My column on Einstein’s obscure visit to Ceylon in October 1922 was well received, and some appreciative readers asked me to look at the human being behind the intellectual. So, in this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala language), I explore Einstein the humanist, pacifist and supporter of civic rights all his life. මහා විද්‍යාඥ ඇල්බට් […]
Promo note for my latest Sinhala language book, being released this week at Colombo International Book Fair to be held from 10 – 17 September 2014. Award winning science writer Nalaka Gunawardene’s latest Sinhala book, Kaala Bomba One Kara Thibe (‘කාල බෝම්බ ඕනෑ කර තිබේ!’ = Wanted: Time Bombs of the Mind!), will be released […]
“Of all the institutions arrayed with and against a President, none controls his fate more than television,” President Richard Nixon wrote in 1989, some 16 years after he resigned. TV reporters, he said, in many ways “are political actors just like the President, mindful of their ratings, careful of preserving and building their power.” The […]
In this week’s Ravaya column, (in Sinhala, appearing in issue of 9 August 2015), I discuss two concepts that could make representative democracy more meaningful. First is adding the option of None of the Above (NOTA) to the list of candidates in an election, so voters can exercise a negative vote – and send a […]
The first eyes donated from Sri Lanka were dispatched overseas, to Singapore, on 25 May 1964. In the half century that followed, over 66,500 eye corneas have been donated from Sri Lanka to a total of 117 cities in 54 countries worldwide (by end April 2014). This is one of the greatest humanitarian gifts in […]
Feature article published in Ceylon Today newspaper, 28 Dec 2013 Don’t exaggerate Lanka’s kidney disease, its discoverer pleads By Nalaka Gunawardene See also: Science and Politics of Mass Kidney Failure in Sri Lanka, Groundviews.org, 19 Aug 2012 While unexplained mass kidney failure is a serious public health problem in Sri Lanka, some persons are exaggerating […]
The world’s fastest growing vector-borne disease is dengue, which has recorded a 30-fold increase over the last 50 years. Dengue is mostly transmitted by a mosquito species named Aedes aegypti, which breeds in water containers in and around homes. It is thus closely linked to environmental factors and human behavior. In this week’s Ravaya column […]
Indian social and environmental activist Dr Vandana Shiva visited Sri Lanka in June 2014, and delivered a well attended public lecture in Colombo. She also joined the launch of a Sinhala translation of her book ‘Stolen Harvest’, written in 2000. The translator, Sydney Marcus Dias, sent me a copy recently and I have quoted from […]
“Journalism to be useful and serviceable to the country will take its definite place only when it becomes unselfish and when it devotes its best for the service of the country, and whatever happens to the editors or to the journal itself, editors would express the views of the country irrespective of consequences…” Mahatma Gandhi […]
In this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala), I pay tribute to Khushwant Singh (1915-2014), writer and journalist who died on 20 March 2014 aged 99. He is best remembered for his satire, humour and trenchant secularism. I make special mention of his defiance of death threats from Sikh fundamentalists in the 1980s, and his vocal […]
There is a popular myth that links Albert Einstein with the atomic bomb. In the months following the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both TIME and Newsweek did cover stories that linked the theoretical physicist with the development of this weapon of mass destruction. Both stories assigned great weight to a letter […]
This week, my Ravaya Sunday column (in Sinhala) carries the second part of my long exchange with the late Dr Ray Wijewardene, agro-engineer turned farmer and a leading practitioner in conservation farming in the humid tropics. Part 1: සිවුමංසල කොලූගැටයා #130: “හරිත විප්ලවය නිසා අපේ ගොවිතැන මංමුලා වුණා!” – රේ විජේවර්ධන See original English interview published […] ...
Lakbima Sinhala daily newspaper has just published my long interview with S M Banduseela who is widely recognised as Sri Lanka’s foremost translator of science and science fiction. He is best known as Arthur C Clarke’s Lankan translator. Parts of this interview appeared earlier in the Sinhala Sunday newspaper Ravaya (24 Nov 2013): “විද්‍යා ප්‍රබන්ධකරුවන් […] ...
The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) asked me to list the best book I’ve read in 2013 (and why); and also for the book I’d like to receive as a Christmas present. I wrote a short piece in response, which is included in their feature titled ‘Leafing through the best picks’ on 22 Dec 2013. Here’s […]
In this week’s Ravaya column, (in Sinhala, appearing in issue of 26 July 2015), I review how Lankan politicians and political parties are using social media in the run-up to the general election to be held on 17 August 2015. In particular, I look at how President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe are […]
I just spoke on a panel on “Framing discourse: Media, Power and Democracy” which was part of the public exhibition in Colombo called Corridors of power: Drawing and modelling Sri Lanka’s tryst with democracy. The premise for our panel was as follows: The architecture of the mainstream media, and increasingly, social media (even though distinct […]
The National Summit for Media Reform in Sri Lanka was organised by the Ministry of Mass Media and Information, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) and International Media Support (IMS) and held on 13 – 14 May 2015 at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, Colombo 7. Its aim was “to maximise the contribution […]
In this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala), published on 28 December 2014, I explore the nexus between social media, digital technologies and elections by taking the example of the Indonesian presidential election held on 9 July 2014. සමාජ මාධ්‍ය පෙරටු කොට ගත් නව වෙබ් තාක්‍ෂණය (web 2.0) ආසියානු රටවල දේශපාලන ක‍්‍රියාදාමයට හා විශේෂයෙන් මැතිවරණවලට කෙසේ […] ...
If there’s one thing (many) South Asian nations have in abundance, it’s people. Now, countries of this populous region are competing to hold the world record in an unusual phenomenon called the human national flag. On 23 August 2014, more than 35,000 Nepalese came together in Kathmandu’s city centre to form the world’s largest “human […]
I use this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala) to address an open letter to newly elected Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena. ජනාධිපති මෛත්‍රීපාල සිරිසේනට විවෘත ලියුමක් ජනාධිපති මහතාණෙනි, යුක්තිය, සාධාරණත්වය සහ යහපාලනය උදෙසා පෙනී සිටිමින් ඔබ ලැබූ මැතිවරණ ජයග‍්‍රහණයට සුබ පැතුම්! බොහෝ බාධක, කම්කටොලූ හා අභියෝග මැද ඔබ ප‍්‍රතිපත්ති ගරුකව මැතිවරණ ව්‍යාපාරය කර ගෙන ගිය […] ...