Entries from July 2009
In academia, peer review can get thankless. More so, if you do one per week, right through the year and still keep receiving review-pending reminders. I haven’t reached that hectic visibility yet, but do enough to already feel swamped.
No real complaint. Peer review is part of my job.
The thing that most reviewers dread is not those standard peer-review requests that provide enough duration for completion of the task with enough competence. It is the unexpected, one-night-stands, rather demands, that put us off. The anguish felt as a reviewer is measurably more than that felt as an author, awaiting the review results of our submitted paper.
Real complaint. Overnight peer review is (also) part of my job.
But this micro-muse has a happy ending.
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Categories: Academics · Muse
Tagged: arts, dekora art, fusion art, indian art, paintings, peer review, worli art
It is not waste of time for scientists to engage the public by popularizing the science practised by them. But there is strong evidence that, at least in India, internet is not the medium to pursue such popularization. Earlier, I have argued otherwise – read here, here and here. But I wasn’t aware of the statistically vindicated evidence, right here on the web. It doubly argues for my case – with its statistics and my neglect of it on the web.
Observe below, the two key survey results from the 2004 Indian Science Survey Report – pdf of full report available from Indian National Science Academy website. The survey sample-set includes all slices of Indian public – from urban to rural, educated to illiterate, dinkys to paupers. Even with a similar 2009 (or 2020) survey, I don’t think the result would be very different from this.
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Categories: Academics · Micro Muse
Tagged: indian public, indian science, indian science literacy, indian science report, public science literacy, Science, science and technology, science blogging, science education, science literacy, science outreach, science writing, Technology
How much do we like Science? How much has Science contributed to our welfare? How much do we regard scientists? As the public of a nation or the World, how would we answer these questions? Perhaps with subjective answers accompanied with a bright nod or a rueful shake of the head.
How much Science then, is the least we should be knowing as public?
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Categories: Academics · Science Notes
Tagged: indian national science academy, indian science, indian science literacy, online science quiz, pew research survey, public science education, public science interest, Science, science education, science literacy
Flaunting book-lists in our blogs doesn’t qualify us as scholars. Presenting a movie list doesn’t make us one either. Such lists perhaps convey only the narcissist identity crisis the list-maker unabashedly conceals in the stated sharing.
There, I have come clean of my motive. Allow me to present a list of movies I watched in part or full in the past three months. Not all of them are new movies and the listing is random in order with few comments wherever I could muster them.
Before the list, a note on my tastes. I am a sucker for comedy and gentle humor. Gentler the better. Next comes adventure and romance, including all sorts of action slam-bang but I stop short of glorifying violence and human depravity. Bitter-sweet is fine, but sweeter the finer. I watch movies (or attempt an art) to enjoy and feel inspired. Not to get depressed and pessimistic with life.
My recommendations carry a [*] next to it. Your judgment should still save you.
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Categories: Movies · Muse
Tagged: adventure movies, akira kurosawa, alfred hitchcock, blake edwards, cinema, classics, comedy movies, drama, great movies, humor movies, ingmar bergman, jacques tati, jim jarmusch, kamal haasan, mel brooks, peter sellers, spielberg
