From comfortable summer wear to advanced geometry
A friend of mine got harem pants and was talking about how much more comfortable they were than a lungi in Chennai's current weather. A lungi is a long cylinder made of cloth (open at both ends of…
Science
363 posts
Finding trash in the dumpster
Just as there's no merit in writing a piece that is confused and incomplete, there's no merit in digging through a dumpster and complaining that there's trash. However, that doesn't me…
The Meerut mahayagya
Did some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the Meerut mahayagya, where a bunch of Hindu priests are burning 50 tonnes of mango wood and approx. 10 million tablespoons of ghee in a mega-ritual to…
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…
ISRO v. SpaceX doesn't make sense
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'
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
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…
On cancers, false balance and the judiciary
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…
The journey of a crow and the story of a black hole
The Washington Post has a review, and introduction therewith, of a curious new book called Ka, authored by John Crowley (acclaimed author of Great Work of Time). It is narrated from the POV of a crow…
Why a pump to move molten metal is awesome
The conversion of one form of energy into another is more efficient at higher temperatures.1 For example, one of the most widely used components of any system that involves the transfer of heat from o…
A problem worth its weight in salt
Pictures of Jupiter's moon Europa taken by the Galileo space probe between 1995 and 2003 support the possibility that Europa's surface has plate tectonics. In fact, scientists think it could b…
Why Titan is awesome #10
Titaaaaan! How much I've missed writing these posts since Cassini passed away. Unsurprisingly, it's after the probe's demise that we've really begun to realise how much of Cassini'…