Cognitive ability and voting 'leave' on Brexit
In a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE on November 22, a pair of researchers from the University of Bath in the UK have reported that “higher cognitive ability” is "linked to higher cha…
VM
1664 posts
A stage-managed World Cup
2 min read
I’m glad the ICC Cricket World Cup ended the way it did, with good cricket on show. I’m disappointed that India lost but, to echo Sunil Gavaskar at the post-match show, I’m glad it was only to a bette…
So many cynical ads on TV
2 min read
I wrote about cynical ads airing on Indian cable TV a while ago. Since then I've started to notice more such ads and thought it might be useful to maintain a running list. 1. Rapido – Don't…
India has a right to noise
3 min read
Excerpt from ‘More light, less sound: On firecrackers and a festival of light’, an editorial in The Hindu on November 7, 2023: The Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules 2000 stipulate that f…
On Somanath withdrawing his autobiography
4 min read
Excerpt from The Hindu, November 4, 2023: S. Somanath, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told The Hindu that he’s withdrawing the publication of his memoir, Nilavu Kudicha Simhanga…
India's science leadership
2 min read
On October 17, the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) introduced a reading module for middle-school students called “Chandrayaan Utsav”. It was released by Union Education Mi…
Gaganyaan: The ingredient is not the recipe
2 min read
For all the hoopla over indigeneity – from ISRO chairman S. Somanath exalting the vast wisdom of ancient Indians to political and ideological efforts to cast modern India as the world’s ‘vishwaguru’ –…
An EIA process just for the Himalaya?
3 min read
In The Hindu today, lawyers Archana Vaidya and Vikram Hegde have written an article asking for a separate environment impact assessment (EIA) process for the Indian Himalayan region. The article begin…
An 'expanded' heuristic to evaluate science as a non-scientist
5 min read
The Hindu publishes a column called ‘Notebook’ every Friday, in which journalists in the organisation open windows big or small into their work, providing glimpses into their process and thinking – th…
Marginalia: On NewsClick, NYT, toolkits, etc.
3 min read
The Bharatiya Janata Party in power in India knows that the process is the punishment, that the amount of punishment imposed depends on the law invoked in the chargesheet, and that no law is as ripe f…
“Why has no Indian won a science Nobel this year?”
4 min read
For all their flaws, the science Nobel Prizes – at the time they’re announced, in the first week of October every year – provide a good opportunity to learn about some obscure part of the scientific e…
The journal's part in a retraction
3 min read
What explains a journal's peer-review producing two different results on two separate occasions?…