Links (1)
* Artist Feeds Her Childhood Diary Into an AI Chatbot -- And Has a Moving Conversation With Her Younger Self * Giant satellite outshines stars, sparking fresh concerns for astronomers * Does the Pe…
VM
1664 posts
The strange beauty of Planck units
4 min read
What does it mean to say that the speed of light is 1? We know the speed of light in the vacuum of space to be 299,792,458 m/s – or about 300,000 km/s. It's a quantity of speed that's very ha…
Getting rid of the GRE
4 min read
An investigation by Science has found that, today, just 3% of “PhD programs in eight disciplines at 50 top-ranked US universities” require applicants’ GRE scores, “compared with 84% four years ago”. T…
A 'quantum consciousness' absurdity at IIT Mandi
7 min read
As you go downward, inward, smaller and smaller, you get more vast conscious experience. This is the idea in Indian knowledge systems. At the bottom of it, or the very base of it, at the source, is Br…
The curious case of the blue coloured ice cream
11 min read
Culture
Scicomm
Alfred Hitchcock
anthocyanins
blue LED
blue screen
blue spirulina
C-phycocyanin
Charles Spence
electroluminescence
experimental psychology
FT Marinetti
gallium nitride
gastroporn
iridescence
Maria Jose San Roman
Morpho butterflies
pterobilin
Rayleigh scattering
structural coloration
Planck's equation
From an unusual ice cream colour to quantum mechanics to ecology to semiconductors to gastroporn.…
Saying bye to The Wire
1 min read
November 30, 2022, is my last day.…
A fountainhead of intrigue
7 min read
Recently, a Chinese-American mathematician named Yitang Zhang claimed to have resolved the Landau-Siegel zeroes conjecture, which is related to the Riemann hypothesis. (Specifically, disproving the co…
The covering COP27 quandary
2 min read
"Of the 1,156 publicly-listed companies, regions and cities that have so far made net-zero pledges … [more than half] are little more than vague commitments or proposals," according to a new…
The ideologues cometh for the IITs
3 min read
In July 2019, when the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched its Chandrayaan 2 mission, the spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev was present in the control centre, along with other dignitaries, g…
The biopolitics of Covaxin
4 min read
In a new investigation, STAT has reported fresh problems with Covaxin’s approval process in India, including the phase 2 trial dropping its placebo arm in favour of one preordained to make Covaxin loo…
A story of dogs
3 min read
This article in The Wire, while entirely compelling, also contains an unarticulated tension. Headline: 'How a Missing Stray Dog Led to the Withdrawal of a Caribbean High Commissioner to India'…
COP talks as ambition police
3 min read
Part of what makes Greta Thunberg such a powerful voice in climate activism is her no-nonsense communication. Yesterday, for example, she called the impending COP27 climate talks, to be held in Egypt…