Monthly Archives: January 2020
The Resistance of the Time
Let us visit the future – a suitable point of time located in one of the many tomorrows ahead of us, a tomorrow far enough to have left The Time behind. What do we see? We see, among other things, … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged Adolf Eichmann, August Kranti Maidan, banality of evil, Citizenship Amendment Act, cynicism, fascism, Hannah Arendt, Jantar Mantar, Joseph Brodsky, Morgoth Bauglir, Nuremberg trials, peace, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Valluvar Kottam
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The pocket-sized accelerator
The world’s largest machine is called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It’s in the shape of a ring with a circumference of 26 km, and cost $3.4 billion (Rs 24,262 crore) and 12 years to build. Using millions of electrical … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged acceleration gradient, ACHIP, biofuels production, cargo screening, flue gas treatment, inverse design, laser plasma acceleration, materials processing, particle accelerator, photonic circuit, photonic integrated circuit, Robert L Byer, slab waveguide, sterilisation, tabletop accelerator, wakefield accelerator, water treatment
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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 this: But … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Op-eds, Science
Tagged human condition, Kiran Bedi, NASA, pseudoscience, science communication, scientism, sympathy
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Injustice ex machina
There are some things I think about but struggle to articulate, especially in the heat of an argument with a friend. Cory Doctorow succinctly captures one such idea here: Empiricism-washing is the top ideological dirty trick of technocrats everywhere: they … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Tech
Tagged anti-intellectualism, artificial intelligence, capitalism, Cory Doctorow, Evgeny Morozov, globalisation, machine learning, middle-class aspirations, nationalism, populism, technological solutionism
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Sci-fi past the science
There’s an interesting remark in the introductory portion of this article by Zeynep Tufekci (emphasis added): At its best, though, science fiction is a brilliant vehicle for exploring not the far future or the scientifically implausible but the interactions among science, technology … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science
Tagged Arthur C Clarke, Elon Musk, human condition, human spaceflight, Jeff Bezos, politics, sci-fi, science fiction, social science, Zeynep Tufekci
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