Category Archives: Culture
Climate change, like quantum physics, will strain language
One of the defining features of quantum mechanics is that it shows up human language, and thought supported by that language, to be insufficient and limited. Many of the most popular languages of the world, including Tamil, Hindi and English, … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science
Tagged causality, chaos theory, climate change, emergent phenomena, language, logograms, quantum entanglement, superposition
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Art is something for cryptocurrencies to con
Cryptocurrencies have emerged as a way to fund art, and therefore supposedly support artists, using the Trojan horse of NFTs. Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Culture
Tagged art trading, cryptocurrencies, NFT, non-fungible tokens, Yakov Golyadkin
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Streaming now: the 24/7 human centipede
Have you heard of ‘Bigg Boss Ultimate’? Continue reading
Posted in Culture
Tagged Big Brother franchise, Bigg Boss franchise, Bigg Boss Ultimate, celebrity culture, consumerism, The Human Centipede, Tom Six, voyeurism
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‘Steps in the right direction’ are not enough
To laud “steps in the right direction” is to flout an intentional ignorance of the government’s track record. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Scicomm
Tagged Ayushman Bharat, economic growth, editorials, Mudra Yojana, op-ed, PM-KISAN, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Smart Cities, Swachh Bharat
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Review of a review: ‘Rocket Boys’ (2022)
Tanul Thakur has reviewed a series on SonyLIV called Rocket Boys for The Wire. I haven’t watched the show and don’t plan to, for want of time as well as because, reading Thakur’s review, I think I know enough about how the series depicts the … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Culture, Science
Tagged Department of Atomic Energy, Homi Jehangir Bhabha, ISRO, Rocket Boys, scientific superpower, Vikram Sarabhai
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The new JNU VC’s statement has bad grammar. So?
I strongly disagree with some criticism that has emerged on Twitter against the new JNU vice-chancellor Santishree Pandit. The object of criticism is a statement that Pandit has apparently drafted and in which she states, broadly, what she considers to … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Culture
Tagged English language, Jawaharlal Nehru University, JNU VC, Mary Beard, Mary Norris, Santishree Pandit, Varun Gandhi
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Ricardo Bofill (1939-2022), architect
The Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill passed away on January 14, at the age of 82. I don’t know most of his work, which means this note of remembrance is less about Bofill the architect per se and more about Bofill the designer … Continue reading
Posted in Culture
Tagged Balearic Sea, brutalist architecture, La Muralla Roja, Ricardo Bofill, Squid Game, utopian living
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What I didn’t like about ‘Eternals’ (2021)
I rewatched Eternals today and had some time to collect some of my thoughts on it. Spoilers ahead (including one each for The Tomorrow War and Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings). Too much deus ex machina – took 55 minutes … Continue reading
Posted in Culture
Tagged Ajak, Bollywood, deus ex machina, Eternals, Gilgamesh, Ikaris, Last Contact, MCU, Shang-Chi, The Tomorrow War
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