Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw

Thus spoke Milton Friedman:

“In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from grinding poverty are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.”

A few years ago when I used to waste time on Quora, I couldn’t resist responding to someone who asked, “How has capitalism ruined the world?”

Here’s my response, for the record.

Continue reading “Capitalism Has Ruined the World”

I love cars and I love driving. Not to brag too much but as it happens, I think I’m the second-best driver in the world. The US is perhaps the best place in the world for road trips. I’ve been fortunate enough to have dozens of road trips under my belt in the US, a few of them across the continent.

Recently a friend in the valley bought a mid-sized SUV, a 2026 Hyundai Palisade Hybrid. It has three rows of seats. This one is very luxurious, with all sorts of bells and whistles. Fancy seats. Great sound system. Cameras and sensors all around. Lots of nice driving assist features. I look forward to driving it one of these days soon. The specs are great.[1]

Hybrids are a very clever idea. They have a gasoline engine and also electric motors and batteries. Pure electric vehicles (EV) don’t have the gas bits and regular cars don’t have the electric bits. Continue reading “Hybrid Cars”

Bill Watterson created one of the most loveable characters in modern American fiction. I suspect that the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes is probably more well-known than Mark Twain’s characters Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn. I conjecture that Twain would have enjoyed Watterson’s creation.

About C&H I wrote in 2022, “The protagonist of our beloved strip is named after the French theologian, John Calvin (1509 – 1564), and his sidekick is named after the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679). I don’t know much about Calvinism but I am familiar with Hobbes’s work Leviathan, as I have an interest in political economy theory.”[1]

Our precocious Calvin’s pronouncements are funny for certain but frequently they are accurate as well: “People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.” I relate to that sentiment all the time. I can’t stand retards.

Though I am not a super genius, or even a genius, I do find average people aggravating. I think geniuses who are also good-natured are extremely rare. Continue reading “Calvin & Hobbes”

Growing up in India, I was taught that democracy was the great good that we have to be eternally grateful for. Democracy was the Holiest of the Holy Cows and it was the gift that Gandhi and his lackeys had given to the people of India through their wisdom and generosity.

It seemed that democracy was so precious that the terrible poverty of India was a price worth paying for it. The link between poverty and democracy was never explained but the claim was that India was poor because it was a democracy.

Allow me a bit of personal reflections. It was pretty late in the day that I learned to think critically about our world. How should we live, how should we organize society to be peaceful and prosperous? How to think about those questions is at least as important—if not more—as the question of the structure of chemical elements and learning calculus. Continue reading “Popper and his Theory of Democracy”

I think that the English have the most delightful sense of humor. It’s dry, irreverent, subtle, often rude but in a sophisticated sort of way, and—most importantly for me—intelligent. An explanation for why I love English humor could be that I grew up reading PG Wodehouse.

On arriving in the US, I got introduced to English sitcoms. This was decades before the internet. Therefore, most of the visual entertainment at home was broadcast TV. We’d gather around the TV in the living room every evening to watch our favorite shows. Public TV carried a lot of BBC programming. I loved a whole bunch of them.

• • • Are You Being Served?
    • Keeping Up Appearances
    • Blackadder
    • Fawlty Towers
    • Monty Python’s Flying Circus
    • Waiting for God
    • Yes, Minister
    • Yes, Prime Minister
    • Bean
    • ‘Allo ‘Allo
    • As Time Goes By
    • Bless Me Father
    •  A Bit of Fry & Laurie
    • The Two Ronnies

Continue reading “Funny People”

Carl Sagan was one of the greatest popularizers of science the world has seen. Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1934, he sadly passed away relatively young in 1996 in Seattle, WA. A trained astronomer and astrophysicist, he inspired generations of scientists through his popular books and his brilliant TV series, Cosmos, one of the most beloved science programs ever made.

Sagan authored, co-authored, or edited around 20 books total, along with hundreds of scientific papers.[1] One could not read him without being moved by the poetry and the lyrical quality of his prose. It was inspired and inspiring. I believe that reading his popular books is great training on how to express oneself verbally.

He had a distinctive speech style. His soft, resonant voice had a melodic and resonant intonation. It was punctuated with pauses for emphasis. Most memorable was how he said the word “billions” — which he had to do with some regularity since his subject involved astronomical numbers. Though he never uttered the phrase “billions and billions,” it was associated with him in the popular mind. The title of the final book he wrote, “Billions & Billions,” shows that he did not lose his sense of humor even while suffering terminal cancer. Continue reading “Carl Sagan”

Today is “May Day,” the first of May. In many European cultures, it’s a traditional spring festival holiday, celebrated since ancient times. For communists and socialist, it’s the “International Workers’ Day” and they too call it “May Day.”

India being a socialist/communist country, 1st of May is “Labor Day” and is a public holiday.

It’s kind of fitting that the communist/socialist celebrate “May Day” because “Mayday” is the international life-threatening distress call for mariners and aviators. It’s derived from the French m’aider (which means ‘help me’ and is pronounced “mayday.”) That use originated in 1921. Continue reading “First of May”

Happy Buddha Purnima.

Buddha Purnima—the first full moon in May—is considered an important day in the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the one who became the Buddha.

Thus have I heard that he was born on this day in north east India in Lumbini over 25 centuries ago, attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya on this day, and died in Rajgriha on this day.

In 1993, I went on a pilgrimage which I call “Following the footsteps of the Buddha.” Of course, I didn’t walk. I took cars, buses and trains. I spent a day in Lumbini at the place where he was born, sat under the tree (a descendent of the original) under which he attained enlightenment, visited the garden in Sarnath where he gave his first sermon (“the Turning of the Wheel of Dharma”), sat in contemplation at the shrine where he died in Rajgriha at the age of 80.

Of the three dharmas, all of which originated in India, only Buddha dharma left India to become a world religion. Hindu dharma and Jain dharma continued to be nearly exclusively Indian. The dharmas have a family resemblance (just as the religions do.) They share core ideas such as karma, dharma, kama, and moksha. Alan Watts, who knew the dharmas as well as any layperson can, described Buddhism as Hinduism packaged for export. Continue reading “Heart Sutra on Buddha Purnima”

Today is the electron’s birthday. In 1874, Irish physicist George Johnstone Stoney suggested that there existed a “single definite quantity of electricity,” the charge of a monovalent ion. But that was a conjecture. He named the particle an electron.

On April 30, 1887 at the Royal Institution, British physicist J. J. Thomson (1856 – 1940) announced the discovery of a particle that is over 1,800 times lighter than a proton. Using a cathode ray tube he found the cathode rays bent in electric and magnetic fields thus showing that they were made of tiny, negatively charged particles were electrons, much smaller than atoms.

As it happened, Thomson’s son, George Paget Thomson (1892 – 1975), experimentally demonstrated electron diffraction in 1927 thus confirming Louis de Broglie’s theory that particles also behave like waves. George Thomson was awarded the Nobel prize in physics in 1937. The father showed that electrons are particles, and the son showed that electrons were waves. Continue reading “Happy Birthday, Electron & WWW”