What's the anomaly in a Nobel for Modi?
I'm sure you've seen the reports doing the rounds today that some person on some Nobel Prize Committee said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was very deserving of the vaunted peace prize, followed…
Analysis
257 posts
The devil's lassi
‘The Devil’s Milkshake’, Tarence Ray in The Baffler, February 23, 2023: You’ve seen it before. An industrial disaster poisons a town’s food or water supply. Residents get angry. Public officials try…
Who are you, chatbot AI?
In case you haven’t been following, and to update my own personal records, here’s a list of notable {AI chatbot + gender}-related articles and commentary on the web over the last few weeks. (While I’v…
Some science prizes are only for men
Say Someone has won the Nobel Prize for physics, perhaps the most prestigious honour (as awards go) for a physicist. What would it mean for all the future awards given to this Someone? One thing that…
Should journos pay scientists for their expertise?
I recently came across a question posed on Twitter, asking if experts whom journalists consult to write articles should be compensated for their labour, especially since, in the tweeter's words, &…
Notes on the NIF nuclear fusion breakthrough
My explainer/analysis of the US nuclear fusion breakthrough was published today. Some stuff didn't make it to the final draft for space and tone constraints; I'm publishing that below. 1. Whi…
Skyward light, wayward light
This is welcome news: … even if it's curious that three of the four officially stated reasons for designating this 'dark sky reserve' aren't directly related to the telescopes, and…
Science's humankind shield
"Science benefits all of humanity," they say.…
The strange beauty of Planck units
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…
The covering COP27 quandary
"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
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
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…