The universe’s shape and its oldest light
The 3-torus is a strange and wonderful shape. We can’t readily visualise it because it has a complicated structure, but there’s a way. Imagine you’re standing inside a cube in which light is moving fr…
The New York Times
13 posts
Marginalia: On NewsClick, NYT, toolkits, etc.
The Bharatiya Janata Party in power in India knows that the process is the punishment, that the amount of punishment imposed depends on the law invoked in the chargesheet, and that no law is as ripe f…
NYT's ISRO coverage continues assault on sense
The New York Times refuses to learn, perpetuating views of ISRO that are equal parts blurry and illiterate, and often missing points that become clearer with just a little bit of closer reading. The l…
Is Dias bringing the bus back?
So Physical Review Letters formally retracted that paper about manganese sulphide, in the limelight for having been coauthored by Ranga P. Dias, yesterday. The retraction notice states: "Of the a…
NYT's profile of India's space startup scene
The New York Times published a 'profile' of the Indian spaceflight startup scene on July 4. The article is typical in that: a) by virtue of being published by one of the world's most-read…
The strange NYT article on taming minks
I'm probably waking up late to this but the New York Times has published yet another article in which it creates a false balance by first focusing on the problematic side of a story for an inordin…
What makes 'good science journalism'?
From 'Your Doppelgänger Is Out There and You Probably Share DNA With Them', The New York Times, August 23, 2022: Dr. Esteller also suggested that there could be links between facial features…
The climate change of bad news
This post flows a bit like the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket. As one friend put it, “It starts somewhere and then goes in a different direction.” This year hasn’t been beset by the same old steady driz…
Two sides of the road and the gutter next to it
I have a mid-October deadline for an essay so obviously when I started reading up on the topic this morning, I ended up on a different part of the web – where I found this: a piece by a journalist tal…
To watch 'The Post'
I read a few reviews of The Post. Based on what the critics are saying, it seems the film has at least the potential to raise the spirits of many journalists today who could use a leg up. That said, I…
Science journalism as an institutional undertaking
"The paper has been through many financial crises and Science Times has not been affected." These were the words of David Corcoran, Editor, NYT Science Times, who'd dropped by my NYU SHE…
No country for new journalism
Through an oped in Nieman Lab, Ken Doctor makes a timely case for explanatory - or explainer - journalism being far from a passing fad. Across the many factors that he argues contribute to its rise and persistence in western markets, there is evidence that he believes explainer journalism's historic…