Too often I see this quoted.
“Per laws of aerodynamics, the “bumble bee” cannot fly. Its body weight is not the right proportion to its wingspan. Ignoring these laws of science, the bee flies anyway.”
It is one of those seemingly profound statements that is actually devoid of the slightest shred of sense or meaning.
Continue reading “We cannot ignore what we don’t know”
I am pretty convinced that one can learn practically all subjects from easily accessible content available for free on the web. This summer I am teaching a development economics course at University of California at Berkeley, Econ171. I will use the web extensively.
Continue reading “Hans Rosling: 200 Years that Changed the World”
Marvin Minsky of MIT is a cognitive scientist and an artificial intelligence pioneer. I recently came acros his 1981 paper on “Music, Mind, and Meaning” which I found informative and profoundly thought provoking. Here’s an extended quote from it, for the record.
Continue reading “Minsky on Words”
A couple of links. One video lecture by David Weinberger. One excellent article by James Fallows.
Continue reading “Weekend links: Stuff worth a look”
R Vaidyanathan has an interesting piece in expressbuzz cryptically titled “The Lost Horizon of the Emperors.” He takes a very big picture view of what’s happening around the world. Big picture painted rather randomly. He starts off with USA’s decline and quickly moves to India and Pakistan. Regarding the decline of the US, he write, “US is going the banana republic way what with a national debt of more than $10 trillion, which is more than 80 per cent of its national income.”
Continue reading “The US Empire in Decline”
My friend Salil Naik asked me to write a letter to his daughter on her birthday. Hence you can say that this is a commissioned post. So in the style of “A Letter to Abhishek“, I offer this letter to Aalisha.
Continue reading “A Letter to Aalisha”
It is hard to believe that anyone can be caught with $134 billion worth of bonds in a false-bottomed suitcase. I did a search for “134 billion” and even Google couldn’t believe it.
Continue reading “False bottom suitcases and $134 billion”
