Monthly Archives: January 2019

A very big sentence

Posted on January 16, 2019 by

Writing on analytic philosophy is apparently very complex. One essay published on 3QD argues that it actually needs to be that way, and quotes a linguist quoting a philosopher to make its case. The quotation goes thus: In arguing for … Continue reading →

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Driving down the moderated way

Posted on January 10, 2019 by

There’s a really yucky scene in the really yucky movie based on the half-yucky book Atlas Shrugged. A copper-mining tycoon who blew up his own mines says in a conversation with his railroad-tycoon friend, “They say money is the root … Continue reading →

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Stupidity at the science congress

Posted on January 8, 2019 by

Load Twitter on the browser. Scroll down, scroll down further, keep going, stop… What’s that? Meh, keep scrolling. Correlation is not causation – but it’s really hard to set aside the fact that India’s ruling party has empowered a clutch … Continue reading →

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Beating pseudoscience at the ISC

Posted on January 6, 2019 by

The following notes are specifically about VijayRaghavan’s post. My overall reaction to the stupidity on display at the ISC is recorded here. At a conference at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in August 2018, K. VijayRaghavan said that the media … Continue reading →

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A tribute to Tolkien

Posted on January 6, 2019 by

Instead of dismissing it with a gracious modesty, I’m going to shamelessly record for posterity that The Master quoted in Anand Venkateswaran’s essay on J.R.R. Tolkien in The Hindu Literary Review is yours truly. The full text of my quote … Continue reading →

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Charge-ordering and Cooper pairs

Posted on January 6, 2019 by

There are many kinds of materials that become superconductors at low temperatures. One famous kind is the cuprates, compounds of copper and oxygen. Some cuprates have been known to become superconductors at temperatures higher than most other materials (although they’re … Continue reading →

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ISRO’s Project ADMIRE

Posted on January 2, 2019 by

A member of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has confirmed it has made progress on its plan to test a new class of reusable rockets. B.N. Suresh, an honorary distinguished professor at ISRO, discussed some details of the ADMIRE … Continue reading →

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