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Meeting Nexi

Nexi, the robot, features in articles on MIT Media Lab’s Center for Future Storytelling. I am not entirely sure why this should be the case. Anyway, I decided to go meet this robot in Cynthea Brazeal’s Personal Robotics Lab . Currently, the humans in the group are training...

Interpreter of Interesting Research

No news story has written itself for me, thus far. This is not a complaint, it is a boast. As a science journalist, I work hard to file good articles, or copy as we say in the business. I translate jargon into narrative for a...

The Original Angry Young Man

Many boys who went to school in Madras must've worn this costume for the "fancy-dress" competition at school. Draw on a mustache, wear your dad's wedding "reception" coat, memorize a couple of the poet's fiery verses, and you are all set! Outside of Tamil Nadu,...

Ursula K Le Guin

From an essay in Aeon magazine: "In her essay ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ (1986), Ursula K Le Guin challenged the hero’s journey – ‘the story the mammoth hunters told about bashing, thrusting, raping, killing’ – as not only narrowly masculine but also threatening humanity’s...

MS Blues

On the last day of school, no matter which city we lived in, we would be on the evening train to Madurai. The overnight train journey was always fun--but our annual destination--we were a little less excited about that. Madurai was my father’s hometown, and...

Goodbye, Pittsburgh

by Ramesh Mahadevan I have lived in Pittsburgh for almost an eternity. And now it is time to move on. In a matter of weeks, I will be relocating to the Denver/Boulder area. (look me up folks, I will be in a village called Louisville) I...