Monthly Archives: May 2018
Sexual harassment, etc.
The name of Sadanand Menon had found mention in Raya Sarkar’s list last year. Since then, a journalist and former student of the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) had published an article in The News Minute about how a noted scholar and … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds
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The technically correct strapline
(Re)Stumbled upon this article, by Ed Yong in The Atlantic, July 2016, this morning. As usual, it is rivetingly packaged. The strapline in particular caught my eye: Biology textbooks tell us that lichens are alliances between two organisms—a fungus and … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged curiosity gap, Facebook, headline, inverted pyramid, journalism, lichen, social media, The Atlantic, Twitter
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Reminiscing about ‘World of Warcraft’
I got into fantasy because my reality growing up was no good. The first videogame I played and really enjoyed, almost to the point of obsessing over it every available second, was Command & Conquer’s Red Alert 2. I believe … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged Azeroth, Burning Legion, Defence of the Ancients, Illidan Stormrage, Lich King, MMORPG, Sargeras, Sylvanas Windrunner, Varian Wrynn, World of Warcraft
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Something worse than a flat-Earth society
Read two interesting articles this morning: 1. An editorial in the Indian Express about how India is the “land of the gullible”, where even the “mere trappings of science suffice to tantalise” people into believing BS and coughing up fortunes … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged flat earth society, knowledge is power, Michael Foucault, Ramar Pillai
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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 efficiency with which the … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged background radiation, cell phone radiation, IndIGO, ionising radiation, Phoni3, pseudoscience, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India
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The case for preprints
Daniel Mansur, the principal investigator of a lab at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina that studies how cells respond to viruses, had this to say about why preprints are useful in an interview to eLife: Let’s say the paper that … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged impact factor, paywall, preprints, research, scientific publishing
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How cut-throat competition forces scientists to act against the collective
Brian Keating, an astrophysicist who led the infamous cosmic inflation announcement in 2014, thinks this is how science works: “… you put out a result, and other scientists work to test the result”. However, his own story shows that this is a … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
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