“When the history books of the future are written, Alan Turing will go down in the company of Newton and Darwin and Einstein. His visions changed how humanity conceives of computation, information and pattern — and 100 years after his… Read More ›
Month: June 2012
Mrs Gandhi’s Evil Move — 37 years ago
The majority of Indians today don’t know a heck of a lot about Mrs Indira Gandhi. Fact is that they were not even born when she ruled. Her descendants and her party, the Indian National Congress (how’s that for an… Read More ›
Visual Perception Lessons
Our brains create the what we observe the world to be. A pretty awesome set of lessons on visual perception from the Mind Lab. Start with “Lesson 1: Illusion of an Uninterrupted World” by clicking on the thumbnail picture. The… Read More ›
Why Nations Fail
The question why some nations are rich while others are poor is not new. It has been the focus of economists for centuries. The great Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith dealt with that in his famous book, An… Read More ›
India is Poor by Choice
Economic growth, development, progress—whatever you call it—is neither inevitable nor impossible. There are lots of examples of economies that continue to struggle with economic growth. And there are many examples of economies that have made rapid progress. What distinguishes the… Read More ›
Ideas dictate the destiny of economies
What is poverty? Who’s a poor person? What’s a rich economy? These questions have engaged some of the brightest people for centuries — and no doubt it will continue to fascinate some for centuries. My answer to what is poverty… Read More ›
What is Economics?
On twitter, I got into a bit of back and forth with two people about economics. In 140 characters, one cannot have a real argument. Instead it is just a series of assertions. One gentleman came down heavily against the… Read More ›
Don’t they like freedom?
Everybody likes to be free. That’s evident not only from introspection (which only humans, as far as we can tell, are capable of) but from just looking around we can be certain that all other humans also want to be… Read More ›
The 2012 Transit of Venus
These few weeks have been exciting for celestial phenomena. First there was the annular solar eclipse of May 20th a couple of week ago. I took some pictures of that one. I will post those as soon as I download… Read More ›
