the rot? What about the storage facility? What about issues in managing it? Oh! let's watch cricket, Pawar.

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Quota generations!!

The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur was secretly — and illegally — keeping aside a discretionary admission quota for children of its teachers and staff for over four decades, admitting dozens of students to seats they failed to secure through the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination - Read further here at Hindustan Times.

That is what has happened, of all places, at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. For over 40 years now, it has now been discovered, the faculty at IIT-Kharagpur have been giving special preference to their own children in admissions to the prestigious institution. They did not have to compete with the rest — more privileged or less. While at one level the faculty has fought caste quotas in higher studies, they have been quietly using quotas for their own children. (From Business Standard)

Got the above links from here (Thanks Ram)

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