Category Archives: Life notes
How science is presented and consumed on Facebook
This post is a breakdown of the Pew study titled The Science People See on Social Media, published March 21, 2018. Without further ado… In an effort to better understand the science information that social media users encounter on these … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Scicomm
Tagged Facebook, IFLScience, Mehmet Oz, Pew Research Center, scientific discoveries, scientific research, social media, social network, Twitter, user engagement
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Happy Lord of the Rings Day!
The Malazan Book of the Fallen fantasy series exhibited a rabid yet desirable iconoclasm, through which its author Steven Erikson elucidated every trope of epic fantasy and then shit on it. I came out of reading the series feeling like … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged fantasy fiction, gateway drugs, Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings day, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Manitoba shlimbo, reading, Steven Erikson
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Looking for gemstones in the gutter
Just the other day, I’d mentioned to a friend that Steven Pinker was one of those rare people whose ideas couldn’t be appreciated by proxy, such as through the opinions of other authority figures, but had to be processed individually. … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Op-eds
Tagged cherry-picking, Culture, Enlightenment Now, George Monbiot, history, Jerry Coyne, moral authority, ontology, Pharyngula, PZ Myers, scientism, sociology, Steven Pinker, Why evolution is true
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On that Poynter debate about stock images and ethical visual journalism
Response to Mark Johnson, Article about free images ‘contradicts everything I hold true about journalism’, Poynter, February 9, 2018. ∞ Let’s get the caveats out of the way: The article to which Johnson is responding did get some of its messaging wrong. … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Op-eds, Tech
Tagged CC-BY license, copyright, Creative Commons, digital commons, journalism, Mark Johnson, multimedia, Open Access, podcast, Poynter, Public domain, royalty, video journalism, visual journalism
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ISRO v. SpaceX doesn’t make sense
Though I’ve never met the guy, I don’t hold Pallava Bagla in very high regard because his stories – particularly of the Indian space programme – for NDTV have often reeked of simplistic concerns, pettiness and, increasingly of late, a … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Op-eds, Science
Tagged Antrix, Arianespace, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO, K Sivan, NASA, NDTV, PSLV, reusable launch vehicle, SpaceX
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Dealing with plagiarism? Look at thy neighbour
Four doctors affiliated with Kathmandu University (KU) in Nepal are going to be fired because they plagiarised data in two papers. The papers were retracted last year from the Bali Medical Journal, where they had been published. A dean at … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Scicomm
Tagged Bali Medical Journal, English, Kathmandu University, plagiarism, Praveen Chaddah, Retraction Watch, retractions
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To watch ‘The Post’
I read a few reviews of The Post. Based on what the critics are saying, it seems the film has at least the potential to raise the spirits of many journalists today who could use a leg up. That said, … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Op-eds
Tagged journalism, Meryl Streep, Pentagon Papers, political journalism, science journalism, The New York Times, The Post, The Washington Post, Tom Hanks, Vietnam War
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Limitations of the Finkbeiner test
This post was republished on The Wire on January 8, 2018. The Finkbeiner test, named for science writer Ann Finkbeiner, was created to check whether a profile of a female scientist published by a mainstream news outlet was produced in the … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Scicomm
Tagged affirmative action, Ann Finkbeiner, Finkbeiner test, science journalism, The Life of Science, women in STEM
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WordPress’s ineptitude
As some of you might know, I’ve been having some issues with WordPress.com in terms of their UX, their service as well as a few outages. I’ve been on the platform for almost a decade now, during which my account … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
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