The ignoble president and the Nobel Prize
What is the collective noun for a group of Nobel laureates? I'm considering ballast. A ballast of Nobel laureates is appealing because these people, especially if they are all white and male, ofte…
Donald Trump
20 posts
The WHA coronavirus resolution is not great for science
On May 19, member states of the WHO moved a vote in the World Health Assembly (WHA), asking for an independent investigation into the sources of the novel coronavirus. Their exact demands were spelle…
A personal manifesto
Many people who are unsure of how their work can help put out the various (figurative) fires ravaging the country at the moment often quickly conclude that purpose is best found at the frontlines of t…
Accumulation then philanthropy
Peter Woit's review of a new book about Jim Simons, the mathematician and capitalist who set up the Simons Foundation, which funds math and physics research around the world but principally in the…
Two sides of the road and the gutter next to it
I have a mid-October deadline for an essay so obviously when I started reading up on the topic this morning, I ended up on a different part of the web – where I found this: a piece by a journalist tal…
False equivalency
Margaret Sullivan in the Washington Post on August 16: “The whole doctrine of objectivity in journalism has become part of the [media’s] problem,” Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York Univer…
Establishing trust across the aisle on issues of climate change
Making people anxious even to ask honest questions, and robbing them of the opportunity to respectfully disagree, isn't good for science.…
The metaphorical transparency of responsible media
We in India often complain about how the media doesn't care enough to cover science stories. But when we're looking back and forward in time, we become blind to the media's efforts.…