Author: Akshat Rathi

Akshat Rathi is a senior reporter for Bloomberg News. He has previously worked at Quartz, The Economist and The Conversation. His writing has appeared in Nature, The Guardian and The Hindu. He has a PhD in chemistry from Oxford University and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai.

The largest human migration occurs annually

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Captured in the 2009 documentary The Last Train Home by Lixin Fan:

Ever year tens of millions of migrant workers go home to see their families for the New Year holidays. For most, the cheapest and the fastest route home is by train, but the impossible crowds strain the system past the breaking point. Police use bullhorns, batons, verbal abuse—whatever means necessary—to keep the vast mob under control. Many migrants camp at the railway station for weeks, waiting to by tickets. Others give up in despair, crippled by exhuastion. Those who get a ticket often have to climb through a window to get on the train, for a ride that can last up to three days but seems much longer. Many have to stand day and night, for lack of space on the floor to sit. Some wear diapers to avoid using the lavatory, and struggle to keep their sanity during the ride.

In 2009, an estimated 130 million people made the holiday journey—but each year the numbers were growing by double digits, like so much in China.

Taken from Ruchir Sharma’s Breakout Nations

My PhD described using the 1000 most used words

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Challenge set by XKCD’s Up Goer Five:

At the big boys’ school I worked on making really, really tiny things that can help many people not be sick. To do that we spent days reading books and learning how to add smaller bits together, one by one, to make the whole tiny thing. All the things around us are made of these tiny bits held together in different ways. But because these bits can not be held in hands, or seen by eyes, we had to do work with them in ways that would allow us to understand if we were doing it right.

The tiny thing I was making was hard to make. So I had two other people working on it with me. We talked and helped each other to come up with a way to make the tiny thing after three years of trying very hard. We made most of it, but some bits remain on which one person is still working.

After my work was done I wrote a book on it. Now the big boys have read the book and they will ask me hard questions. If I answer them then they will give me a note which will help me go out in the world and get a job that will pay me money and let me do what I want to do.

If you want good ideas, stop censoring yourself

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Paul Graham notes: 

In 1989 researchers tracked the eye movements of radiologists as they scanned chest images for signs of lung cancer. They found that even when the radiologists missed a cancerous lesion, their eyes had usually paused at the site of it. Part of their brain knew there was something there; it just didn’t percolate all the way up into conscious knowledge. 

In just the same way we have many thoughts that form in our head but we choose to ignore, or worse, silence them.

This is perhaps also the origin of the idea of brain-storming without criticising. The idea here is that when a team meets to come up with ideas, they sit an enlist as many ideas as possible without judging any idea. It helps to bring out some crazy ideas, which might just be better than any other idea you will get.