Month: February 2009

Innovation and Entrepreneurship in India

US Innovates

It is fairly widely acknowledged that there is a very strong connection between the US’s economic success and the entrepreneurial character of its people which generates innovations. It can be plausibly argued that economic success and entrepreneur-driven innovations are bi-directionally causally linked: each gives a boost to the other in ever widening upward spirals of mutually reinforcing, positive feedback. It is perhaps difficult figure out which came first: the economic success or the entrepreneurial character of the people.
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Darwin and The Daily Show

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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http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:124491

You will find a collection of evolution related segments here.

In honor of Charles Darwin turning 200 years young today (you don’t look a day over 139, Chuck!), I’ve assembled some of the finest evolution-related clips from The Daily Show’s history. I have to say though, I have some misgivings about this, because I don’t believe I descended from some damn monkeys. No, I believe we all descended from space-pandas, like it says in The Bible.

Lincoln and Darwin: Who was the more important?

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 read the whole thing.
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Darwin Quotes

darwin_cutout

Darwin wrote:

“To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.”

“My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding laws out of large collection of facts.”

Quotes from the Jan 2009 special issue of Scientific American on the Most Powerful Idea in Science issue.
[Image source]

Here’s what Gary Stix’s article, “Darwin’s Living Legacy”, in that issue begins with: Continue reading “Darwin Quotes”

A bit of piano music

This six-year old, Ethan Bortnick, is pretty astounding.

The world has 6+ billion people. Even six-sigmas away from the mean, you are likely to find a pretty huge number of extremely extraordinary people. Makes you wonder how many don’t have access to what it takes for their various talents to flourish. This kid is not just talented — he is lucky. As Stephen Jay Gould had said, “I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

Slowly wise and meanly just

The Vatican has decided that Charles Darwin was not really wrong. In a remarkable display of mealy-mouthed post-hoc rationalization, it claims that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is not inconsistent with the idea of a biblical creation of life. Vatican Buries the Hatchet with Charles Darwin, says TimesOnLine.
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Happy Darwin Day

lincoln

darwin

Feb 12, 1809 must have been an extraordinary day.

It is special for me because two of my heroes were born on that day. Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were both born on this day 200 years ago. This year, 2009, is also the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s book, On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

So I will dedicate the next couple of posts on Darwin and Lincoln.

Happy Birthday, Mr Lincoln and Happy Birthday Mr Darwin. The world is a better place for your having been here.

The Risk of Gas Pipelines

Energy security is not something that a country that is not energy independent can ever completely achieve.

India has to import energy — whether it is oil, or natural gas, or even nuclear fuel — and therefore it can never in the conceivable future be anything but be at the mercy of suppliers. Which necessarily means that India has to think really hard about how to mitigate the risks of disruption of its energy supplies from abroad.
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Where’s Waldo Now?

wheres-waldo-now

Good news!

“Where’s Waldo Now” has been reissued. Worth having around the house. Kids of all ages would love it.

I have copied bits from one of the reviews at Amazon below the fold.

(If you are considering a gift for me, I strongly recommend “Where’s Waldo: The Complete Collection.”)

🙂

OK, so where am I now? I am in Mumbai on my way to Hyderabad this afternoon for a meeting at the Indian School of Business. I’ll be back.
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The “$10 Laptop” and Radical Ignorance

The radical ignorance displayed by those who claimed that the government had created a laptop costing Rs 500 (~US $10) is jaw-dropping spectacular. How on earth can one for even one moment entertain the idea that any entity — least of all the government and a bunch of students — could produce something for an order of magnitude less cost than currently possible is unfathomable.

As the photoshopped image in my first post on this matter previously states, “I see stupid people . . . they don’t even know that they are dumb.” And now we note the furious back-peddling. I had noted in the followup post that the claim is that it was a typo. It seems that India’s Minister of State for Higher Education D Purandeswari’s claim that a $10 laptop was a reality was based on a simple typo, a dropped “0”. (H/t: Sudipta)
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