Some years ago it was some genius who was making petroleum by twirling some sticks in a bucket of water. The Indian press reported it breathlessly and which is worse, some dimwitted “professors” from some “educational” institutions even considered it seriously. The details of that are hazy in my mind but I was reminded of it when I read that the government is going to produce a laptop for Rs 500 (or US$ 10).
A collaborative team between the Indian governments ministry of science and ministry of technology will unveil …

Governance matters because how a society functions is clearly determined by how it chooses to govern itself. I have my doubts about democracy as a good form for organizing society — smacks of majority rule — but it’s better than many of the available alternatives. Democracy is, in my opinion, a first-best solution applied haphazardly in a second-best world. But given the world we have rather than the world we would like to have, democracy is the best we can do for now. So when it comes to choosing between …

This year, 2009 CE, marks the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882), and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). Contrary to what one may suppose, the phrase “survival of the fittest” does not occur in that book. It was Herbert Spencer (1820 -1903), who coined it in his book Principles of Biology, (1864).[1]
Spencer warned that “the ultimate result of shielding men from …

The capacity for ethical behavior is evidently not correlated with wealth. Too often I have observed poor taxicab drivers, upon being given a generous tip, attempt to return the excess amounts pointing out that perhaps I made a counting error. So it is no surprise to me to come across instances of extremely wealthy people behaving unethically and immorally merely to gain a little (relatively speaking) more wealth.
The evolving story about Satyam and its chairman Mr Ramalinga Raju is more interesting from a human interest point of view than merely …