Category Archives: Uncategorized

There’s a formula in thermodynamics 101 called Carnot’s theorem that goes like this: This is a famous equation because it defines the absolute upper limit of efficiency achievable by a heat engine, irrespective of how much its performance is optimised. … Continue reading →

I’ve had migraines since 2006, when I started college. The pain is excruciating, disabling, ruinous, usually on both sides of my head. I can sense a migraine coming 12-24 hours beforehand, in the form of a small sphere of ache … Continue reading →

There are many similarities between Kaala, Pa Ranjith’s second flick with Rajinikanth, and their first film together, Kabali (2016). The thematic one is the most obvious, where Ranjith focuses on class mobility, caste discrimination and social welfare and brings them into … Continue reading →

I’m no artist, nor a scholar of art. I can’t analyse images to pick out patterns. Heck, I think an image is well-crafted only because those commentators I trust have said it. My admiration of formal art is only by … Continue reading →

I received an email from a fellow journalist last week with the following subject: Banks wont recover even half of the Rs 4,000,000,000,000 bad loans of 37 companies That number with all those zeroes is four trillion. It’s a large … Continue reading →

It had to come to this at some point, and here we are finally. To undertake a challenge to write one blog post a day – when I’ve mentioned to my friends and colleagues that I’m doing this, all of … Continue reading →

There’s a report in Science dated June 8 with the headline ‘Middleweight black holes found at last’. The abstract describes an effort by an “international team” of astronomers to find intermediate-class black holes, which weigh more than tens of solar … Continue reading →

There were two developments in the news last week that were very important but at the same time didn’t get mainstream attention: Microsoft acquiring GitHub and the LHC collaboration’s measurement of the strength of the Higgs boson/top quark interaction. Before … Continue reading →

Until a few hours ago, I thought Harry S. Truman had been one of the worst-performing American presidents of all time. I was wrong. I’d spotted an infographic on Twitter, drawn up by FiveThirtyEight and talking about how Donald Trump … Continue reading →

Whenever I think of world-building – as in the fantasy exercise where you build out the lay of the land, and then the land itself where you’re going to situate your story – the first thing that comes to mind, … Continue reading →