Ephemeral Reflections

 Now a union minister states ( in All India vaidic sammelan, no less) that Darwin's theory of evolution is wrong because none of historic texts mention sightings of ape turning into man.  ‎The idiocracy.  Okay, everybody is entitled to have their own view but not on the cost of playing with facts. Do our ancient texts mention dinosaurs and woolly mammoths ? But they sure did exist. Look at frozen carcass of woolly mammoths dug out from Siberia or partial dinosaur skeleton in our own India (Rajasaurus narmadensis) . Hey, but those are not mentioned in our ancient texts. So , here they go out of windows. Texts do not mention them as they were written by humans. Humans ( Homo sapiens , to be specific) date back to 195,000 years at max, while those poor chaps existed in completed different era (230-65 million years). Woolly mammoth went extinct 9-5000 years ago.   Prima facie , it appears that he has not studied the very theory he is advocating to remove  from...

C ontrary to the title here, I am referring to the spring. After Makar Sankranti, spring is officially here. For some deciduous trees, spring time equals to fall and with that comes the magical journeys of leaves.It’s nothing out of ordinary. But still always has a spellbinding effect on me and brings a smile in mind. From top to the bottom…. Sometimes just hanging in there and Swaying gently in the wind rest of the time. When these leaves fall, I get mesmerized by their subtle play of glimmer…in the golden sunshine or in those haunting lamp lights. They have the same effect on me as do fireflies.  Nowadays specially, I get to see it abundance. When I walk in the evening on the main BARC road, a light breeze sweeps away the dead ones into numerous eddies. And all the way till end, leaves keep their random dates with me. These late evening walks remind me of my times in Delhi.  Those boulevards and the pleasantness of walking on those wide roads lined those shady green tr...

 There is one thing on which I can absolutely count on to provide fodder for this blog. And that is talking about the books which made me recommend them to whoever is ready to listen.  But this, is more about the author.  I was introduced to history of science as by Sam Kean (rest of them then followed). And for that, I indebted to him. Let’s just say ‘The Disappearing Spoon’ and ‘The Violinist’s Thumb’ are two of the most enjoyable books I have read which do not belong to fiction category. Science. And pure joy.  In my Masters’ classes in JNU, many professors used to tell interesting stories about the interactions of scientists which led to the discovery (topic of the class). As much I enjoyed them, I used to think of them as superhuman story collectors. Blame that on my ignorance and on the small cache of book genres I read till then. And then I stumbled upon Sam Kean. He was the first science historian I came across (and then there was no looking back). Th...