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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The Times of India is a Porn Rag
I am not against porn. It has its place but that place is not in the pages of newspaper that pretends to be a national newspaper. It’s a dismal situation. Here’s a picture compiled by someone — graphically illustrating the fact that the Times of India peddles porn. They have been in that business for a long time. I wrote about it in June 2004 — Peddling Pornography. See also this April 2004 post about the Slimes of India.
Modi Will Rescue India from Its Enemies
My previous post “Narendra Modi Scares Some People” received a comment by Sanjeev Sabhlok. See the full text of the comment here. He began by writing, “Much as I respect your opinions on other matters, I simply can’t understand your stand on Modi.” This post is a reply to Sanjeev explaining why I support Narendrabhai Modi.
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Narendra Modi Scares Some People
In the 10 days that I have been in India, I have traveled quite a bit. First was a road trip from Mumbai to Nashik to see my younger brother. Then a day trip to Ahmedabad/Gandhinagar. Three days ago I came to Kolkata and I’ll return to Mumbai on Tuesday 25th October.
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Life is a Random Draw 
