And just in time for April Fool’s Day. I wonder what the newspapers around the world will unleash on the unsuspecting on April 1st. The greatest April fool’s joke is undoubtedly the Swiss spaghetti harvest of 1957. The BBC explained… Read More ›
Month: March 2008
The Management Regrets to Announce . . .
. . . that the chief typewriter monkey has called in sick the last couple of days. Which also means that there will be no posts for the next few days. However, the management recommends the archives for your reading… Read More ›
An economics moment
This is a personal post. Not exactly what I had for breakfast type of post but close. I clearly remember the moment when a light went off in my head. Brian Wright was teaching and we were talking about EV… Read More ›
Education Spending
This is a follow up to the post on Indian spending on education abroad. The actual spending may not be $13 billion annually but the argument does not change even if the figure was much lower. What matters is that… Read More ›
India Spends $13,000,000,000 on Education Abroad
That’s what a report in the Hindustan Times claims: US $13 billion each year. Figures such as these are unbelievable but I suppose someone must have done the numbers. In any case, I had estimated that number to be around… Read More ›
Arthur C Clark: The Final Odyssey
Sir Arthur C Clarke 1917–2008 departed the planet yesterday for his rendezvous with Rama in geosynchronous orbit. Like millions of others of my generation, I grew up reading science fiction. I liked Arthur C Clarke the best. Based on his… Read More ›
A bit from Einstein
I confess that if there is one human whom I come close to worshiping, it is Albert Einstein. [Picture source.] “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be… Read More ›
Rajivspeak is getting out of hand
One of my pet peeves is the idiotic mixing of English and Hindi words in advertising copy which is cropping up everywhere on billboards and in print. Perhaps it is considered cool. But it is cool in only the way… Read More ›
Babbage and Tennyson
Charles Babbage (1791–1871), the English mathematician was the father of the idea of a programmable computer. Babbage built a mechanical computer called “the difference engine.” He once corresponded with Alfred Lord Tennyson. Sir, In your otherwise beautiful poem “The Vision… Read More ›