There’s an interesting news article in the Times of India, “Congress counts 8 Oscars as part of UPA `achievements’” (Hat tip: Sudipta Chatterjee.)
Keen to be part of the euphoric `Slumdog’ bandwagon, Congress has counted the eight Oscars as part of the UPA’s `achievements’. The party lost no time in claiming credit for the `Indian triumph’ and hinted that good times had come with the UPA government.
Danny Boyle is not Indian though the slums most certainly are. So I suppose anyone claiming credit for the Oscars won by a movie …

It’s been a while since we had an open thread for readers to give feedback. So here’s an opportunity for you if you have something to say. I have never deleted any comment merely because I don’t agree with an opinion. The only time I delete comments is when it is clearly spam, totally irrelevant or is abusive.
Say what you will. And stop lurking.

A well-written rant warms the cockles of my heart. And when the rant is against gross stupidity, crass ignorance, and idiot politicians pandering to the mindless bigotry of the public, I feel envious and wish I had written it. Here’s one for you — A Letter I’d Like to See (But Won’t) — if you like that sort of thing. But first, the background:
The Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps, who was photographed inhaling from a marijuana pipe, has lost a major sponsorship deal and has been suspended from competition …

The Friends of BJP is a recently formed organization with which my colleague Rajesh Jain is closely associated. On his blog today, Rajesh explained that
“The goal is to galvanise the youth and professionals to engage with the political process to bring about transformational change in India.”
The Friends of BJP is a subset of the educated civil society that is BJP-leaning, and willing to be vocal about it. We are not part of the BJP. We also do not agree with everything the BJP says or does. It is …

Here’s a whimsical look at how the world got the numbering system — the Indian numerals — it has today.

“The Economics of Urbanization” is the title of a course that I plan to teach at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, starting next week. I am looking forward to being at the ISB for the next five weeks.
The course is an exploration of the idea (related to the theme on cities and urbanization explored on this blog) that economic growth and urbanization are bidirectionally linked. I hope to argue the case for urbanization of India based on simple economics.

Here’s a graph from the Pew Research Center which shows the percentage of people of various religious backgrounds (living in the US) who agree that evolution is the best explanation for the origin of human life on earth.

MyToday is a set of opt-in SMS services from our company, Netcore. MyToday has around 3.8 million subscribers. Since you cannot receive the SMSs from MyToday without first sending an SMS to MyToday requesting the service, you cannot get spammed. Stopping the service is as simple as sending a “Stop” SMS to the same service.
Vodafone, one of the bigger mobile operators, has blocked the MyToday SMS alerts since today morning, as this Business Standard news item reports. I suppose the MyToday free SMS services is hurting Vodafone’s paid services. …

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea,” advised Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
Does makes sense, doesn’t it? Motivating the task is the real job of the leader, not messing around with petty details.

The UK is on the fast track to becoming a closed society in its hurry to emulate Saudi Arabia. Last week, it denied entry to Geert Wilders of the Netherlands. “Dutch populist politician and controversial anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders has been refused entry to the United Kingdom despite being invited to visit by a member of the House of Lords, the British parliament’s upper chamber. . . Geert Wilders, perhaps best known outside the Netherlands for having made the video Fitna, in which the religion Islam and its holy book …

US Innovates
It is fairly widely acknowledged that there is a very strong connection between the US’s economic success and the entrepreneurial character of its people which generates innovations. It can be plausibly argued that economic success and entrepreneur-driven innovations are bi-directionally causally linked: each gives a boost to the other in ever widening upward spirals of mutually reinforcing, positive feedback. It is perhaps difficult figure out which came first: the economic success or the entrepreneurial character of the people.

Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show ranks among my most favorite shows. It’s intelligent and funny, and does not shrink from calling a spade a commonly used gardening equipment with a wooden handle and a metal working surface. Here’s one hilarious segment on evolution.
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The Daily Show With Jon StewartM – Th 11p / 10c
Evolution, Schmevolution – Panel: Edward J. Larson, William A. Dembski, Ellie Crystal

Daily Show Full EpisodesImportant Things With Demetri Martin
Funny Political NewsJoke of the Day

You will find a collection of evolution …

If you have 15 minutes to spare today, you have to read this Malcolm Jones article, “Who was more important: Lincoln or Darwin,” in the Newsweek issue of July 2008. (Let’s also take a moment to reflect on our great fortune that we live in an age when it is possible for us to have access to so much great stuff to read without having to visit a physical library.) I quote a few bits from that article for the record but I entreat you to find the time to …

Darwin wrote:
“To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.”
“My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding laws out of large collection of facts.”
Quotes from the Jan 2009 special issue of Scientific American on the Most Powerful Idea in Science issue.
[Image source]
Here’s what Gary Stix’s article, “Darwin’s Living Legacy”, in that issue begins with:

This six-year old, Ethan Bortnick, is pretty astounding.

The world has 6+ billion people. Even six-sigmas away from the mean, you are likely to find a pretty huge number of extremely extraordinary people. Makes you wonder how many don’t have access to what it takes for their various talents to flourish. This kid is not just talented — he is lucky. As Stephen Jay Gould had said, “I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent …

The Vatican has decided that Charles Darwin was not really wrong. In a remarkable display of mealy-mouthed post-hoc rationalization, it claims that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is not inconsistent with the idea of a biblical creation of life. Vatican Buries the Hatchet with Charles Darwin, says TimesOnLine.

Feb 12, 1809 must have been an extraordinary day.
It is special for me because two of my heroes were born on that day. Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were both born on this day 200 years ago. This year, 2009, is also the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s book, On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
So I will dedicate the next couple of posts on Darwin and Lincoln.
Happy Birthday, Mr Lincoln and Happy Birthday Mr Darwin. The world is a better place for …

Energy security is not something that a country that is not energy independent can ever completely achieve.
India has to import energy — whether it is oil, or natural gas, or even nuclear fuel — and therefore it can never in the conceivable future be anything but be at the mercy of suppliers. Which necessarily means that India has to think really hard about how to mitigate the risks of disruption of its energy supplies from abroad.

Good news!
“Where’s Waldo Now” has been reissued. Worth having around the house. Kids of all ages would love it.
I have copied bits from one of the reviews at Amazon below the fold.
(If you are considering a gift for me, I strongly recommend “Where’s Waldo: The Complete Collection.”)

OK, so where am I now? I am in Mumbai on my way to Hyderabad this afternoon for a meeting at the Indian School of Business. I’ll be back.

The radical ignorance displayed by those who claimed that the government had created a laptop costing Rs 500 (~US $10) is jaw-dropping spectacular. How on earth can one for even one moment entertain the idea that any entity — least of all the government and a bunch of students — could produce something for an order of magnitude less cost than currently possible is unfathomable.
As the photoshopped image in my first post on this matter previously states, “I see stupid people . . . they don’t even know that …