Why Titan is awesome #11
Titaaaaan! Here we go again. 😄 As has been reported, NASA has been interested in sending a robotic submarine to Saturn's moon Titan to explore the hydrocarbon lakes near its north pole. Various…
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ISRO v. SpaceX doesn't make sense
4 min read
Though I've never met the guy, I don't hold Pallava Bagla in very high regard because his stories – particularly of the Indian space programme – for NDTV have often reeked of simplistic concer…
All the science in 'The Cloverfield Paradox'
4 min read
I watched The Cloverfield Paradox last night, the horror film that Paramount pictures had dumped with Netflix and which was then released by Netflix on February 4. It's a dumb production: unlike H…
Veblen cars and useless concerns for the climate
2 min read
Lexus has an ad on the jacket of today's The Hindu for its new premium hybrid electric vehicle, the LS 500h. The product description states that the car "extends relentless innovation to envi…
We don't have a problem with the West, we're just obsessed with it
2 min read
How much do we not know about what Indian researchers are doing simply because Western scientists haven't written to some of them?…
Dealing with plagiarism? Look at thy neighbour
2 min read
Four doctors affiliated with Kathmandu University (KU) in Nepal are going to be fired because they plagiarised data in two papers. The papers were retracted last year from the Bali Medical Journal, wh…
On cancers, false balance and the judiciary
3 min read
Climate change has for long been my go-to example to illustrate how absolute objectivity can sometimes be detrimental to the reliability of a news report. Stating that A said "Climate change is r…
To watch 'The Post'
1 min read
I read a few reviews of The Post. Based on what the critics are saying, it seems the film has at least the potential to raise the spirits of many journalists today who could use a leg up. That said, I…
Limitations of the Finkbeiner test
3 min read
This post was republished on The Wire on January 8, 2018. The Finkbeiner test, named for science writer Ann Finkbeiner, was created to check whether a profile of a female scientist published by a mai…
WordPress's ineptitude
1 min read
As some of you might know, I've been having some issues with WordPress.com in terms of their UX, their service as well as a few outages. I've been on the platform for almost a decade now, duri…
'Mantra sciences' is just poor fantasy
3 min read
I don't know how the author of a piece in the Times of India managed to keep a straight face when introducing a school based on Vedic rituals that would "show the way" to curing diseases…
Happy new year!
1 min read
2017 was a blast. Lots of things happened. The world became a shittier place in many ways and better in a few. Mostly, Earth just went around the Sun once more, and from what we know, it’s going to be…