Greeting from Thiruvananthapuram, aka Trivandrum. I arrived here yesterday evening from Mumbai. This is the city of the famous Mahavishnu temple in South India, the Sri Anantha Padmanabhaswamy Temple. Thiruvananthapuram means “The land of Sree Anantha Padmanabhaswamy”. A few months ago, that temple’s treasures were valued at Rs 90K crores (around US $20 billion.)
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Month: October 2011
Praying for an External Shock
The world is reaching a milestone – nominally today – 7 billion people are alive in the world. I suppose there must be some uncertainty about that number; perhaps we have to give or take 100 million or so. It has been estimated that the total number of people who have ever lived is around 100 billion. Thus around 7 percent of people who have ever lived are alive today. That’s an incomprehensively large number.
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The Louder She Talked of Her Honor, the Faster We Counted Our Spoons
Used to be that once upon a time, India had leaders who had a backbone and could shoulder responsibility without buckling. Thus have I heard that one man, Lal Bahadur Shastri, resigned as the railways minister following a train accident in which scores of people died.
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A Taxonomy of the Stupid
I have mentioned the basic laws of human stupidity enunciated by Prof Cipolla before on this blog. For your convenience, I repeat the basic laws here:
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Goodbye, John McCarthy
Folklore says that things come in threes. Prof John McCarthy, Stanford University, passed away on the 24th of this month. Before that, we said goodbye to Dennis Ritchie. He was found dead on Oct 12th. Steve Jobs died on Oct 5th. It’s been not a very good month for people related to computers and computer science.
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During Diwali, worship Kali and Lakshmi
For me, one of the best things about being in India during Diwali – or any Indian festival for that matter – is that it gives me hope, that all is not yet lost, that there is something precious that we have, that we will still endure even though it may look quite hopeless.
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In Spite of the Gods (Redux)
A good friend sent me an email which reminded me of an old post of mine. Here, for your entertainment, is the text of the email and a link to the old post.
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