The importance of sensible politics to good science
Stuart Ritchie writes a newsletter-blog that I quite like, called Science Fictions. On May 30, he published a post on this blog entitled 'Science is political - and that's a bad thing'. I…
Brahmins
6 posts
A Brahmin wedding
I was at a wedding this weekend. It had a distinct Omelas-like quality throughout. For most of the elders present, it was an oru naal koothu — a single-day celebration that has been many weeks in the…
Don't donate bad food and call it 'dharma'
There's a troubling pattern among some people who give food away to homeless people and beggars. I have seen this happen first-hand with my folks, my extended family and their wider group of neig…
NCBS fracas: In defence of celebrating retractions
Continuing from here… Irrespective of Arati Ramesh's words and actions, I find every retraction worth celebrating because how hard-won retractions in general have been, in India and abroad. I don…
Caste, and science's notability threshold
A webinar by The Life of Science on the construct of the 'scientific genius' just concluded, with Gita Chadha and Shalini Mahadev, a PhD scholar at HCU, as panellists. It was an hour long and…
Curious Bends – macaroni scandal, bilingual brain, beef-eating Hindus and more
1. The great macaroni scandal in the world began in Kerala "'Only the upper class people of our larger cities are likely to have tasted macaroni, the popular Italian food. It is made from wh…