Apologies
I'm sorry, my dear followers, to have to disappoint you (or, quite possibly, induce a sigh of relief) but today's blog post will have to be just these lines. My laptop died yesterday, I got a…
VM
1664 posts
Building with mobile devices
2 min read
My laptop, a 2015 MacBook Pro that survived being drowned during the Chennai floods that year, went into the ICU today. A service person said the RAM was fried, along with some other adjacent componen…
Remembering S. Pancharatnam
4 min read
Scientists have combined one atom of sodium (Na) and one of caesium (Cs) to form one molecule of NaCs, achieving the most precisely controlled chemical reaction in history. They were able to achieve t…
Sewer gas
1 min read
Today's post is just a very interesting tidbit I found when conducting research for a piece for #GRIT – about how, in the 19th century, the White House had a sewer gas problem so severe that Chest…
Yo-yo fitness
3 min read
Nagraj Gollapudi on the yo-yo fitness test, ESPN Cricinfo: A player starts at speed level 5, which consists of one shuttle. The next speed level, which is 9, also consists of one shuttle. Speed level…
Religious tolerance among children
1 min read
Here's another instance of an unsound university press release exaggerating the conclusions of a study. The headline goes "Children in India demonstrate religious tolerance, study finds"…
The cost of global warming, from thermo 101
3 min read
There's a formula in thermodynamics 101 called Carnot's theorem that goes like this: This is a famous equation because it defines the absolute upper limit of efficiency achievable by a heat e…
Migraines
2 min read
I've had migraines since 2006, when I started college. The pain is excruciating, disabling, ruinous, usually on both sides of my head. I can sense a migraine coming 12-24 hours beforehand, in the…
'Kaala' is not 'Kabali' but questions Rajini's politics more
4 min read
There are many similarities between Kaala, Pa Ranjith's second flick with Rajinikanth, and their first film together, Kabali (2016). The thematic one is the most obvious, where Ranjith focuses on…
A new fantasy
3 min read
I'm no artist, nor a scholar of art. I can't analyse images to pick out patterns. Heck, I think an image is well-crafted only because those commentators I trust have said it. My admiration of…
Monstrous moonshine
3 min read
I received an email from a fellow journalist last week with the following subject: Banks wont recover even half of the Rs 4,000,000,000,000 bad loans of 37 companies That number with all those zeroe…
The Keeper of Words
2 min read
It had to come to this at some point, and here we are finally. To undertake a challenge to write one blog post a day – when I've mentioned to my friends and colleagues that I'm doing this, al…