Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Remember James Watson? One half of the duo who discovered the famous double helix structure of the DNA molecule? Well, the scientist recently announced that he plans to sell his Nobel prize medal . Why? Is he disenchanted with the Nobel or prizes in general? Nope. He says that following accusations of racism in 2007, “no one really wants to admit I exist”. And so his income has fallen (because, you know, fewer talks and guest appearances). Oh, the medal just sold for $4.75 million, but that’s not what this blog is about. Adam Rutherford writes a scathing description of what he thinks is the real problem here, and not just about Watson. He starts off with the reaction one might have on hearing of Watson’s decision: “This sounds awful: an 86-year-old hero ostracised for his views, shooed from public life by the people who walk in his scientific shadow. ” But what exactly did Watson say to invoke the racism charges? He said that while people may want to believe that all races a...

I used to associate the US with crazy lawsuits, like people suing fast food chains because they spilt hot coffee on themselves! Turns out the French are just as mad. The latest such case of French insanity is where a French anti-discrimination organization, SOS Racisme, sued Google for its, hold your breath, autocomplete feature. So what about autocomplete is so offensive to the French? Turns out if you type the names of certain celebrities on Google’s page, autocomplete shows the word “Jew”. The French, of course, are too dumb to know how Google autocomplete (or anything else for that matter) works: -          Autocomplete is an algorithm that shows suggestions based on search phrases that the majority of people typed in the past. -          Further, autocomplete does localization, i.e., the suggested phrases shown vary from place to place to reflect the popular choice in that region . Now that you under...