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

What do Pat Robertson, Priyanka Chopra, Jerry Falwell and Mahatma Gandhi have in common? If you thought that they were all religious nutcases, you are wrong. Priyanka Chopra’s nuttiness doesn’t belong to the religious variety. So think again. Give up? OK, they all blame people for natural disasters.

Excellent profile of Paul Krugman in the New Yorker by Larrisa MacFarquhar. It is long and interesting. A few excerpts below the fold. This is a must read if you have even a passing interest in economics. Economics is about people and it is done by people. Among contemporary economists, Krugman is as good as they come.

Charlie Munger said, “Safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want. Deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end” in a commencement address to the USC Law School in 2007. A copy of full transcript is here. The “Cliff notes” of that speech was posted by some kind soul and I am reproducing them with gratitude (but without permission.)

Richard Dawkins, he of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, pulls no punches. He tells it as he sees it.

Ever wonder why India is so corrupt? Because like three-day old fish, the rot starts at the top. Now you know what the top was at the time of India’s independence and therefore you must have had your conjectures. Now wonder no more.

One of the perils of reading newspapers in India is that you are exposed to some rather mindless nonsense. Last Sunday morning in Ahmedabad, throwing caution to the winds, I picked up a newspaper, DNA Sunday. To my horror but not to my surprise, there was Sri Sri Sri Ravishankar’s hirsute image atop a column titled, “In love, losing is winning.”
You caught that, didn’t you – that there are three sri’s where there used to be only two sri’s? That’s not a typo.

The title of this post is borrowed from an article by Arun Shourie in today’s Indian Express, “Conduct above all.” In it Shourie recounts a story told about an ancestor of mine, a fellow called Diogenes. Also known as Diogenes of Sinope, he was a cynic. Here’s that story:

On Sept 10th, Alan Turing received an apology from the British government 55 years after his death. Following a petition to 10 Downing St signed by 30,000 people, Gordon Brown formally apologized to the man who was so persecuted for being a homosexual that he committed suicide.

Congress, Nepotism and Corruption: The Eternal Rotten Braid
The three — corruption, nepotism and the Congress party — form India’s most enduring triumvirate. It is hard to think of one without thinking of the others because they characterize India’s politics and political landscape like nothing else conceivably can. The Congress party is the fiefdom of one family — being part of that confers the inalienable right to be the boss. Nepotism gains a whole new meaning in the hands of the Congress. Chronic, acute and pervasive corruption at the highest levels …

Mr. B Raman, in his South Asia Analysis Group paper of 20th August — “Counter-terrorism & Appeasement” — writes:
* There have been four acts of mass casualty terrorism since 1981. All the four were carried out when the Congress (I) was in power in New Delhi.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

The web is a wonderful place where if you have the required smarts, you can get yourself a pretty decent education. Just having a lot of information at the click of a mouse would not do. You have to know what to take and in which sequence. What you get out of a book — or the web — obviously depends on you. But we can safely assume that one is reasonably well educated and can reason effectively at some level. If that is so, then the task becomes one …

Are there no depths that the Congress party led UPA government will not plumb to protect the criminally corrupt? When exactly will the Indian public wake up to the realization that the pervasive corruption that hollows out the Indian state is the sole achievement of the Congress party over its decades of misrule — practically all of India’s existence as an independent country in modern times? If even the unspeakable misgovernance by Mr Manmohan Singh does not enrage the Indians, what on earth will it take — a thousand thermonuclear …

The primary advantage of not having to shave your mug is that you don’t have to face yourself in the mirror every day. Unless of course if one is totally shameless or is already barefaced (as in a barefaced liar.) I am just saying.

In an opinion piece in the Financial Times of April 15th (hat tip: Sudipta), Razeen Sally writes that “the Congress deserves to lose the elections”. Right up front, Sally wrote about “the do-nothing, zero-reform record of Manmohan Singh, prime minister, and his government.”
I have an excerpt from the piece below the fold. I agree with the particulars that Sally (who is director of the European Centre for International Political Economy) mentions supporting the argument that Manmohan Singh is a singular disaster but I cannot agree with the title …

I was wondering about something the other day. For people who are stupid, we say that they lack a brain. Figuratively, we associate a condition with an organ and say that that organ is missing. So if someone is weak and pliable, we say that they lack a spine or a backbone. Someone cruel and inhuman, we refer to as heartless. With the lack of courage, we associate gutlessness. Emasculation has obvious connections. So I was wondering: which organ or part of the body is there an association with ethics? …

Whether personal or societal, transformations generally require will and vision. In the case of personal transformation, unless one is a schizophrenic, a combination of intelligence, basic human values, determination, foresight and will is sufficient. For social transformation, something more is needed. Clearly leadership matters.
Here’s something to think about. Below the fold is an extended excerpt from the book, “Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas” by Kwang, Tan and Fernandez. Indian leaders ought to take note. Or at the very least, they should read what Lee Kuan Yew …

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 …