Shiva's Scrapbook

July 6, 2010

Pictures from ICML/Israel.
March 29, 2010

War (Sri Lanka, 2008).
December 7, 2009

The Photographic Evidence.
October 10, 2009

The strange case of Angraecum sesquipedale and Xanthopan morgani: made for each other.
July 11, 2009

No bottled water sold in Bundanoon: The town in Bundanoon, in New South Wales, Australia, has taken the welcome initiative of eliminating the sale of bottled water, the arguments in favour of which are (naturally!) compelling.
July 5, 2009

At long last, I organise pictures from my trip to Hungary in May for AAMAS 2009.
June 22, 2009

Computing Machinery and Mind, A. M. Turing, Mind, 59, 433-460.
Turing's brilliant article, years ahead of its time in imagining the various ramifications of building and evaluating an intelligent machine.
June 8, 2009

Has Indian cricket had a better representative than Kapil Dev? Gideon Haigh brilliantly notes in Un-Indian idol (Source: ESPN Cricinfo, dated May 30, 2009): "No fast bowlers in India? Kapil could have hailed from no other country." And if one match summarises the nature of the man's contribution, its importance couldn't be recounted better than by Jamie Alter in Hallowed ground (Source: ESPN Cricinfo, dated June 18, 2008).
May 25, 2009

Relativity: a thought.
April 20, 2009

"Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing - at last - into history."
The dark side of Dubai, Johann Hari, from The Independent, dated April 7, 2009.
April 1, 2009

A Piece of Steak, Jack London, first published in the The Saturday Evening Post, Vol. 182, November 20, 1909 (Source: The World of Jack London).

This short story by Jack London, which is one of my favourites, turns hundred this year. And yet it remains timeless, a shining example of London's eye for the simple laws of nature that underpin all living.