The recent Princeton University Press book by former Harvard president Derek Bok titled “The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being” got some reviewers unhappy, as this article in the Atlanticwire.com reports. I have only read that article and the reviews of the book quoted by the publisher, not the book itself. Here I want to focus on the concept of “Gross National Happiness” which crops up in discussions of this nature.

I am doing my bit to show how terrible the monotheistic organized cults religions are. Richard Dawkins answers the question “Should the pope resign?” with a definite “No.” He writes in yesterday’s Washington Post:

I was telling my friend CJ about a presentation I made yesterday to the trustees of a school. The proposal was to hand over the management of the school to a firm that will manage the school for a fee. One of the trustees had brought up the point that the firm was a for-profit organization and therefore it would be improper for the school to be associated with it. CJ’s reaction was, “That’s the basic problem with the whole education system, isn’t it?”

“I see dead people,” whispers the little guy in the movie “The Sixth Sense.” That must be very unfortunate for the ability is of dubious utility and seeing dead people walking about certainly would scare the crap out of the normal fellow. It’s more of an affliction than a talent. My affliction is that I see stupid people.

Two men I admire most are Harris and Hitchens. Awesome speakers and writers, they have the courage to say it like they see it. In an age where politically correct mealy mouthed prevarication oozes out of spineless leaders leaving a slimy track for the mindless to follow, Harris and Hitchens restore my faith in humanity and I am assured that this is just a temporary phenomenon because truth abides. Here’s a video, an editorial, and a news item.

Today is World Water Day. Having evolved in a watery world, nearly all life on earth needs water to survive. In the short run humanity is going to face an acute shortage of water. But not in the long run.

If you have not read the modestly titled Huffington Post piece — The Future of God: A New Theory of the Divine — by Dee-Quack Deepak Chopra, you have missed out on world-class intellectual nonsense.

There is a very famous woman in India who is a Roman Catholic. Roman Catholics take as their undisputed leader the Bishop of Rome, aka the Pope, or Papa. You’d have thought that in this day and age, people would have given up on medieval superstitions. Most have but some — even some very powerful people — are superstitious. How superstitious?

When someone reads out an email address and reads “@” as “at the rate of.” That reveals a marked inability to deal with symbols.

Our journeys have a destination. But they have a starting place also.

The Chinese leadership knows how to think big — which is more than what one can say about the Indian leadership, which one must remember has been mainly from the Congress party led by the Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty. One case in point is how big the Chinese leaders think about railways.

I am an internet Hindu. The wannabe part refers to the card-carrying bit. What we Internet Hindus(tm) chiefly need are genuine laminated identity cards. Commies and pseudo-secularists no doubt have their official authorized genuine cards. So I too want one. I am sure that among the hordes of Internet Hindus(tm), there must be some who are good at creative graphic design. You may ask, “How do you know there are hordes of Internet Hindus(tm)?” Here’s how.

I have often wondered where the pseudo-seculars of the Indian main stream media — the Burkhas, Sataricas, Amendhatis — got their education. One conjecture I have is that they got bussed to school — on the Samjhauta Bus — to Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Richard Feynman (1908 – 1988) is one of my great heroes. Here’s a short video of his.

One of the tools that I use quite frequently comes from Arc90.com.

In a 11 March rediff article titled “Mediocrity has become the norm“, the transcript of an interview of Arun Shourie makes interesting reading. I especially like his views on how Indian education has to change.

I don’t know what zone-h.org is. Someone pointed me to the site saying that he could not access it from India and believes that the government of India has banned it. He said that he has “heard (from a reliable source) a rumour that the Government of India has a fairly regular habit of issuing fiats to ISPs to block various websites that it feels are objectionable for some reason.”

My friend Rajan Parrikar’s photo feature on Ganesh — the One with the Broken Tusk, the One with the Huge Body, the One with the Brilliance of a Million suns.

As I am wont to do, I pick up newspapers while travelling. It is not good for my mental health but what can I do — sometimes newspapers hold the sort of fascination for me that rubberneckers have for gruesome road accidents. An item in yesterday’s Times of India (ok, ok, bad move I know) caught my eye: “Just a bottle of water can power your home.”

Last year in February, Rajesh Jain and I had written a note on “Ideas for India.” Following Rajesh’s example, I am reposting the note here, for the record.