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Yearly Archives: 2019
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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A windier world
A new paper in Nature Climate Change reports a reversal in “terrestrial stilling” since 2010 – i.e. global wind speeds, thought to be in decline thanks to deforestation and real estate development, actually stopped slowing around 2010 and have been … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged climate change, climate crisis, climate emergency, plastic, steel, terrestrial stilling, wind energy, wind turbine
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The circumstances in which scientists are science journos
On September 6, 2019, two researchers from Israel uploaded a preprint to the bioRxiv preprint server entitled ‘Can scientists fill the science journalism void? Online public engagement with two science stories authored by scientists’. Two news sites invited scientists to … Continue reading
Starlink and astronomy
SpaceX’s Starlink constellation is currently a network of 120+ satellites and which, in the next decade, will expand to 10,000+ to provide low-cost internet from space around the world. Astronomers everywhere have been pissed off with these instruments because they … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm
Tagged Blue Origin, Cerro Tololo, Elon Musk, Facebook Athena, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission, geosynchronous orbit, International Astronomical Union, International Telecommunications Union, Iridium constellation, Jeff Bezos, low-cost internet, low-Earth orbit, OneWeb, satellite constellation, SpaceX, Starlink, Starlink mega-constellation, VLEO
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The press office
A press-officer friend recently asked me for pointers on how he could help journalists cover the research institute he now works at better. My response follows: Avoid the traditional press release format and use something like Axios’s. answer the key … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged Axios, Creative Commons, Flickr, open knowledge, press office, press release, public outreach, science communication
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Two things
First As a professional science journalist, I’ve accrued a long list of ‘contacts’ in India and abroad, so whenever I discuss my career prospects with friends, I’m often told that I’m well-setup to become a freelancer. However, I recently realised … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
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Does Kangana have to look like J.J. to portray J.J.?
The poster for a new biographical feature about former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa is out, featuring Kangana Ranaut: At first glance, it’s not evident that the woman in the picture is Ranaut, nor even Jayalalithaa, but in an … Continue reading
Accumulation then philanthropy
Peter Woit’s review of a new book about Jim Simons, the mathematician and capitalist who set up the Simons Foundation, which funds math and physics research around the world but principally in the West to the tune of $300 million … Continue reading
To see faces where there are none
This week in “neither university press offices nor prestigious journals know what they’re doing”: a professor emeritus at Ohio University who claimed he had evidence of life on Mars, and whose institution’s media office crafted a press release without thinking … Continue reading