A cultured evolution?
Can perceptions arising out of cultural needs override evolutionary goals in the long-run? For example, in India, the average marriage-age is in the late 20s now. Here, the (popular) tradition is to frown down upon, and…
October 2012
Plotting a technological history of journalism
Electric telegraph July 27, 1866 – SS Great Eastern completes laying of Transatlantic telegraphic cables By 1852, miles of American telegraphic wires had grown from 40 in 1846 to 23,000 In 1849-1869, telegraphic mileage had…
A case of Kuhn, quasicrystals & communication – Part IV
Dan Shechtman won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2011. This led to an explosion of interest on the subject of QCs and Shechtman’s travails in getting the theory validated. Numerous publications, from Reuters to The…
A case of Kuhn, quasicrystals & communication – Part III
The doctrine of incommensurability arises out of the conflict between two paradigms and the faltering of communications between the two adherent factions. According to Kuhn, scientists are seldom inclined to abandon the paradigm at the…
A case of Kuhn, quasicrystals & communication – Part II
Did science journalists find QCs anomalous? Did they report the crisis period as it happened or as an isolated incident? Whether they did or did not will be indicative of Kuhn’s influence on science journalism…
A case of Kuhn, quasicrystals & communication – Part I
Dan Shechtman’s discovery of quasi-crystals, henceforth abbreviated as QCs, in 1982 was a landmark achievement that invoked a paradigm-shift in the field of physical chemistry. However, at the time, the discovery faced stiff resistance from…
de Tocqueville & the news
That the switch from newspapers to digital handheld devices – for the purpose of sourcing all my news – is limited only by my comfort-level with technology is telling of some shortcoming of the print…
Notes: News aggregation
Access to multiple sources of news over the internet increases aspirations corresponding to news consumption: readers don’t have to restrict themselves anymore to news that we or they think will be useful to them. Consequently,…
Problems associated with studying the brain
Paul Broca announced in 1861 that the region of the brain now named after him was the “seat of speech”. Through a seminal study, researchers Nancy Kanwisher and Evelina Fedorenko from MIT announced on October…
Notes from my interaction with Dr. Kannan Soundararajan, Infosys Prize winner
My article on this interview and Dr. Soundararajan’s opinions appeared in The Hindu’s EducationPlus supplement on October 22, 2012 titled “It’s a mixed bag“. — Dr. Kannan Soundararajan is a professor at Stanford University and…
The notion of the Nobel Prizes
Some points generated during a discussion with a friend: The Nobel Prizes used to be definitive of the orientation of scientific research in the past; however, staying on top of all recognition now is impossible…
A note on the Nobel Peace Prize, 2012
Across six decades, the European Union has stressed repeatedly on the importance of democracy and human rights. In the process, it set up a system that offered great humanitarian, and therefore popular, benefits to nations…