Posted on 22 February 2010
Dates: 6-7 March, 2010
Location: Mulali Juba Kendra Hall near Moulali crossing close to Sealdah station, Kolkata.
The Science & Rationalists Association of India ( Bharatiya Bigyan O Yuktibadi Samity) has completed 25 fruitful years. There will be a celebration of the silver jubilee on 6-7 March 2010. The annual conference will also be held during the two days with delegates attending seminar, workshop and interactive session during the day. The program on the evening of March 7, 2010 will be open to all. For more details about our activities you may visit our website, www.srai.org.
The program on the 7th will start from 5 pm with songs and discussion by the veteran Bengali folk song maestro Sri Swapan Basu, followed by our anti-superstition demonstrative show “Aloukik noy, Loukik”.
You are invited to attend the function and make it a grand success!
Prabir Ghosh
[G.S. Juktibadi Samiti]
Sumitra Padmanabhan
[President, Juktibadi Samiti]
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Posted on 02 January 2010
How does one begin to understand the impact that science and technology have on our lives? Well, one can start by thinking about all that one has done during the day and imagining whether those things would have been possible had Newton not formulated the three laws, or if Galileo hadn’t been ingenious enough to think of his machines, or if Anur R Puniyani had not discovered the effect of fire on lead pencils, or if some scientific crusader or the other had not contributed in some way or the other to this continuing saga of the breathtaking power of combined human intellect. Ok I am sorry about the last one, I was just expressing a long held fantasy of mine, to be counted among the great minds of Science. And that was actually an experiment that I did as a child, sacrificing one of my dear lead pencils to Agni, the Hindu ‘God of fire’. Coming back to the point, I don’t think it should be difficult to imagine how deep our kinship with science and technology has grown to be over the past three hundred odd years or so, but just in case you have come to take science and technology so much for granted that you don’t seem to take note of its presence, the following might just make you let go off that feeling. Read the full story
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Posted on 28 October 2009
This event was organized by the Orissa Rationalist Association in Rourkela on 10 and 11 October, 2009.
Prabir Ghosh, General Secretary of Science & Rationalist Association of India was invited as the chief guest to handover the certificates and mementos to the winners of the inter-school competition on scientific outlook being arranged by the Orissa Rationalist Association for the last 10 years. Read the full story
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Posted on 23 October 2009
This question was sent in by Roope Kasvi and has been selected for this month’s Q & A.
Hi,
I’m an openminded sceptic from Finland. One of my friends (also Finnish) is an Ayurvedic consult and spreads all kinds of crazy stuff in Facebook.
Recently in the comments section of one of his rants he said that there are many diseases that Ayurveda can cure or treat better than modern medical science. Needless to say, I am sceptical about this claim and wondered if you guys knew of any studies that could point me to any direction at all. Read the full story
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Posted on 18 July 2009
On 22 July 2009 part of India is going to witness a total Solar Eclipse. Scientists from India and abroad have already started arriving at various places lying in the path of the total eclipse with their equipments to study this celestial spectacle. Scientifically aware common people are also waiting for this moment with their eclipse-viewing glasses, pinhole cameras, and reflectors including ordinary mirrors. It is indeed a spectacle to be witnessed and experienced.
At the same time in India we have the largest number of superstitious masses, fear-mongering astrologers, and religious preachers who treat this beautiful natural phenomenon as a bad omen. Hiding inside their homes, they stop eating and drinking anything during this period. The pregnant women fear to venture out. The really religious ones throw away the cooked food, as the eclipse would make them inedible! They conduct pujas at their homes and in temples and take a dip in their ‘holy’ rivers and ponds to cleanse themselves of the ‘evil’ effects of the eclipse, when their pet god is being swallowed by the demons! Read the full story
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Posted on 23 February 2009
I celebrated the New Year (going by the Julian calendar, I mean; not the Malayalam New Year, my favorite!) by attending the 7th World Atheist Conference held at Vijayawada in the first week of January 2009. The conference was organized by the Atheist Centre founded by Gora, the Gandhian atheist and the center is now run by his children and grandchildren. It is the second time that I have attended the conference - now a biennial one. Although it was called the “World Conference”, all of the foreign delegates were from Europe, making the conference more of a Euro-Indian one, than a “world conference” proper.
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Posted on 20 December 2008
Most Indians graduating from their 12th standard in the high schools of India don’t know what science is.
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