Category Archives: Culture
Why we need *some* borders between us
Borders are often a bad thing because they create separation that is unconducive for what are generally considered to be socially desirable outcomes. And they’re often instituted to maximise political outcomes, especially of the electoral variety. However, as electoral politics … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Op-eds
Tagged #MeToo, affirmative action, borders, deliberative democracy, democratic society, higher education, human spaceflight, leaky pipeline, privilege, quota system, reservations, SpaceX, status quo
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Partial review: ‘Hitler’s Circle of Evil’ (2018)
Hitler’s Circle of Evil is a documentary series on Netflix that narrates the lives and actions of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle, leading up to and during the Second World War. This is a partial review because it is based on … Continue reading
Posted in Culture
Tagged Adolf Hitler, Berchtesgaden, Berghof, Ernst Rohm, fascism, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, Hitler's Circle of Evil, interwar Germany, Joseph Goebbels, lebensraum, Martin Bormann, Mein Kampf, Nazi Party, Nazism, Netflix, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolph Hess, Second World War, Third Reich, World War II
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Review: ‘Paatal Lok’ (2020)
I binge-watched Paatal Lok today, a show on Amazon Prime India about a cynical cop who is all too familiar with how the The System works and who gets a high profile case by chance – to investigate a conspiracy … Continue reading
Posted in Culture
Tagged Amazon Prime India, Ayodhya, Bundelkhand, caste violence, communalism, gratuitous violence, Hathoda Tyagi, Hindi heartland, Jigarthanda, Neeraj Kabi, neo noir, Paatal Lok, Punjab, right-wing politics, Super Deluxe, trans-women, Uttar Pradesh
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In defence of ignorance
Wish I may, wish I mightHave this wish, I wish tonightI want that star, I want it nowI want it all and I don’t care how Metallica, King Nothing I’m a news editor who frequently uses Twitter to find new … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Culture
Tagged conspiracy theories, Dunning-Kruger effect, expertise, fear of missing out, FOMO, hot air, human psychology, ignorance, information overload, Jose Luis Borges, social media, The Souffle, the thing itself, Twitter
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Lord of the Rings Day
A happy Lord of the Rings Day to you! (Previous editions: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014) Every year I pen a commemorative piece about Lord of the Rings, and share something about the books and films that I think about … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Life notes
Tagged Black Leopard Red Wolf, Deepanjana Pal, Denethor, Discworld, ergodic, fantasy, fantasy fiction, Faramir, Gautam Shenoy, inventiveness, JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Steven Erikson, Supriya Nair, Ted Chiang, Terry Pratchett, Thomas Manuel
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‘Hunters’, sci-fi and pseudoscience
One of the ways in which pseudoscience is connected to authoritarian governments is through its newfound purpose and duty to supply an alternate intellectual tradition that subsumes science as well as culminates in the identitarian superiority of a race, culture … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Scicomm, Science
Tagged Adolf Hitler, Bharatiya Janata Party, civil aviation, Delhi riots, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, electricity, ethnic cleansing, Hindutva, Hunters, identity politics, John Forster, Nazism, occult, provincialism, pseudoscience, sci-fi, science fiction, technology, The Coming Race, Vril
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Review: ‘Hunters’ (2020)
Just binge-watched the first season of Hunters, the bizarre Amazon Prime original about a covert group of Jews in 1970s’ New York city tracking down and killing Nazis who were integrated by the US government into American society under Operation … Continue reading
Posted in Culture
Tagged Al Pacino, Amazon Prime, conspiracy theories, Hunters, moral dilemma, Nazism, Operation Paperclip
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Writing itself is fantasy
The symbols may have been laid down on paper or the screen in whatever order but when we read, we read the words one at a time, one after another – linearly. Writing, especially of fiction, is an act of … Continue reading
Posted in Culture
Tagged Ariekei, Arrival, China Miéville, Dune, Embassytown, Flatland, Frank Herbert, Harry Potter, heptapods, Higgs boson, higher dimensions, hypersphere, language, linguistics, nonlinear storytelling, nonlinearity, Orson Scott Card, sphericity, three dimensions, time, varelse
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Peter Higgs, self-promoter
I was randomly rewatching The Big Bang Theory on Netflix today when I spotted this gem: Okay, maybe less a gem and more a shiny stone, but still. The screenshot, taken from the third episode of the sixth season, shows … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science
Tagged C.R. Hagen, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Englert, Francois Englert, Gerald Guralnik, Gerardus t Hooft, Greenpeace, Higgs, Higgs boson, Higgs mechanism, Large Hadron Collider, particle physics, Peter Higgs, Philip Warren Anderson, Robert Brout, Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory, Tom Kibble, Wolf Prize
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Review: ‘Parasite’ (2019)
In 2011, the Dalit rights scholar and activist Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd (then only Kancha Ilaiah) addressed a room of 150 or so students of the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. In the first 20 minutes of his speech, he spoke … Continue reading
Posted in Culture
Tagged Bong Joon-ho, caste guilt, class conflict, cognitive function, Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, Parasite, Parasite film, Poverty, Sendhil Mullainathan, Shaheen Bagh
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