Posts

Excuse me Moon, Can I lick you?

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Excuse me, Moon, can I lick you? How Salty Is The Moon? It has come to my attention that one of the greatest geological tools available is our tongue.  Yup, you read that right. There are geologists out there in the wild right now. Licking and nibbling on strange rocks. Remember when you ate sand in kindergarten? Well, turns out that you were a misunderstood geologist. Yet, since it is frowned upon in public, most novice geologists hesitate with employing the use of their tongue in identifying a rock. To the uninitiated, this might sound absurd but I assure you it is a valid scientific test still currently in use.   But why though? Geology is the study of rocks and is an Earth Science. It is necessary as it reveals the deep history of the Earth, informs the other sciences with its discoveries, and is useful for economic purposes. Need to know where you have to drill for oil? Call a geologist. Think you found a fossil on your trail? Call a geologist. Need inputs on a hydroelectric proje

Push-up Equator.

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We Have Been Measuring Push-up Competitions Wrong. I’ve been a top-heavy, chunky boy for a while during my childhood. Although I am currently working on altering that, don’t worry this post isn’t about my journey to getting absolutely shredded (fingers crossed) it’s instead about something that I discovered on the way there. (To clarify I’m not there yet. Check again in 6 months).  While exercising I’ve progressively lost weight and I noticed that once I lost a few kilos the movements and exercises got much easier and effortless. So I’d have to increase the reps or opt for much harder variations in those exercises. One particular exercise though stood out. The Push-up.   Every kid has been a part of at least one push-up competition. Whether voluntarily or otherwise. It’s a common metric that children and adolescents use to measure each other and square themselves up to the rest of the class/group/friend circle/team/gym. No space is too sacred for a push-up competition. Heck, I think I

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre - A Review

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Bad Science by Ben Goldacre - A Review   The overall tone of the book and what it’s about. In most books, the preface contains either the names of the author’s family or a few words of their gratitude/annoyance with close friends and dear ones. Not in Bad Science. Ben Goldacre decided to begin the book with the words “To whom it may concern”. Talk about setting the tone and feel of your book. I couldn’t help but smirk until I finally burst out laughing. I was immediately hooked and kept coming back to it every day until I was done. While I did find most of the concepts and dwellings easily digestible and much akin to common sense and logic of today. It was a fun and entertaining read. The sheer precision and levity with which the author has taken down the foundations of homoeopathy, nutritionists, cosmetic companies, pharmaceutical industry and anti-vaxxers is art in and of itself. Armed with logic, a fair understanding of statistics and the scientific method he proceeds to dismantl

My favourite German word.

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My Favourite German word. With wave after wave of the pandemic. Everyone’s world has been thrown into the doldrums. I figured it was a good time to try and begin picking up a new language. Come out slightly better off than I was going into this whole ordeal. So I took the plunge and downloaded Duolingo onto my mobile, once again. Like everyone else I had previously tried learning a new language on and off over the years since 2016. Didn't every follow through with it. Not this time. The language of my choice is German, given its likeness and similarity to English not to mention English itself being a Germanic rooted language.  I figured the learning curve shouldn’t be too steep.  I set the goal of earning 50XP every day on Duolingo for the first 3 months. I broke past that barrier and am now at a total of 11100XP. It has been 5 months since I started. While I’m nowhere near being able to converse and follow a conversation in German, I’m getting there. Being able to recognise wor