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๐ณโ๐ @Evening: The 'Woke America', Remembering Ramanujan And More
Nishtha Anushree
Dec 22, 2022, 06:45 PM | Updated 06:45 PM IST
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1. ๐ฐ Catch Up
The ED filed chargesheet in the Delhi liquor scam case, claimed a loss of approximately Rs 2,973 crore to the government exchequer.
SIT to conduct a probe into the death of Disha Salian, the former manager of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
The eighth edition of the 'Twitter Files' revealed that the social media company "quietly aided the Pentagonโs covert online PsyOp campaign".
Indiaโs maiden human space flight mission under the Gaganyaan programme is targeted to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2024.
The work on the Gurugram-Dausa section stretch of Delhi-Mumbai Expressway nearly finished, PM Modi to inaugurate soon.
2. ๐ณโ๐ Not 'American', But 'US Citizen'!
Stanford University has released a list of forbidden words under its "multi-phase, multi-year project Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative".
"American" is one such word and the recommended alternative is "US citizen."
It says that "American" often refers to people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas (which is actually made up of 42 countries).
Woke culture has been gaining traction in the US for the past few years and the focus on vocabulary and usage of 'politically-correct' terms is more than ever.
It is progressing so fast that most people can't keep up their pace. Once they start using or get accustomed to certain words, a new list comes up that they have to absorb.
Basically, woke culture comes from above and not below, unlike other social movements, and is driven by the big government and big academia.
3. ๐ NASA's InSight Mission Ends
Out of power: On 20 December, @NASAInSight tweeted that its power is "really low" and it "will be signing off soon".
The next day, NASA announced that the mars lander mission has ended after more than four years.
It concluded that the spacecraftโs solar-powered batteries have run out of energy โ a state engineers refer to as โdead bus.โ
The accomplishments: It collected valuable data on the physical and thermal properties of the Martian soil.
Shortly after landing, it sent sound of the Martian surface using the lander as a giant microphone.
It also took the first-ever recording of a marsquake โ the Mars version of an earthquake โ using its Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument in 2019.
It also discovered traces of the planetโs former magnetic field, which no longer exists.
4. ๐ On This Day: Ramanujan Was Born
Sreenivasa Ramanujan was born to poor orthodox parents in the obscure town called Kumbakonam, in Tamil Nadu on 22 December 1887.
He was the greatest mathematician of the 20th century and developed many theorems that have practical uses like in guided missiles.
He is known as a mathematician who discovered so much and and yet left so much more for other people to discover in his works that will keep mathematicians busy for centuries.
The divine angle: Ramanujan was a deeply religious Hindu and credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity.
He said the mathematical knowledge he displayed was revealed to him in his dreams by his family goddess Namagiri Thayar.
He once said, "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of Godโ.
5. ๐ Bhaskar Kamble's The Imperishable Seed
THE IMPERISHABLE SEED: How Hindu Mathematics Changed the World and Why this History was Erased is a recently released book.
It assembles compelling evidence to show that many mathematical concepts were expounded by Indian mathematicians much earlier than their supposed discoveries in Europe.
The book discusses the contributions of ancient and medieval India not only to mathematics, but also to fields such as astronomy and linguistics.
The relevance: As we celebrate Ramanujan today on his birth anniversary, this book comes as another way to celebrate Indian mathematicians.
The book highlights how Indian contributions continue to find applications even today in areas such as computer science.
It also traces why and how the tradition of Hindu mathematics in India came to an end and why most people today do not know about its history.
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Nishtha Anushree is Senior Sub-editor at Swarajya. She tweets at @nishthaanushree.
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