Yearly Archives: 2019

The climate and the A.I.

Posted on October 31, 2019 by VM

A few days ago, the New York Times and other major international publications sounded the alarm over a new study that claimed various coastal cities around the world would be underwater to different degrees by 2050. However, something seemed off; … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm, Science | Tagged artificial intelligence, climate change, climate emergency, global heating, Global warming, LIDAR, sea-level rise | Comments Off

The virtues of local travel

Posted on October 29, 2019 by VM

Here’s something I wish I’d read before overtourism and flygskam removed the pristine gloss of desirability from the selfies, 360º panoramas and videos the second-generation elites posted every summer on the social media: It’s ok to prioritize friendships, community, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Life notes, Op-eds | Tagged Bengaluru, climate change, Delhi, extractive capitalism, flygskam, grifter, Max Weber, mental health, overtourism, Protestant ethic, remote working, Silicon Valley, work from home | Comments Off

India’s Delhi-only air pollution problem

Posted on October 28, 2019 by VM

I woke up this morning to a PTI report telling me Delhi’s air quality had fallen to ‘very poor’ on Deepavali, the Hindu ostensible festival of lights, with many people defying the Supreme Court’s direction to burst firecrackers only between 8 pm … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Scicomm | Tagged CSIR National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, CSIR NEERI, decibels, Deepavali, Diwali, festival of lights, green firecrackers, Heinz Nixdorf Recall, human loudness, noise pollution, Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules 2000, sound pollution | Comments Off

The calculus of creative discipline

Posted on October 27, 2019 by VM

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building. World-building is dull. World-building literalises the urge to invent. World-building gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). World-building numbs … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Op-eds | Tagged classical mechanics, creative discipline, critical points, Dan Shechtman, differential calculus, EPR paradox, fantasy fiction, Imre Lakatos, JK Rowling, Karl Popper, literary criticism, M John Harrison, Malazan Book of the Fallen, mathematical analysis, nerdism, Niels Bohr, Paul Feyerabend, Philosophy of Science, quasicrystals, replication crisis, smooth functions, Steven Erikson, Thomas Kuhn, Viriconium, world-building | Comments Off

Scientism is not ‘nonsense’

Posted on October 24, 2019 by VM

The @realscientists rocur account on Twitter took a surprising turn earlier today when its current curator, Teresa Ambrosio, a chemist, tweeted the following: If I had to give her the benefit of doubt, I’d say she was pointing this tweet … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Tagged Colonialism, history of science, Real Scientists, science and society, scientific knowledge, scientism, STS, Twitter | Comments Off

IBT’s ice-nine effect on Newsweek

Posted on October 24, 2019 by VM

In his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut describes a fictitious substance called ice-nine: a crystalline form of water that converts all the liquid water it comes into contact with into more ice-nine. This is the sort of effect the International Business … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture | Tagged BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed model, Cat's Cradle, Columbia Journalism Review, CPM model, Daniel Tovrov, Facebook, Google, Google Pagerank, ice-nine, International Business Times, Kurt Vonnegut, late capitalism, Newsweek, search engine | Comments Off

Why are the Nobel Prizes still relevant?

Posted on October 16, 2019 by VM

Note: A condensed version of this post has been published in The Wire. Around this time last week, the world had nine new Nobel Prize winners in the sciences (physics, chemistry and medicine), all but one of whom were white … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Op-eds, Science | Tagged Abhijit Banerjee, Albert Einstein, Appa Rao Podile, Booker Prize, Brian Keating, Caltech, Chien-Shiung Wu, CV Raman, Esther Duflo, Fermilab, Göran Hansson, gender-based discrimination, Hindutva, Hugo Award, impact factor, Isaac Asimov, John B Goodenough, late capitalism, Lise Meitner, Margaret Atwood, nationalism, Nature journal, Nobel laureates, Nobel Prize, prestige bias, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sexism, The Big Bang Theory, Vera Rubin | Comments Off

Ad verecundiam

Posted on October 14, 2019 by VM

That Swedish group announced today that Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer are the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize for economics. Within minutes, my Twitter feed was awash with congratulations as well as links to criticisms Duflo and … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Abhijit Banerjee, ad verecundiam, demonetisation, Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer, Narendra Modi, Sendhil Mullainathan | Comments Off

New Scientist violates the laws of physics (updated)

Posted on October 12, 2019 by VM

A new article in the New Scientist begins with a statement of Newton’s third law that is blissfully ignorant of the irony. The article’s headline is: The magazine is notorious for its use of sensationalist headlines and seems to have done it again. Jon … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm | Tagged David Burns, em drive, helical drive, laws of physics, mass-energy equivalence, mass-energy-momentum equivalence, momentum, particle accelerator, special relativity | Comments Off

Trouble at the doorstep

Posted on October 11, 2019 by VM

When an alumnus of the IISc wanted to organise an astrology workshop at the institute’s premises in 2017, students and various members of its teaching faculty rose in protest and wrote to the director to have the event cancelled, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds, Science | Tagged astrology, mental health, pseudoscience, selective outrage, Sri Sri, Vedic heritage | Comments Off