Category Archives: Life notes
Happy new year!
2017 was a blast. Lots of things happened. The world became a shittier place in many ways and better in a few. Mostly, Earth just went around the Sun once more, and from what we know, it’s going to be … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged anxiety, blogging, Chennai, depression, science journalism
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A shorter article about short gamma ray bursts lights up little
Identify a simple and well-defined question Describe the question and answer it Get the fuck out Writing with these three rules in mind makes for a good science article. You stick to the point, you know what details to include … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged BusinessLine, gamma-ray bursts, gravitational waves, GW170817, LIGO, neutron star mergers, science journalism, short gamma ray bursts, The Hindu
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The journey of a crow and the story of a black hole
The Washington Post has a review, and introduction therewith, of a curious new book called Ka, authored by John Crowley (acclaimed author of Great Work of Time). It is narrated from the POV of a crow named Dar Oakley, who … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Science
Tagged Alexei Starobinsky, black hole information paradox, black holes, Dar Oakley, Hawking radiation, John Crowley, Ka, no hair conjecture, Stephen Hawking, Yakov Zel'dovich
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In solidarity with Nautilus’s writers
In April this year, Undark published a piece that caught me by surprise: Nautilus magazine was going broke. Actually, it wasn’t a surprise that lasted long. Nautilus, to me, had been doing a commendable job of being ‘the New Yorker … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged AAAS, American Association for the Advancement of Science, business models, John Steele, journalism, Michael Segal, Nautilus, science journalism, Undark
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Ruins of the Sutlej avulsion paper’s coverage
Reporting on the new Indus civilisation study out of IIT-K and Imperial College London was an interesting experience because it afforded an opportunity to discover how the technical fields of sedimentology and hydrodynamics can help understand the different ways in … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged fluviodeltaic morphodynamics, Ghaggar-Hakra palaeochannel, hydrodynamics, Indus river, Indus valley civilisation, river avulsion, science communication, science journalism, science writing, sedimentology, Sutlej river
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The language and bullshitness of ‘a nearly unreadable paper’
Earlier today, the Retraction Watch mailing list highlighted a strange paper written by a V.M. Das disputing the widely accepted fact that our body clocks are regulated by the gene-level circadian rhythm. The paper is utter bullshit. Sample its breathless … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Scicomm
Tagged pseudoscience, scientific papers, scientific publishing, Second language, University Grants Commission, vernacular languages
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The blog and the social media
Because The Wire had signed up to be some kind of A-listed publisher with Facebook, The Wire‘s staff was required to create Facebook Pages under each writer/editor’s name. So I created the ‘Vasudevan Mukunth’ page. Then, about 10 days ago, … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged 140 characters, blogging, Facebook, social network, The Wire, Twitter, Vasudevan Mukunth
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