Tag Archives: The Wire
Middle fingers to the NYT and NYer
American outlets will steal our journalists’ ideas and obfuscate memories of their initiative and the Indian government will treat them like they don’t exist. Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged Amruta Byatnal, New York Times, New Yorker, Project Pegasus, Ronan Farrow, The Wire
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Good luck with your Maggi
You know when you’re cooking a packet of Maggi noodles in a saucepan, and you haven’t used enough water or don’t move the stuff soon enough from the pan to a plate once it’s done cooking, and you’re basically left … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged 2020, causality, COVID-19, epidemic, Maggi Noodles, memories, pandemic, Paul Feyerabend, Penrose process, sense of time, The Wire, Thucydides
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A Q&A about my job and science journalism
A couple weeks ago, some students from a university in South India got in touch to ask a few questions about my job and about science communication. The correspondence was entirely over email, and I’m pasting it in full below … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged class symbols, copy editing, English language, grammar, journalism on the internet, newspapers, Science, science editor, science journalism, scientific method, scientism, The Wire, The Wire Science
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Eight years
On June 1 last year, I wrote: Today, I complete seven years of trying to piece together a picture of what journalism is and where I fit in. Today, I begin my ninth year as a journalist. I’m happy to … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged commemoration, focus, hope, progress, The Wire, The Wire Science
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Retrospective: The Wire Science in 2019
At the start of 2019, The Wire Science decided to focus more on issues of science and society, and this is reflected in the year-end list of our best stories (in terms of traffic and engagement; listed below). Most of our … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm, Science
Tagged democracy, Dinamalar, history of science, independent journalism, Indian Express, Mongabay, nationalism, Philosophy of Science, R&D, science communication, science journalism, social science, sociology of science, The Hindu, The Print, The Wire
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The gaudy-hued beast
When you wake up in the morning to news of four people who allegedly raped a woman having been shot to death by the police, it’s hard not to ask yourself what kind of country this is. It’s even harder … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged cynicism, extra-judicial killing, failure, journalism, mental health, misanthropy, relevance, reward mechanism, The Wire
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Firstpost’s selfish journalism
I’m sure you’ve heard of the concept of false balance, which is based on the conviction that there are two sides to every story even when there aren’t or when it’s not clear to anyone what the other side is. … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged Chandrayaan 2, Firstpost, helium-3, Indian Space Research Organisation, K Sivan, Moon, pseudoscience, The Wire
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Diversifying into other beats
I delivered my annual talk AMA at the NCBS science writing workshop yesterday. While the questions the students asked were mostly the same as last year (and the year before that), I also took the opportunity to request them to consider … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged chemical engineering, computer science, National Centre for Biological Sciences, NCBS Science Writing Workshop, physical sciences, quantum biology, science communication, science journalism, The Wire, theoretical particle physics
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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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