Analysis
The party-spirited cricket World Cup
Sharda Ugra's essay and the BCCI-BJP combine's presumption of zero resistance at the ICC Cricket World Cup
Analysis
Analysis
Infinity in 15 kilograms
While space is hard, there are also different kinds of hardness. For example, on April 15, ISRO issued a press release saying it had successfully tested nozzles made of a carbon-carbon composite that would replace those made of Columbium alloy in the PSLV rocket's fourth stage and thus
Analysis
Justice delayed but a ton of bricks await
From 'SC declines Ramdev, Patanjali apology; expresses concern over FMCGs taking gullible consumers ‘up and down the garden path’', The Hindu, April 10, 2024: The Supreme Court has refused to accept the unconditional apology from Patanjali co-founder Baba Ramdev and managing director Acharya Balkrishna for advertising medical products
Analysis
Feel the pain
Emotional decision making is in many contexts undesirable – but sometimes it definitely needs to be part of the picture, insofar as our emotions hold a mirror to our morals. When machines make decisions, the opportunity to consider the emotional input goes away. This is a recurring concern I'm
Analysis
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 programme director (space transportation systems) at VSSC… ISRO and DRDO really need to systematise
Analysis
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. Since the Election Commission's restrictions on poll candidates'
Analysis
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 products offer “permanent relief” from “blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, asthma and obesity” in its advertisements,
Analysis
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 national expenditure on R&D has fallen significantly since 1996,
Analysis
JPL layoff isn't the fall of a civilisation
A historian of science I follow on Twitter recently retweeted this striking comment: While I don’t particularly care for capitalism, the tweet is fair: the behemoth photolithography machine depicted here required advances in a large variety of fields over many decades to be built. If you played the game
Analysis
Poonam Pandey and peer-review
One dubious but vigorous narrative that has emerged around Poonam Pandey's "death" and subsequent return to life is that the mainstream media will publish "anything". To be sure, there were broadly two kinds of news reports after the post appeared on her Instagram handle
Analysis
Schrödinger's temple
On January 22, in a ceremony led by Prime Minister and now high-priest Narendra Modi, priests and officials allegedly consecrated the idol of Lord Ram at the new temple in Ayodhya, with many celebrities in attendance. ('Alleged' because I don't know if it's a
Analysis
ICC pitch-rating system is regulatory subversion
In today's edition of The Hindu, Rebecca Rose Varghese and Vignesh Radhakrishnan have a particularly noteworthy edition of their 'Data Point' column – 'noteworthy' because they've used data to make concrete something we've all been feeling for a while, in the