Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

A supernova is a colossal explosion of a star when the fuel within that star becomes too much to handle. When such a celestial event happens, the star shines brighter than an entire galaxy, but only for a celestial instant (a few weeks or months). During this time span, the star will burn more energy than our Sun will burn during its entire lifespan. Such events are uncommon. The last one observed in the Milky Way happened over 400 years ago.

In the wake of the star that has shone so brightly is left either a neutron star or a black hole. Neutron stars are tiny. One could fit in the area covered by Greater London. They are, however, very dense. One teaspoon of neutron star would weigh a billion tons. If the star going supernova is big enough, instead of ending its life as a neutron star, maybe…

Thomas Bayrle, $, 1980

As I mentioned in a previous post I have been reading Michael Sorkin’s All Over the Map and I just finished Sorkin’s essay the Jungle Urban:Welcome to Petropolis. I am also reading Rethinking a Lot The Design and Culture of Parking by Eran Ben-Joseph on the side. While both of these are thought provoking, I have become overwhelmed with the facts and maybe even depressed. Both are critical of an auto-centric society and the negative impact the infrastructures (pipeline or parking lots in particular) have on the environmental:  oil spills, toxic land, air pollution, unfiltered storm water runoff and increasing daytime temperatures in cities. Automobiles and their infrastructures have played a role in shaping our natural and built environment and they have contributed to the decentralization of urban areas and urban sprawl. Both books have reconfirm my commitment as to why I will never own a…

Dear Manjula,

Let me congratulate you on your report which you submitted recently on the Mangalore molestation case.

Your report was a landmark report in many ways. Let me tell you how.

Your report reconfirmed the absolute lack of faith of a common citizen in our system. It reconfirmed the fact that till there are people like you in position of power, our country will rapidly adopt the ideologies of the Taliban and celebrate it too. It reconfirmed the fact that you are a mere puppet dancing to appease your political masters.

The fact that you report did an unbelievable magic trick by making the molesters from HJV vanish from the scene of crime and put the blame squarely on the boys in the party does not come as a surprise. We were expecting nothing more than a moral preaching and cultural preservation bullshit but you took the episode to…

It is well known among philosophers that Heidegger was a member of the Nazi party and that this is an event that has to be taken into account in any interpretation of his work. For some people as Richard Polt points out in his excellent book on Heidegger, this means that Heidegger’s thought need not be bothered with. As he notes, this is a case of “bad man = bad philosopher” (attributed to Gilbert Ryle). For others, the opposite might be true; that Heidegger’s membership and active involvement needs to be nuanced, put in context, or perhaps divorced from the work.

A similar although lesser known case exists in geography around the person of Walter Christaller. A new and I believe, highly significant paper on Christaller is forthcoming from the Annals of the AAG by my colleagues Trevor Barnes and Claudio Minca. The paper is about the links between spatial theory and…