Journalistic entropy
Say you need to store a square image 1,000 pixels wide to a side with the smallest filesize (setting aside compression techniques). The image begins with the colour #009900 on the left side and, as yo…
pseudoscience
29 posts
The life and death of 'Chemical Nova'
You know how people pretend to win an Oscar or a Nobel Prize, right? Many years ago, I used to pretend to be the author of a fictitious but, blissfully unmindful of its fictitiousness, award-winning s…
Nitin Gadkari, tomato chutney and blood
There is a famous comedy scene in Tamil cinema, starring the actors Vadivelu and 'Bonda' Mani. Those who understand Tamil should skip this awkward retelling – intended for non-Tamil speakers,…
'Hunters', sci-fi and pseudoscience
One of the ways in which pseudoscience is connected to authoritarian governments is through its newfound purpose and duty to supply an alternate intellectual tradition that subsumes science as well as…
Mad Mike: Foolish Road
On Sunday, an American thrill-seeker named Mike Hughes died after attempting to launch himself to an altitude of 5,000 feet on a homemade steam-powered rocket. A video of the accident is available bec…
A trumpet for Ramdev
The Print published an article entitled 'Ramdev’s Patanjali does a ‘first’, its Sanskrit paper makes it to international journal' on February 5, 2020. Excerpt: In a first, international scien…
A sympathetic science
If you feel the need to respond, please first make sure you have read the post in full. I posted the following tweet a short while ago: With reference to this: Which in turn was with reference to t…
The rationalists' eclipse
The annular solar eclipse over South India on December 26 provided sufficient cause for casual and/or inchoate rationalism to make a rare public appearance – rarer than the average person who had deci…
Trouble at the doorstep
When an alumnus of the IISc wanted to organise an astrology workshop at the institute's premises in 2017, students and various members of its teaching faculty rose in protest and wrote to the dire…
The alleged politicisation of science
"Don't politicise X" has become the defence of choice for a class of scientists and public intellectuals in India whose class and caste privilege utterly blinds them to various inequitie…
Firstpost's selfish journalism
I'm sure you've heard of the concept of false balance, which is based on the conviction that there are two sides to every story even when there aren't or when it's not clear to anyone…
Myth of harmful cell phone radiation is good business for IndiGo
When I fly, I always fly IndiGo. They’re not perfect but they and their services have become familiar, from their website (where I book my tickets) to when I exit the airport at my destination. The ef…