Hi all from JP’s place.
No sooner do I arrive in Edison, NJ that the NY Times calls it a place where Indians (now New Jerseyans) thrive. [Hat tip: Maria]
Oak Tree Road [in Edison, NJ], which runs through this sprawling town of 100,000 people and into neighboring Woodbridge Township, may be America’s liveliest Little India, with 400 Indian businesses that attract Indian immigrants from across the region. But the impact is more than just commercial. Indians make up from 20 to 25 percent of the population, and they have spearheaded …

Go. Profit from exile. To see, listen, walk, pause beside wisemen; question savages and madmen; and listen to stories. It is always pleasant and, sometimes, improves you.
– Jean C. Carriere in his play based on the Indian epic The Mahabharata.

Did you know that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy? It will be 400 years since Galileo Galilei, the starry messenger, demonstrated his telescope to the world (actually, Venetian politicians) in August 1609. To commemorate that event, IAU and UNESCO are going to release a movie.
The vision of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 is to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery. All humans should …

Big Change on a Tiny Screen is the title the editors of Indian Express chose for my column on the mobile phone I did for them today.
The greatest technological advancement of the modern world, after the personal computer, has to be the cell phone. The power that it gives its approximately three billion users around the world arises from its participatory nature. Consider the recent protests against the Chinese repression of Tibetans. The use of mobile phones to send pictures of the protests in Lhasa and elsewhere and regular …

I received an email from a list that I am on. The basic tenor of the email was that India is somehow better than China. Well, I certainly hope so because I want India to be better than China, of course. But it was the gloating that made me uncomfortable. Here’s what that email was about.

Previous posts: Part 1, Part 2
Reservations in educational institutions for specific groups are essentially a flawed response to a problem. It is flawed for a number of reasons. The first and foremost is that it does not even begin to address or even recognize the actual problem, namely, that there is a mismatch between supply and demand. Any attempts at allocating a limited supply among the competing demanders for it is definitely not going to succeed in correcting the basic problem. This follows from a general principle that to solve …

I was listening to a lecture “Alan Watts Teaches Meditation” (mp3 format) and I thought that I would share a bit of what he said on this blog. I enjoy listening to Alan Watts. Thankfully, there is a lot of great recordings of his available on the web. While in Berkeley, I used to listen to these dharma talks of his on a local public radio station. Anyway, I took the time to transcribe a few minutes of the talk. If anyone is interested in the audio files, let me …

Time for a little diversion, don’t you think? Of late this blog has been too involved with serious matters and I think it is time for something entirely different. Many of you regulars know that SSRS — a.k.a Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a.k.a Param Pujaniya Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankarji, a.k.a His Most Exalted Holiness the Maha Param Pujaniya Gurudev Bhagwan Sriman Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji Mahadevji, etc etc — is a favorite diversion for this blog. As luck would have it, another of His Most Exalted Holiness Sri Maha Param …

A magazine article in the New York Times of April 13th has the rather mistaken and misleading title “Can the Cell Phone End Global Poverty?” (Hat tip: Abhishek Sarda). The article title is misleading because it doesn’t even remotely attempt to answer that question. It is instead about what is called a “human-behavior researcher” or “user anthropologist,” in this case someone who works for Nokia and essentially tries to figure out how people actually use their phones and thus how phone companies should design phones for greater usability.

The April 12th, 2008 Wall Street Journal has an article, “The Rise of the Mega Region” (Hat tip Pankaj Kumar) which argues that rather than entire countries, the proper unit of analysis in the context of economic growth and competitiveness should be the mega-regions.

Shubho Noboborsho

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was the third President of the United States (1801–1809), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States. [Wikipedia]
Happy birthday, Mr Jefferson.
Here’s something that Jefferson insisted upon that the Indian government would do well to adopt. In the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, Jefferson wrote:

I am leaving on a jet plane. This time to the east coast of the US. I will be there for a couple of weeks starting April 26th. Places I am going to be: NY, NJ, Delaware, Boston, and Chicago.

The garage at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto which transformed Santa Clara County into the Silicon Valley. Bill and Dave worked here when they first started. Read the story here.

I worked for HP in Cupertino in their Computer Systems Division. My office was in building 47.

Previous post: Part 1.
I find it hard to comprehend very large numbers. For instance, when I consider that India has 1.12 million schools (primary and secondary), I am dumbstruck. I have to translate it down to relative numbers because the absolute numbers are beyond me. So, I would roughly estimate that out of population of approximately one billion people, about 200 million are in the school-going age. If you have one school per 200 kids, that means India must have approximately a million schools. Now the number of schools makes …

Neil Diamond sings his Longfellow Serenade:
I’ll weave his web of rhyme
Upon the summer night
We’ll leave this worldly time
On his winged flight
Then come, and as we lay
Beside this sleepy glade
There I will sing to you
My Longfellow serenade
Weave your web of rhyme
Upon the summer night
We’ll leave this worldly time
On your winged flight
I quote those lovely lines just for the heck of it. Beautiful, isn’t it? Here’s a random link from this blog — on A Path with a Heart.

Yesterday morning I got to the Pune railway station early because I had yet to buy a ticket for Mumbai. A notice at the ticket counter informed me that the train – Deccan Queen – was full. Disappointed, I walked to the nearby intercity bus stop.
As one can expect, the place is a sort of transportation hub where you get trains, buses (both private and public), taxis, and rental cars. Walking along that stretch of the road is like running a gauntlet. A dozen people descend on you, each …

There’s this black guy asking for change. Some people, I tell you.
[Off to Mumbai. See you there today.]

Penn and Teller are pretty amazing. I especially like their debunking videos. They are iconoclasts and have a lot of fun letting the air out of some of the high and mighty. They have done the usual ones. YouTube has a lot of their stuff. Here’s a video of one great illusion by Teller: Shadows

The other I sat down to have a conversation with the spirit of Dr Adam Smith (1723-1790), professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow and Fellow of the Royal Society of London and Edinburgh. A stellar observer of the human condition, his book, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,” was published in the same year, 1776, as the Declaration of Independence of the United States. Opinion is divided on which of the two events is of greater importance for the subsequent evolution …