Atanu Dey on India’s Development

Apparently, to be a successful “public intellectual” one of the requirements is that one must invent a catchy tag line. The tag line must have emotional appeal through a reference to some deeply held belief or social conditioning. An example of one such is the title of the book by Thomas Friedman “The World is […]

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I have never had the pleasure of meeting Richard Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988). Reading the Wiki entry on Feynman is both humbling and delightful. What a prodigious brain, what a sensibility, what delight he takes in being alive and learning. But to get a better understanding of who he […]

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[Previous Posts on “Free Energy”: Part 1, Part 2]
Keith Hudson, the author of the outstanding Daily Wisdom postings, recently commented on the matter of free energy. With his permission, I am sharing his post with the readers of this blog.

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OM Shri Ganeshaya Namaha!

Of the 330 million gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, my favorite is Ganesh, the Lord of the Ganas. He is Vighneshwara, the Remover of Obstacles. The story goes that Shiva, the great god, had challenged Ganesh and his brother Kartik to go around the universe three times. While Kartik took […]

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Magical thinking and wishful thinking are fraternal, if not identical, twins. Both are cognitive traps that our emotional selves stumble into. Both are characteristically childlike. While childlike behavior and mentation is adorable in small children, when adults do it, it is childish and not cute. There is no law which says that adults cannot, or […]

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Free National Geographic Podcasts. Go have fun and perhaps waste some time.

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This is getting curiouser and curiouser. First there was “free textbooks.” Now there is free energy. Scientific American: Irish tech firm throws down “free energy” gauntlet
Perpetual motion machines of the first, second, and third kind? Not going to happen.

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Scientific American podcasts. Free. Haven’t yet checked them out — so cannot say whether they are good or not.

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It is a sad day for Hindustani classical music fans. Dr Bismillah Khan passed away today. May his soul rest in peace.
His sublime music will, of course, live on. I cannot express the hours of joy his rendition of Bhupali Todi has given me.

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A Tentative Taxonomy of Problems
Compared to all other life forms in the known universe, our species can be characterized as the one that consciously solves problems. There appears to be – at least in some specimens of our kind – an inherent drive to not only solve problems but in fact to seek out new […]

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Dweep’s comment on Science — Part 2 is worth responding to in a separate post because of the good points he makes. He writes:

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The time has come for me to bring to a close the matter of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his Art of Living as discussed on this blog. It began with a simple enough request some years ago from my brother who asked me to check out AOL since he was (and continues to be) […]

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The post , a quote from Marvin Harris’s book, entitled Science, provoked a few comments that require responding to.
Karthik Rao Cavale objected to the apparent dismissal of Indian scientific achievements of the past by the claim by Harris that “it was in western Europe that the distinctive rules of the scientific method were first codified, […]

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AOL refers not to “America On Line” but rather to “The Art of Living” as taught by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (SSRS, in short).
A simple straight forward piece I wrote some years ago (Is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar a Con Man?) does get a lot of attention. I get emails from people, some of […]

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A particular instance of the general statement that there is no such thing as a free lunch is “There is no such thing as a free textbook.”
This line of thinking was provoked by an article titled “Ads Coming to Textbooks” (thanks to Rohit Malik) which reports that a publisher, Freeload Press, is trying to […]

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I like to read. Actually, I like to read what makes me think. And that makes me a slow reader. On top of that, I am lazy. So it is a rare book that I read cover to cover. But when I do read a book completely, I usually read it all over again. If […]

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Markets Work
Economists have a mantra which says “Markets work” and mumble under their breath the disclaimer “subject to a bunch of conditions, of course.” By “markets work” they mean that when a whole lot of buyers and sellers get together and buy and sell stuff, magic happens through Adam Smith’s invisible hand, and everyone ends […]

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Voltaire’s dictum that the perfect is the enemy of the good is fascinating because of the delicious ambiguity embedded in it. The ambiguity arises from what one identifies as the “perfect” and the “good.” If perfection is by definition unattainable, and the good is defined as an attainable “optimal” (again defined suitably), then it is […]

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