I stumbled upon an interview with Daniel Dennett* on google video. I didn't care much for the interviewer, Robert Wright, because he kept trying force his own viewpoint on Dennett (he seems to have a fundamentalist/dogmatic understanding of religion and philosophy), rather than ask smart questions. Nonetheless, the interview was enlightening, and should prove interesting to other people attracted to philosophical ruminations.

It turns out that Robert Wright has been going around for the last five years talking to philosophical thinkers of all ilks - philosophers, biologists, psychologists, physicists, religious leads and so forth. and the videotaped interviews are available on the website MeaningOfLife.tv. The interviews are organized by interviewee\topic (column on the left) or by topic\interviewee (column on the right), which is convenient, since the whole interviews run for 45 minutes, on average. I haven't watched all the interviews yet, but I'm sure we can assume that they are equally enlightening.

Unfortunately, the website doesn't work well in Firefox, but you could use IETab or watch the series on GoogleVideo (without the benefit of topically organized clips). If you like any specific segment, you could probably download it using VideoDownloader. Keep in mind though, that all the material is copyrighted. (For more interesting Firefox extensions and tips, see here)


*A more interesting interview with Daniel Dennett by Bill Moyers, about Dennett's book - Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

- Chinmay

Categories - ~World~

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I've put this off for too long, but with Firefox 2.0 coming soon, now is a good time to do a little writeup about how I use Firefox. The Firfox webpage has nice list of the features that make Firefox a much better browser than IE6, and probably also IE7, but here are a couple I find particularly useful -

• Internet Searches:
  One fo the main things people do on the interenet is search for information. Firefox offers a few ways to do that more efficiently.
  1. Quick Searches - Firefox comes with a dedicated search box, but the Quick Searchs feature is simpler - type in keyword (I prefer keyletter, much quicker!) hit enter and off you go! (Install a tab customization extension - such as Tabbrowser Preferences, and configure it so that your search opens a new tab, instead of overwriting yout current tab.)
     There are a few quick searches built in, but you can make your own to suit your needs. In addition, you can assign keywords to any bookmark, and type that in to open the site (e.g. type 'bbc' instead of news.bbc.co.uk to open the site, by assiging the keyword 'bbc' to the link)
     Another result of this is efficiency of screenspace - you can have a much more functional toolbar, giving you more space for your webpages.
  2. Search Extensions - There are probably hundreds of these, but the two I like are -
     Context Search, which makes your search-box engines available in the context menu, and
     Unwrap Text, which isn't really a search extension, but is very useful to quickly search street addresses in Google Maps, and launch URLs in text form
• Extensions:
  One of the main attractions of Firefox is the ability of users to increase its functionality through the huge library of extensions. Here are a few that I've found the most useful -
  1. Forecastfox - itself highly customizable, gives you information about weather conditions right in your status bar.
  2. All-in-One Gestures - I use it only to go back and forward, but it offers a lot of other useful gestures. (Another way to go back and forward - use Alt+ left-arrow/right-arrow)
  3. Fasterfox - Reduces page load time.
  4. Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - A great extension to keep your bookmarks synchronized between Firefox on different computers. Doesn't require your own server, unline some other extensions, and you can access your bookmarks online too. On the other hand, if youo'd rather keep your bookmarks on your own private server, use this extension BTW, while on the subject of bookmarks, do you know that you can group your bookmarks in folders subjectwise, and keep all the folders on the bookmarks toolbar folder? (like you saw here) That makes browsing so much easier!
  5. Gmail Notifier - Check your GMail account without opening a tab for it...
  6. Download Statusbar - see information on downloads instead of in a seperate window.
  7. IE Tab - If a web-page is coded for Internet Explorer, and doesn't show up well in Firefox, use (click on the small Firefox symbol in the statusbar) this extension to open a new tab in the Firefox window. The new tab uses Internet Explorer to render the page, so that it shows up as intended. There's also IE View Lite which can be used from the context menu to open a link in a seperate IE window.
  and we already talked about
  8. Tabbrowser Preferences
  9. Context Search
  and
  10. Unwrap Text

Also see the tips and tricks page and other useful information at the Firefox site. If you have any other Firefox tips (or webpages with such tips) that I would find useful, let me know!

Now that I've pointed out the reasons (more here) to use Firefox, I'm going to put a little code on this page, which will point to this post and urge future visitors to switch, in case they aren't already using Firefox.

update:
1)

for developers : Firefox is probably the most developer friendly browser around because of numerous useful extensions.
- Ajit

2) right mouse button + scroll wheel = history menu
I just discovered by accident (while trying to see if there was a way of changing text display size using the scroll wheel) that if you keep the right mouse button pressed and then scroll the wheel, a menu pops up showing the history (back and forward) of the tab you're on, enabling you to go back of forward multiple pages. To go to a page in the history, keep scrolling the wheel till you highlight the page you want to go to, and release the right button. Even though the mouse gesture is useful to go back/fwd a page or two, it gets quite tedious to use it for skiping more pages. So I used to keep the back and fwd arrows on the window.Now I've removed them. Let's see if I can use this newly discovered feature effectively.
Caveats:
a) this might be an effect of some extension I've installed. I haven't tested it on a bare Firefox install.
b) the maximum height of the popup is limited to the current height of the Firefox window, so if you've been browsing in the same tab for a while, things might get tricky, as your recent history might be hidden from view.)
3) VideoDownloader - another useful extension. Say you watch some vidoe website like YouTube, or GoogleVideo, and would really like to keep it. Right now these sites don't usually offer a way to save the file to your computer. VidoeDownloader lets you do exactly that, and with just a single click.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~GeekStuff~
Edited on: Friday, August 18, 2006 1:50 PM
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Skepticality

and

Point of Inquiry (the Richard Dawkins interview)

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Science~ ~World~

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There's a very informative seminar* [1 hr. 42 min.] available on GoogleVideo regarding the science and policy related to climate change.
"[Dr. Stephen Schneider and Thomas C. Heller] have helped steer the international course of policy, scientific verifications and the overall consensus on the existence of climate change. They both have plenty to say about what the failures and successes have been along the way, and what their predictions for the future of climate change policy will be."

The March 24 issue of Science magazine also has a lot of articles focussed on climate change. For a quick summary, see here [\\Ars Technica\Nobel Intent]

*The seminar is a part of the TechTalks at Google. A whole bunch of these TechTalks are available at Google video.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Environment~ ~Money~ ~World~

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In intriguing interview with Lester R. Brown in Wired Magazine. Definitely worth reading.

Interesting snippets -

• "Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth." - Oystein Dahle
• China justified a 1999 blanket ban on tree cutting in the upper reaches of all river basins in economic terms - the flood-control services provided by those forests were three times as valuable to society as the timber in those trees.
• It is no longer true that the US consumes 25% of global resources. China has now overtaken the US in this regard. Which raises the question - what happens if China catches up to the US in consumption per person? The Western economic model -- fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy -- is not going to work for China, or India, or for the other three billion people in developing countries.

Brown's book - Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble should prove an interesting read fon anyone concerned about these matters.

Another book on a similar subject, but with a more retrospective approach is Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed [I haven't read this one either.. yet]

Meanwhile, here are some soundbites from IBM's Global Innovation Outlook 2.0. ["For GIO 2.0, 248 thought leaders from nearly three dozen countries and regions, representing 178 organizations, gathered on four continents for 15 “deep dive” sessions to discuss three focus areas and the emerging trends, challenges and opportunities that affect business and society - The future of the enterprise, Energy and the environment and Transportation and mobility"]

Whether all this thinking and talking is going to have a meaningful impact on the survival of our civilization is still up for grabs. In my opinion, we have very likely passed a point of no return in terms of ecological change, and there will be some pretty dramatic and destructive changes to the global order before the end of this century.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Environment~ ~Money~

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This is pretty funny. Read the 13 reasons to switch from IE to Firefox.

Also check out the Explorer Destroyer website. I might put their code on this page.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Fun~ ~GeekStuff~

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In case you want to take good photographs (as opposed to just being a camera geek), you'll be well served to read Alain Briot's series - "Aesthetics and Photography" on the Luminous Landscape. The webpage there doesn't really list the articles in the correct order, (I have no idea why!), so I'll list them in sequence (and by conceptual grouping) here -

The Basics
1) How to See Photographically
2) How to Compose a Photograph

The Technique
3) How to Choose the Best Lens For a Specific Composition
4) How to Find the Best Light for a Specific Photograph
5) How to Select the Best “film” for a Specific Image with both Film and Digital Capture
6) How to determine the best exposure for a specific photograph with film and digital capture

The Operational
7) How to Decide Which Photographs Are Keepers and Which Ones Are Not
8) How to Create a Portfolio of your Work

The Unteachable
9) How to Establish a Personal Photographic Style
10) Being an Artist

There are more of Alain Briot's columns (Briot's View) here, and his own website can be found here. I'd previously linked to an article by Ken Rockwell - How to Make Great Photographs or "Everything You Really Needed to Learn About Photography That They Didn't Teach You at Brooks", that stems from the same philosophy. Read that here.

For camera geekery (I wouldn't deny my own guilt, of course...), there's DPReviews. :)

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Arts~ ~Photo~

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India, along with other countries, has been a attracting attention in the west recently with respect to both outsourcing as well as long term global economic trends, and the issue seems to have attained a critical mass, with both the Beeb and McKinsey Quarterly doing specials simultaneously.

The Auntie is running special programming for "India Week" on BBC World TV channel as well as on the BBC News web pages and, as is wont, has an all round approach; with coverage from cultural and social angles, along with economic/governmental approaches. Of course, no serious journalistic thesis on India would be complete without pictures of overloaded mass transport, so there's some of that too! (And the logo manages to invoke agriculture, bindi, and the rising sun all at once :|)

The McKinsey Quarterly special edition: Fulfilling India's promise which has been in the hopper for a almost a couple of months, with articles coming online as they're ready, now seems to be complete. Most of the articles deal with specific facets of India's economic future: for instance energy needs, or potential as a manufacturing hub (both pay-to-read) or problems with the financial infrastructure (register-to-read); but there are a few qualitative articles with overarching themes. The ones I would specifically recommend for general consumption are the introduction to the special issue by Rajat Gupta, and Why Believe in India, as well as an engaging interview with the PM Dr. Manmohan Singh.

All in all, it looks like the pot has come to a boil. Hopefully the cooking will be worth the wait.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~India~

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Stan Williams from HP Labs' QSR group was here yesterday, to deliver the Keynote speech at the 6th Nano Day.

He presented some really interesting research that they've been doing at HP, including a way of doing logic where the information is not represented by voltage, but by resistance. (The were initially trying for crossbar memory, but recently realized that two adjacent contacts could function as a latch)

If you know your Boolean algebra, you'd know what he meant by "creating a NAND function using three Implication gates" (or something to that effect.) And if you know your chip design, you probably also understand that if you have a NAND gate, you can build a universal computer. (I don't, understand, that is... I'll have to take it on face value for now.) The remarkable thing is, this 'computer' does not need any semiconductors - it's built entirely out of conductors with resistive junctions (think crossbar memory architecture)

You can read the related publication "The crossbar latch: Logic value storage, restoration, and inversion in crossbar circuits" here (if you have access to Journal of Applied Physics...). Also see the Applied Physics A March 2005 special "Nanoelectronics" issue, where the QSR group has 20 papers.

HP stock is currently near 52 week highs and the P/E is 26, but if they're going to build the next generation of computers, that might work out to be cheap.

Finally, Feynman Lectures on Computation

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Science~

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Interesting stuff at the Genographic Project webpages - you can track the history of human migration as it is currently known, and even pay and find out your own genomic heritage!

Also read about ongoing brain evolution in a one of the two recent NYTimes articles.

BTW, do you have the bug-me-not extension installed on your Firefox?

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Science~

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