Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw

Today is the spring (or vernal) equinox in the northern hemisphere. This is one of the four transitions — two equinoxes and two solstices — from one season to another: from winter to spring, to summer, to fall (aka autumn), and back to winter.

The reason that earth has seasons is that it is tilted on its axis at an angle of approximately 23.44 degrees (called its obliquity) due to a colossal impact early in its history around 4.5 billion years ago. The hypothesis is that a protoplanet collided with the early earth. This collision caused it to tilt off its perpendicular orientation relative to its orbital plane around the Sun.

During an equinox, the sun rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the west, and both hemispheres receive almost equal sunlight. The sun is positioned directly above earth’s equator, and the earth is tilted neither toward the sun nor away from it, resulting in nearly equal lengths of day and night across the globe. Continue reading “Equinoxe”

The followers of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) routinely instruct their children in their religious texts and traditions. In contrast to that, children brought up in the dharmic traditions (Hindu, Buddha and Jain) are not taught the dharmas explicitly, not even the basics.

Whatever we learn is through a process of osmosis: gradual and unconscious assimilation of ideas that become increasingly more sophisticated and refined as one grows up. We don’t go to the equivalent of a Sunday school or a madrassa.

Hindus learn about dharma gradually. It begins with puja, the worship of various gods and goddesses at home, the occasional visit to a temple, and of course enthusiastic participation in the many dozens of festivals round the year. They are primarily cultural celebrations although they have a component of worship.

As children we are told stories, particularly from the two great Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. As we grow up, depending on individual interest, we learn more about them in bits and pieces. By the time we are young adults, we have a vague idea of our dharma but we are relaxed about it. We see nothing in it to get too agitated about. Our dharma is part of our lives but it doesn’t dominate every of our waking moments. Our attitude is to take it or leave it, but don’t get worked up about it. Continue reading “What is Vedanta?”

I’ve been spending a great deal of time following the war in the Middle East. It’s depressing as all hell.

Trump dragged the US into a needless war. I think he was sincere in his insistence during the 2024 election campaign that he’d not want the US to fight any wars. But that was before the Epstein files began to come out.

All the evidence supports the theory that there’s some seriously damaging stuff in those files that would pretty much destroy Trump’s reputation (whatever little he has remaining) among his MAGA supporters. The stupid, vain, man-child that he is could not countenance that. Mossad most certainly has the goods on Trump and is using that to force Trump to do Netanyahu’s bidding.

Trump tried his best to stop the Epstein files from being released. But the Congress forced the DOJ to begin releasing large, albeit heavily redacted, chunks of it. More was to come soon. Thanks very much, Representatives Massie and Khanna. Are you happy now? Continue reading “Reshaping the World”

Albert Einstein was born on this day, March 14th, in 1879. He will probably be remembered for as long as our present civilization persists. Like all the rest of us, he was a flawed human being. He too was made from the same crooked timber of humanity out of which no straight thing was ever made, as Immanuel Kant so memorably put it in 1784.

I feel a particular kinship to Einstein. Ludicrous though it surely appears, I believe that I am a reincarnation of Einstein. Note that “a reincarnation” — meaning that an atman reincarnates severally, not singularly.

Reincarnation is a dharmic concept that I believe. The idea that atman transmigrates from one birth to another is a core belief in the dharmas; it is anathema in the religions where all one has is one life that ends and then one has an eternity of heaven or hell. That makes no sense to me. But your mileage may vary. Continue reading “Happy Birthday, Albert Einstein”

Two hundred and fifty years ago, in 1776, two events occurred in the world that had a momentous impact on the subsequent development of the modern world. They were separated by the Atlantic Ocean: one happened on an island on the east and the other on a continent on the west that it had colonized where an act of treason took place.

The first event was the publication of a book titled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith in two volumes on 9 March 1776 in London, England. (It’s March 10th, 2026, as I write this.) It can justifiably be regarded as the start of the formalization of the modern discipline that we call economics today.

The second event happened later that year on the 4th of July 1776 in the colonial city of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, one of the 13 British colonies. It was the Declaration of Independence that announced the separation of the 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain.

It is hard to overestimate the impact of those two seemingly disparate events. One was the publication of a book by a Scottish philosopher, born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, and the other an act of rebellion by a bunch of traitors which eventually to a very large extent created the modern world we live in. What could possibly be common to both? Continue reading “Two Events from 250 Years Ago”

How long is the platinum-iridium bar that served as the world’s SI based unit of length, the meter, from 1889 to 1960? It was held at 0 degrees Celsius at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris, France. That platinum-iridium bar is now preserved as an artifact at the bureau near Paris, France.

About it, in Philosophical Investigations §50, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: “There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris. But this is, of course, not to ascribe any extraordinary property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the language-game of measuring with a metre-rule.”

Wittgenstein’s remark relates to the grammatical game we play when we measure something. The bar in Paris was not an object we discovered to be exactly one meter long. It was the thing that gave meaning to “one meter long” to begin with. The question of how long that bar is cannot be answered by measurement. The bar simply occupies the role of a paradigm or a sample. Continue reading “How Long is a Meter?”

Margaret Thatcher remarked that Europe was the product of history. European nations were shaped by centuries of wars, dynasties, traditions, and cultural evolution, their identity deeply rooted in historical continuity.

By contrast, the United States was consciously built on philosophy: Enlightenment ideals of liberty and individual rights. Its founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—embody abstract principles rather than inherited traditions.

Europe grew organically from its past, while the United States was deliberately constructed around ideas, making it a nation defined more by philosophy than by historical legacy. An analogous story can be told about the religions and the dharmas. The dharmas are a product of philosophy, not history. Continue reading “Alan Watts on the Bhagavad Gita”

Ponzi schemes are an unfortunate fact of modern life.

Named after Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant who ran a famous scam in the 1920s, a Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment scam where returns to earlier investors are paid using funds from new investors, rather than from legitimate profits generated by any underlying business activity or asset appreciation.

These schemes rely on a constant flow of fresh money to keep going. Eventually, when new investors dry up or too many people try to withdraw funds, the scheme collapses, leaving most participants with heavy losses. (See grok for more.)

Like many others, I am convinced that bitcoin is the greatest Ponzi scheme of the 21st century CE. It has no underlying productive activity and it needs a constant flow of fresh money from “bigger fools” to keep going. Continue reading “Bitcoin, the Brilliant Ponzi Scheme”

I’ve never been to Iran. I would have liked to have visited Iran but that was before the mullahs took over.

One of my close friends during my undergrad engineering days in Nagpur was an Iranian named Ibrahim Akbar Shahi from Isfahan. After he finished his engineering degree, he and his Iranian girlfriend continued to stay on in India in Pune. I lost touch with him when I went to the US for my PhD studies at Rutgers University.

I remember one of Ibrahim’s observations. He said that he found Indian Muslims to be rabid and disgustingly intolerant. He was a Muslim of course as most Iranians were, but he said that Iranians were relaxed about their faith. Then the Ayatollahs took over. Continue reading “Iran”