3 Quarks Daily has announced the winners of the 2010 science blogging competition. All three articles are in biology and all are worth reading. Richard Dawkins judged the competition.

(The Houston fundraiser for Save A Mother ends this coming Friday. Bringing this to the front of the page. My sincere thanks to those who have contributed. Your generosity will go a long way in facilitating the work of this deserving organization.) This is the first time since the inception of this blog that I am initiating…

Or maybe we are already at the bottom of the hill, with no further place to go. I refer, to the Jan 21 decision of the US Supreme Court with regard to election spending by corporate entities. From the Washington Post: "Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his conservative colleagues delivered a seismic jolt…

It's good to be thankful on Thanksgiving, or not, per PZ Myers of Pharyngula. "This whole notion that one should have vague and aimless feelings of gratitude for the nature of one's existence is just too weird, and the bow-your-head-at-the-table and radiate-blessings-at-the-cosmos tradition is pointless and silly. Don't get me wrong: I can be appropriately…

ruchirapaul at gmail dot com

An attractive visual time line of the disappearance of world empires.  (via 3 Quarks Daily)

During our childhood, for many years and even more hours, my sister and I used to pore over a book of photography that our father had brought home when I was probably six or seven years old and my sister two or three. The collection consisted of black and white pictures from all over the world. We were entranced by The Family of Man whose content…

Much discussion is on in the media and blogosphere over the violent clashes in the aftermath of the Iranian elections. Was the election rigged or not? A collection of interesting links and stories:In which Juan Cole thinks that it's highly likely that the elections were stolen: A list of possible indicators that the results were…

Last month, Alex Ross contributed a worthy and encouraging account of Salonen's long career with the LA Philharmonic and his recent departure from the musical leadership of the orchestra. Salonen really is a marvelous musician, composer, and conductor, but as Ross' story suggests, his decision to end an era was perfectly timed and exquisitely executed.…

When did Google — or google — become a verb? Or scratch that. New question: WHY did google become a verb? Ten years ago, people used to say "do an internet search." We would "do an internet search on snow leopards." Now we "google snow leopards." This wasn't the pre-Google era, exactly, but at that…

It's not self-control. And apparently it has nothing to do with how badly you want the marshmallow. But it is interesting.

Putting aside criticism of the bizarre sports-world obsession with "purity," there's another angle to the Alex Rodriguez steroids "scandal." As I previously remarked: He obviously said what his agent and his lawyer and his other people (whoever they may be) told him to say.  But why did they tell him to admit to only those…

.”End of Watch, April 4, 2009″ read the flashing sign above the Parkway as I headed home from work today. Was this a novel way of signalling some accident had created congestion ahead?“Fallen Hero, PO Stephen Mahyle”, flashed the sign. Three police officers, Stephen Mahyle, Eric Kelly and Paul Sciullo II fell in the line…

Today I came across two stories from different eras separated by nearly seven decades, which struck a common chord in my mind. The first report is about a group of American musicians who have organized a concert named Music In Desparate Times as a tribute to women musicians who used their artistic skills in order to survive in…

This picture on the right was the first picture of Shakespeare that I ever saw, on the cover of the Merchant of Venice, which we had as part of our 10th grade English literature course.He seemed a dour-looking gentleman, but we nevertheless paid our respects at his altar, memorizing and declaiming his prose in all…