End of the line
The folks at The Wire have laid The Wire Science to rest, I’ve learnt. The site hasn’t published any (original) articles since February 2 and its last tweet was on February 16, 2024. At the…
March 2024
The foundation of shit
I’ve been a commissioning editor in Indian science, health, and environment journalism for a little under a decade. I’ve learnt many lessons in this time but one in particular still surprises me. Whenever I receive…
A new tradition
This screenshot is from ESPN Cricinfo’s live commentary for the Chennai Super Kings versus Gujarat Titans IPL match on March 26, 2024. Super Kings captain Ruturaj Gaikwad got out caught behind off the bowling of…
Happy Lord of the Rings Day
War is on all our minds these days. There is a war happening in Ukraine and something barely resembling a war (because it’s a genocide) in Gaza. Governments have been fond of casting our collective…
Reassurance by electoral bond
The electoral bonds release has been reassuring on one count. For some time after the (new) BJP first rose to power in 2014, with a groundswell of support (but arguably also because of the ‘first…
Will ‘Surya’ launch bombs or satellites?
From Times of India, March 14, 2024: ISRO chairman S. Somanath confirmed to TOI in an exclusive interview that the NGLV project, internally named “SOORYA”, will be headed by (Project Director/PD) S. Sivakumar, currrently the…
The missile test before the polls
On March 27, 2019, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) conducted ‘Mission Shakti’: India’s first anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test. After the event, the national broadcaster broadcast an hour-long speech by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.…
Farce and friction over an Indian astronaut
When we met Mr [Morarji] Desai, he was totally relaxed even after the long journey from Delhi. Squatting on a carpet in the Kremlin and spinning his favourite charka, he received us very gracefully and…
To the moon – or the stock market?
Now this is quite upsetting. I learn from Jatan Mehta’s Moon Monday #166 that Intuitive Machines – the maker of the Odysseus spacecraft that landed on the moon on February 22 – may have lied…
When metastable systems fail to become stable…
‘Metastable systems’ is a technical term for something you’ve definitely experienced in your daily life, as much as scientists often encounter it when studying subatomic particles. Say you’re sitting on a chair and are getting…
Government by Supreme Court
On February 27, a bench of the Supreme Court upbraided Patanjali Ayurved and its chairman Acharya Balkrishna for continuing to disparage systems of medicine other than Ayurveda (technically, what it calls Ayurveda) and claiming its…
Why not increase ISRO’s budget?
This post is in response to a question on Reddit about why the Indian government won’t increase ISRO’s space budget. There’s a good analogy in India’s research budget. As a share of the GDP, the…