Exciting new and improved feature on this blog!! Finally, a way to kill more time for you.
An Interview With E.O. Wilson, the Father of the Encyclopedia of Life. From the NYTimes. (Link thanks to Suhit.)
DR. E.O. WILSON: I’ve been in systematics and the mapping of biological diversity all my life. And a little more than ten years ago, I thought the time had come to undertake a complete mapping of the world’s fauna and flora.
Because remarkably–and this is little known even in the scientific community–we’ve only begun to …

I have been asked to write my opinion on Mr Raj Thackeray and his party, MNS. He is the nephew of Mr Bal Thackeray of the Shiv Sena and has been in the news of late because his followers have been attacking migrant labor from northern India to Mumbai.

Well in India we just got done with Diwali. The fireworks were great if you don’t mind the air and noise pollution. I think foreigners should visit India during Diwali. I don’t think any other country has so much in terms of fireworks as India during Diwali. But I don’t think we have fireworks battles in India.
Easter on the small Greek island of Chios means one thing – a massive firework battle, with over 50,000 rockets raining down on two small towns.

[Source.]

Every now and then I get to read stuff about the huge on-going economic crisis. But there is no economic crisis going on. It’s a financial crisis, not an economic crisis. I think it is important to make that distinction. The financial system is part of the economic system and it is an important part. But the two systems are not identical and cannot be referred to interchangeably.
Let me see if I can get this right. Let’s take the failure of a financial institution or a stock market crash. When …

It is hard to point to a more illuminating example of a dangerous combination of stupidity and greed (even more than the on-going global financial meltdown) than an email that landed in my inbox this morning. The subject line was “If any body delete Shiridi Sai Baba message without darshan & forwa” and it was forwarded by one Mr K R Tilak. Evidently I was the lucky recipient after a few dozen forwards, and all the forwarding information was intact. The content appeared after pages and pages of long lists …

The more I hear of what Narendrabhai is doing in Gujarat, the more I believe that India needs him as the PM. The man has a backbone unlike the spineless bozo who shall remain unnamed here. The man has a brain. And the man knows what is economic development means and how to make it happen. The spineless bozo will not know development even if development came up and bit him on his behind.
If India cannot have Lee Kuan Yew, it is not a problem because India has Narendra …

Dear blog visitors:
Happy Diwali, Happy Deepavali, Happy Lakshmi Puja, Happy Kali Puja, and Happy Bhai Duj.

Since Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth and prosperity, Diwali is really what the stock market needs.
Here are stories about Bhai Duj (or Bhai Dooj) below the fold. And below that, the details of the Five Days of Diwali.

Finally
India is catching up with the USSR (which does not actually exist anymore) of nearly 50 years ago. The Soviet lunar space mission got off the ground with Luna 1 in Jan 1959. Two days ago India gave a fitting reply to it by launching Chandrayaan-I on its way to the moon. Aside from crash-landing on the moon a probe with the Indian flag in it, Chandrayaan-I will map the surface of the moon for two years. It brings to mind the US Lunar Orbiter Program of 1966-7 which photographed …

Capturing Externalities
It’s an economics truism that generally people respond to incentives. If you truly and deeply understand that, you know a fundamental truth about the world.

Among recent political leaders, Mandela stands out. You may not agree with him on all matters, but one has to respect what he achieved. Here’s an article in Time magazine which I thought was worth reading and reflecting upon.

India’s telecommunications infrastructure story is remarkable in many respects. It used to be a public sector monopoly not too long ago. Waiting time was measured in years and the service was as poor as the price was high. Things changed rapidly after the sector was liberalized and the private sector was allowed to provide telephone services. As there was practically no wire-line phone system to speak of in the early 90s — around 20 million phone lines for a population close to a billion — the legacy burden was …

It’s been a while since I wrote a post on SSRS. To remedy that neglect, here’s something about the man.
Ram Guha wrote a funny entry in his Oslo diary with the title “Nobel Longings.” (Thanks to Sushant for the link.)

In an article in the Business Line titled “Kalam’s PURA will not work,” Lee Kuan Yew makes the case for urbanization of the population for India to develop.

I am privileged to be on Keith Hudson’s mailing list. He is an English polymath, a Renaissance Man in the strictest sense of the term. With his permission I am quoting from one of his musings on the present financial crisis. He quickly hones in on the systemic trouble at the base of the problem: that those who are in charge are incapable of comprehending the system, and the lag between the institutions of yesterday and today’s technical and scientifically advanced world.
Here, for the record, is an excerpt from …

If I were asked to name one national political leader — contemporary or in the past — who is deserving of deep respect I would answer “Mr Lee Kuan Yew.” There is something about him that puts him in the top of the heap, in my opinion. It could be his basic intelligence, his deep insight into politics, his masterly understanding of world affairs, his breadth of vision, his obvious scholarship, his impish wit and his Confucian wisdom. The more I read him — and read of him — the …

[This is a repost of a January 2008 post. Even if you have seen the video before, I am sure that you will appreciate it even more now since it rings so true.}
The other day, a BBC producer from London called me up and asked me if I would care to comment on the recent big sell-off in the Indian stock markets. I confessed that I am not fully qualified to do so but added that in all honesty that my guess would be as good as any one else’s. ...

Mr Ahmadinejad is a nut-case. Unfortunately, he is also very powerful and his nuttiness can harm a lot of people, not just Iranians. He’ll come to a sticky end, undoubtedly, but he will also lead a lot of his compatriots to misery and doom.
This is the only economy in the world – indeed possibly in world history – in which you can borrow money from the bank and then receive a higher rate of interest by depositing it in the same bank.
Mr Ahmadinejad, who says he is proud of …

This one is really funny. And a bit sad. My friend Anup in Australia sent me the link to an article, Prabhupada And Nehru’s Incarnation, from the Prabhupada Hare Krishna News Network.
The setting is in Brooklyn, New York, a few weeks after Nehru’s death in 1964. Someone asks the guru Prabhupada what he thought became of Nehru after his death. The writer of the article recounts Prabhupada’s answer. Read on.

Some things make me see red. Not in any particular order, here’s the list. It is not exhaustive, merely a random set that I can unfortunately recall right now.

This morning I went to say farewell to Devi Durga at the Durgamahotsav close to where I live. I took the picture of the protima above. The traditional belief among Bengalis is that Ma Durga along with her children — Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesh and Kartik — comes to visit her parental home for 10 days. Today is the 10th day, Vijay Dashmi, when she goes back to her in-laws. People then visit each other and wish “Shubho Bijoya” after she leaves.
Durga will be back next year, of course. But Durga …