News Scientist is currently featuring a story titled “Unsung Heroines: Five Women Denied Scientific Glory.” The woman scientists featured are: Hertha Ayrton, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Gerty Cori (an odd choice given she was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize), Rosalind Franklin, and Lise Meitner. For my money, of the stories told here, those ofContinue reading “Unsung Heroines and Premature Glory”
Author Archives: Samir Chopra
The Mad Men Can’t Quite Get Hold Of Me
A year or so ago, I wrote my first brief response to AMC’s Mad Men. Three episodes in, I described it as ‘grim’ and a ‘serious downer’. Now, five seasons in, I’m still inclined to that description. (The fact that it has taken me this long to come close to exhausting Netflix’s online repository of itsContinue reading “The Mad Men Can’t Quite Get Hold Of Me”
Jehane Noujaim’s ‘The Square’: Enthralling and Frustrating
Jehane Noujaim‘s The Square is an enthralling and frustrating documentary record of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. It tells its story by holding a steady narrative focus on a small cast of central characters and tracking the revolution’s rise and fall–so to speak–from the glory of Hosni Mubarak‘s resignation to its co-optation by a variety of counterrevolutionaryContinue reading “Jehane Noujaim’s ‘The Square’: Enthralling and Frustrating”
The Campus Bell, From School to College
When I began school, I passed into another zone of discipline. The most prominent marker of that regime of control was not the corporeal form of the stern schoolmaster but rather, the sounds of a bell ringing. It was the aural code that dominated the next twelve years of my life, slicing up the schoolContinue reading “The Campus Bell, From School to College”
Acts of Kindness: Writing to Writers, Especially Academic Ones
A couple of years ago, after reading Neil Gross‘ excellent biography of Richard Rorty, I sent him a short note of appreciation, telling him how much I enjoyed his book. Gross wrote back; he was clearly pleasantly surprised to have received my email. I mention this correspondence because it is an instance of an actContinue reading “Acts of Kindness: Writing to Writers, Especially Academic Ones”
Margaret Cavendish, Epicureanism, and Philosophy as Confession
In her erudite and enjoyable Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity Catherine Wilson makes note of Margaret Cavendish‘s participation in the so-called “Cavendish Salon” in Paris, which served as “the center of a revival of Epicureanism led by Hobbes and Gassendi.” Cavendish, who might have obtained her knowledge of that school of thought either throughContinue reading “Margaret Cavendish, Epicureanism, and Philosophy as Confession”
Twenty-One Car-Free Years
Over the weekend, thanks to traveling up to Albany to meet an old friend, I was unable to make note of an especially important anniversary: March 30th marked twenty-one years of blessed freedom from car ownership. On March 30th, 1993, I sold my Toyota pickup truck, purchased a mere eighteen months previously, at a drasticallyContinue reading “Twenty-One Car-Free Years”
The Visually Sophisticated Society and “Seeing is Believing”
In 1980, Stephen Jay Gould and Steven Selden sent their copy of H.H Goddard‘s The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness to James H. Wallace, director of Photographic Services at the Smithsonian Institution. The photographs in Goddard’s book of the supposedly “feeble-minded” family had appeared to confirm their mental infirmity: All have aContinue reading “The Visually Sophisticated Society and “Seeing is Believing””
Police or Wanna-Be Commandos?
You might have noticed your local police force starting to look increasingly militarized, wearing riot-gear like the type Glenn sports in The Walking Dead, and armed with not just weaponry like Rick Grimes‘ but with an attitude as bad as Merle‘s. Don’t worry, it’s part of a nation-wide trend of SWATting local police: Peter Kraska, aContinue reading “Police or Wanna-Be Commandos?”
Ending the NCAA’s Plantation Racket
In Kevin Smith‘s Chasing Amy, Banky tries to talk Holden out of his crush on Amy: Banky Edwards: Alright, now see this? This is a four-way road, okay? And dead in the center is a crisp, new, hundred dollar bill. Now, at the end of each of these streets are four people, okay? You following?Continue reading “Ending the NCAA’s Plantation Racket”
Samir Chopra 