Some empathy for Treebeard's privilege
There's a line from The Two Towers (2002) that's really stayed with me: I'm on nobody's side because nobody is on my side. It's spoken by Treebeard, the Ent, to one of Meriadoc/P…
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Appa Rao Podile made fellow of science academy that published his problem paper – some questions
Appa Rao Podile, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, has been elected a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in spite of one of his three papers – which The Wire…
Gigernama / 'A man dressed in black with a tube under his arm'
On May 12, 2014, about half a week before the Lok Sabha election votes were to be counted, ahead of the result that would catapult the BJP to power with an overwhelming majority in the lower house of…
Taking the ringdown route to understanding the humans of science
What follows is an attempt to process and understand Cassandra Willyard's post on Last Word on Nothing, about her preferring the humanised stories of science over the stories of the science itself…
On that 'Last Word on Nothing' post
A post published on the Last Word On Nothing blog yesterday has been creating quite the stir on Twitter. Excerpt: Physics writers, this is how you nab the physics haters — human emotion. You can expl…
Hair conditioners and immortality
I'm not a fan of cosmetic products whatsoever. The most I use is a bar of soap, a bottle of shampoo, a smaller bottle of coconut oil and the occasional earbud. Maybe a bottle of deodorant when I&#…
Confused thoughts on embargoes
Seventy! That's how many observatories around the world turned their antennae to study the neutron-star collision that LIGO first detected. So I don't know why the LIGO Collaboration, and Natu…
Neutron stars
When the hype for the announcement of the previous GW detection was ramping up, I had a feeling LIGO was about to announce the detection of a neutron-star collision. It wasn't to be – but in my ex…
Drama along the line of sight
TIL one reason some of us are so dejected and furious at the TV when in, a cricket match being telecast live, a fielder appears to miss catching the ball even though it looks like he easily could have…
By the way: the Chekhov's gun and the science article
"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." (source) This is the principle of the Chekhov's…
Before seeing, there are the ways of imaging
When May-Britt Moser, Edvard Moser and John O'Keefe were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine "for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the b…
Are the papers behind this year's Nobel Prizes in the public domain?
Note: One of my editors thought this post would work for The Wire as well, so it's been republished there. "… for the greatest benefit of mankind" – these words are scrawled across a ba…