Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

Climate Change

Of the many challenges that the world is facing, climate change is the biggest and the baddest in my opinion. It has the potential to cause tremendous long-term damage and affect the most number of people.

It could be several orders of magnitude worse than the Chinese Covid19 pandemic, although they have one thing in common: the policy response to the Chinese virus imposed the terrible cost, not the disease itself. The policy response to the climate hysteria could end up destroying billions of lives. This is not hyperbole. Continue reading “Climate Change”

Doing Arithmetic

Humans are amazing in their variety. A dear friend of mine would sometimes call me for help figuring out some bit of arithmetic. “Hey Nu,” she’d say, “what’s 17 percent of 200?” That’s one end of the spectrum; at the other end is this Chinese kid. Prepare to be amazed.

I am sure that it would take me over an hour to do what the kid does in two minutes. What are those weird finger movements he does while doing the additions? Continue reading “Doing Arithmetic”

Game of Life

The great big game of life has a surprising counterpart in a cellular automata developed by John Conway in the 1960’s. It’s called “Game of Life.”

The gif on the left is an instance of the game. It’s called Gosper’s glider gun. Lucky for us, we can download Conway’s game from the google store.

John Conway was a mathematical genius. Born in England, he did most of work in Princeton University. I first came across Conway’s Game of Life during my graduate studies in computer science.  It was featured in Martin Gardner’s Scientific American column “Mathematical Games.”[1] Continue reading “Game of Life”

Laws of Motion

If you are trained in elementary physics and in basic calculus, you’d recognize the image above as summarizing Newton’s laws of motion in simple mathematical equations. The wiki explains:

Newton’s laws of motion are three basic laws of classical mechanics that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws can be paraphrased as follows: Continue reading “Laws of Motion”

Liberty

Samuel Adams, bronze and granite statue, 1880. Anne Whitney.

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” Continue reading “Liberty”

Technology

Iron Pillar in Delhi

The iron pillar in Delhi is an amazing object. At over 7 meters in length and weighing over three tonnes, it was made about 16 centuries ago from forge-welded wrought iron pieces. It is so corrosion resistant that it has survived the ravages of nature, and is strong enough that it even withstood destruction by cannon fire by Nadir Shah’s army about three centuries ago.

The people who cast that pillar had the technology to make that pillar. Which means that they knew how to make an iron pillar which resists corrosion for over a millennium and a half. The operative phrase in the previous sentence is “knew how to” — which is the definition of technology that we focus on. Continue reading “Technology”

A Mudumalai Bear

Click on image to embiggen

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. That adage is known as Hanlon’s Razor.

I wondered about the mentality of the people who decided that disallowing photos at nature preserves is a great idea. Were they merely stupid or was something else motivating them? They have those signs at the Tiger Reserves at Bandipur and Mudumalai. Continue reading “A Mudumalai Bear”

The Best Thing for Being Sad

Photo credit: Anita Jankovic at unsplash.com

Learn something. I don’t know if that’s the answer for everyone but that’s what works for me. You mileage may vary, as they say in the ads for cars. But for the vast majority of the cases, it works. Learn something. The best thing you learn is that you are just fine just as  you are. Continue reading “The Best Thing for Being Sad”

Pass the Dutchie

Time for a musical interlude. A few fun songs. The first is from a one-hit wonder Jamaican band Musical Youth.

When I first heard the song long years ago, I mistakenly thought that “pass the dutchie” meant pass the bong. Only recently I learned that dutchie refers to a “dutch pot” and the stew-like dish made in it. It’s food that is being passed. Hence the words, “How does it feel when you have no food.” Continue reading “Pass the Dutchie”

Mudumalai Park

Tiger Drinking Pond Mudumalai Mar21 DSC01310
Tiger at Mudumalai. Click on image for credit.

I’ve been at my friend KM’s home for the last three weeks in Bangalore. Yesterday, KM and I drove 300 kms south to the Mudumalai National Park to visit a beautiful resort for a couple of days. The resort is located in a tiger reserve that spans three southern India states — Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu — in the Nilgiris. The image above is from the Mudumalai part of the reserve. Continue reading “Mudumalai Park”