The cost of forgetting Ballia
Actively papering over the effects of extreme weather has to be the most self-destructive thing we’re capable of in the climate change era.…
Analysis
257 posts
The party-spirited cricket World Cup
Sharda Ugra's essay and the BCCI-BJP combine's presumption of zero resistance at the ICC Cricket World Cup…
Infinity in 15 kilograms
While space is hard, there are also different kinds of hardness. For example, on April 15, ISRO issued a press release saying it had successfully tested nozzles made of a carbon-carbon composite that…
Justice delayed but a ton of bricks await
From 'SC declines Ramdev, Patanjali apology; expresses concern over FMCGs taking gullible consumers ‘up and down the garden path’', The Hindu, April 10, 2024: The Supreme Court has refused to…
Feel the pain
Emotional decision making is in many contexts undesirable – but sometimes it definitely needs to be part of the picture, insofar as our emotions hold a mirror to our morals. When machines make decisio…
Will 'Surya' launch bombs or satellites?
From Times of India, March 14, 2024: ISRO chairman S. Somanath confirmed to TOI in an exclusive interview that the NGLV project, internally named “SOORYA”, will be headed by (Project Director/PD) S.…
The missile test before the polls
On March 27, 2019, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) conducted 'Mission Shakti': India's first anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test. After the event, the national broa…
Government by Supreme Court
On February 27, a bench of the Supreme Court upbraided Patanjali Ayurved and its chairman Acharya Balkrishna for continuing to disparage systems of medicine other than Ayurveda (technically, what it c…
Why not increase ISRO's budget?
This post is in response to a question on Reddit about why the Indian government won’t increase ISRO’s space budget. There’s a good analogy in India’s research budget. As a share of the GDP, the nati…
JPL layoff isn't the fall of a civilisation
A historian of science I follow on Twitter recently retweeted this striking comment: While I don’t particularly care for capitalism, the tweet is fair: the behemoth photolithography machine depicte…
Poonam Pandey and peer-review
One dubious but vigorous narrative that has emerged around Poonam Pandey's "death" and subsequent return to life is that the mainstream media will publish "anything". To be su…
Schrödinger's temple
On January 22, in a ceremony led by Prime Minister and now high-priest Narendra Modi, priests and officials allegedly consecrated the idol of Lord Ram at the new temple in Ayodhya, with many celebriti…