My picks - 22nd Januray 2012

Here are some of the links I was reading this week.

The first one has to be this. Unbelievable. This is the best piece I read this week. Can a scientist get any more eccentric? I am not saying anything about it. You HAVE to read it.

TED talk by Drew Berry. He talks about molecules inside our cells.

Thalaivar, Richard Dawkins, talks about his favourite, deep, elegant and beautiful explanation. There are 191 other respondents to the same question. I read a few of them. V.S.Ramachandran’s was interesting. You can read all the responses here.

How to identify quackery in medicine? Go through the red flags of quackery.

An extract from a book about London being the libel tourism capital. A must read.

I came across this interview of a science write, Amy Harmon. Clicking through some links, I found a list of articles. Some of them were interesting like this one about a person who found out through DNA testing that reveals that she has a gene which could cause Breast Cancer.

Read this to know, how dog breeding informs us about genetic diseases.

Top 10 popular Mathematics books. If somebody asked me what heaven is, I would say it would be a place where I can afford all the books I want to read. Sigh.

All about common colds.

What would I not do to be in this guy’s place? But that is how it always appears from outside, doesn’t it? Still…

Here is Carl Sagan’s Christmas lectures on the planets. With my internet connection, I need to sit for hours to buffer each of these videos. And there are no downloads offered. So, I will envy you if you get to see this.

To round off the list with some fun, here is a stand up comedy on religion. My younger brother sent this to me. Religion is such an easy target for comedians, dont you think?