Hey people, do you know what a RIBOSOME is? No? Are you absolutely clueless about the properties of this RNA-complex which produces life-regulating protein? Well, as editor of India's leading newspaper, I think it is time you, dear reader, gets some education on protein-producing ribosomes. Why do I need education on ribosome and not on lysosome, centrosome, vesicle, cytoskelton, cytoplasm, vacuole, endoplasmic reticulom or golgi aparatus, you might ask if you are a gawky nerd who spends all his spare time studying biology of a typical eukaryotic cell.
Well, for one, a brown guy like you and me with a name that you can pronounce more easily than a white guy, has discovered something fascinating about this sub-cellular component of an eukaryotic cell that has fetched him top prize in world's annual chemistry awards. Isn't that a good enough reason you should know what a ribosome is?
So dear reader, buy today's copy of Times of India or visit the web-page of our newspaper to know all you can about ribosome.
Yes, I know you don't give a fuck about ribosome, centrosome or aparatus of goldi and would rather study biology of Katrina Kaif or Angelina Jolie than biology of an eukaryotic cell. I totally understand you. (If you are a dedicated reader of TOI, you know how hard we work to convert even the sports page of our newspaper into a biology-appreciation course of sizzling hot girlfriends of soccer/tennis/F1 racers/golf players you have never heart of.) Even though I'm editor of TOI, till yesterday, I was as clueless as you are about the intriguing inner world of an eukartyotic cell. Hell, I didn't even know what an eukaryotic cell was till yesterday!
But now things have changed!
A brown guy, who shares a similar ancestry with all of us, has discovered something terribly important about the inner workings of an eukaryotic cell in his laboratory, important enough to be awarded the NOBEL, the ultimate feel-good, feel-proud trophy that when won by a brown guy can make you feel vicariously as smart as the white guys who regularly win such trophies.
Now don't give me the shit that science is about advancement of frontiers of knowledge and not about the color or race of the guy who wins the top prize at some award function. Admit it, dear reader, you don't give a shit about expanding the frontiers of your scientific know how. For heaven's sake, there are countless different cells divided into countless components and hundreds of scientists from all parts of the world making regular scientific breakthroughs on the inner workings of some or other goddamned part of some or other particle or a cell. We can't keep you updating about every bit of important scientific breakthrough that keeps happening every now and then, can we?
Relax, you don't really have to know about the breakthroughs in science achieved by Japanese, Turkish, Armenian, French, Australian or German scientists. Learning about development of green fluorescent protein or metathesis method in organic synthesis is not going to change your life or make it better. So why bother filling your head with so much useless information that you are never likely to use in your daily life unless you find yourself marooned on a remote island with a bunch of morose cell-biologists!
If you are a brown-skinned Indian, you should know about boring, unexciting, new discoveries in the field of physics, chemistry or cell biology ONLY if the breakthrough is made by a fellow brown guy. Why else would you want to know about boring research for any other reason? My job as editor of India's leading daily is to make you proud of being an Indian and your job is to feel proud whenever a brown guy wins a Nobel for discovering properties of some freaky farking fuckity molecule or top prize at an inter-school spelling competition in some white country for spelling correctly an erect Brazilian shrub of deep red flowers named f-u-c-h-s-i-a c-o-c-c-i-n-e-a.
Of course, the world of science is not all boring. There are many exciting new discoveries and developments happening in the field of alternate energy, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, robotics, molecular engineering or artificial intelligence. Even if we began covering a fraction of the news we receive on our science news-feeds, we would have to waste several pages everyday on science and technology, pages that are better used giving you details of Sonam Kapoor's wardrobe, Katrina Kaif's success in prevent her wardrobe from malfunctioning, Shahid Kapoor's butt-pad, Saif Ali Khan's night out with Kareena, Jaya Sawant's crocodile tears at the residency of Bigg Boss, Shilpa Shetty's new found love for soccer, John Abraham's not-so-secret love affair with his bike, Priyanka Chopra's sexy garba moves or Salman & SRK's ardous struggles in keeping the flames of enmity burning.
Yes, I know there are bigger things happening in the world of science that you should keep abreast of. But is it my fault that you have never heard of Ray Kurzweil (even though he is world's leading futurologist) or his views on Singularity, an epochal event when technology growing an an exponential rate will overtake humanity's ability to keep track of it? The color of Kurzweil's skin is not brown and that for me and my colleagues at TOI is a clinching factor in deciding which science news will make to the front pages of TOI.
If you are so interested in knowing more about the expanding frontiers of science or the mind-boggling rate at which technology is progressing, subscribe to Science Daily or New Scientist. At TOI, we don't keep track of science, only brown scientists who are awarded gold medals embellished with the image of Alfred Nobel.
onionuttapam
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes...120125.cms Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has expressed disenchantment with people from India "bothering" him "clogging" up his email box and dubbed as "strange" their sudden urge to reach out to him. "All sorts of people from India have been writing to me, clogging up my email box. It takes me an hour or two to just remove their mails," he said. He said the deluge of emails had buried important communications from colleagues or from journals concerning papers we have in press. "Do these people have no consideration? It is OK to take pride in the event, but why bother me?" the 57-year-old Indian-American scientist wondered in an email interview to PTI. "There are also people who have never bothered to be in touch with me for decades who suddenly feel the urge to connect. I find this strange," said Ramakrishnan, who shared this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry with two others. He expressed anguish over "all sorts of lies" published about him in a section of the media that he went to school and pre-Science in Chidambaram, the Tamil Nadu temple town where he was born in 1952. "People I don't know, for example a Mr Govindrajan, claim that they were my teachers at Annamalai University which I never attended, since I left Chidambaram at the age of three," Ramakrishnan clarified. Ramakrishnan said it was good if his winning the Nobel prize encouraged people to take interest in science. “But I, personally, am not important. The fact that I am of Indian origin is even less important. We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth,’’ the scientist said. AGENCIES |
