Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

Numerology Question

I need help with replying to this email which has been sitting in my inbox for a while. Every time I open it with intentions of replying, words fail me. Any suggestions from the gallery on what the appropriate response should be?

Atanu:

I read your article on name change and I found it fascinating. Do you have a numerologist you could recommend? I’ve just written my first novel and I need to choose between my name and married name. Thanks so much.

All the best,
Novel Writer

Thank you kindly for any help.

OLPC at the WEF at Davos

David Kirkpatrick filed a CNN report about the movers and shakers of this world at the World Economic Forum at Davos. The Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe apparently pooh-poohed global warming and trashed Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Kirkpatrick later asked Vinod Khosla what he thought of Brabeck-Letmathe’s position. “He should see his proctologist to find his head,” said Khosla, “and you can quote me.” I like that sort of ‘say it like you see it’ attitude.
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Learning a bit of History from Lt Gen Thapan

It is important to know what happened and why, and how we got to where we are today before we have a good shot at understanding where we should be going and how we could get there. If we are lost in any sense today, it could be because we are ignorant of our past and cannot quite figure out where we ought to be heading, leave alone knowing how to get there. We don’t know our history. Chalk that one up as yet another failing of our dismal educational system.

Reading someone who has lived through events that define our past is a learning experience. Lieutenant General M L Thapan, Param Veer Seva Medal, has just added an important bit to my very limited understanding of India’s recent history. He’s seen most of the last hundred years, being 89 years old. Long before most of us were born, he was fighting wars. Ramanand Sengupta spoke with him, Rediff.com reports:

He fought in two major campaigns in World War II.

After Independence, his division was ‘two-and-a-half km from Sialkot when the ceasefire whistle blew in (the second India-Pakistan war) 1965.’ And in 1971, he faced enemy fire again when he was asked to clear one of the three sectors into which East Pakistan had been marked out by India’s Eastern Command.

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Art of Living: Another Letter

Not having the gift of foresight, one rarely knows how far one will stray having embarked on an ill-advised direction. So it is with me and my simple assessment of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar many years ago. I began with concluding that SSRS is very skilled in marketing a good and ancient Indian technique generally known as yoga. Many others from India have done so and I approve of all of them because I approve of good ideas being shared. Some made huge fortunes (self-styled “Bhagwan” Rajneesh AKA Osho, for instance) and some labored out of sheer love and devotion for the ideas.

However, my conclusion that SSRS is a “useful” person, just like you and I, did not go down too well with those who are persuaded that SSRS is God Almighty incarnate (whatever “God” is.) So I get nastygrams from these fairly regularly. But once in a while I also get letters from dissatisfied AoL customers. The curious thing is that the nastygrams from SSRS worshippers are pretty incoherent rants; and the dissastisfied customers are generally pissed off but coherent. Because I have published one recent incoherent rant from an SSRS worshipper, I am publishing one from someone who has an opposing point of view. Here it is, for the record.
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Bush Bumper Stickers

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

That bit of popular wisdom comes to mind when one considers POTUS George W Bush. Clearly the man is not to blame. Nearly half of the US voted for the man. Twice. Bush is not the problem; he is only the most visible symptom. The neo-conservatives that run the US are representative of a significant percentage of the US population. If the leader of the pack is as dumb as a rock, then the pack has the collective intelligence of a rather huge pile of rocks. Here are some bumper stickers poking fun at the stupidity of Americans, using Bush as a proxy.

* Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber.

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A Bit on Mobile Advertising

Advertisement as Signaling

Advertising is the communication of a signal (information) with the express purpose of gaining advantage over one’s rivals in a competitive environment. That’s my definition of advertising in the broadest terms. In those terms, advertising is not limited just to the world that is human made. All sorts of life forms over evolutionary time scales have been in the business of advertising. In the natural world, advertising serves a very useful function, the end result of which is the astonishing appearance of beauty and diversity. A beautiful human face is not just an advertisement but also the result of successful advertising. Little wonder that beautiful people appear in advertising pictures.
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Dawkins: The God Delusion

Reading on a lazy Sunday afternoon is a luxury that I look forward to eagerly. Authors that I have special regard for, I read slowly and deliberately. I value not just the ideas but also how they are presented. So it was with particular relish that I curled up with today’s book “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. He is a master craftsman constructing elegant arguments that are a delight to behold. Here are some excerpts, for the record.
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This Amazing Web — 1

Check out this site. Click on the little square after the site has finished loading. Like that instruction on the shampoo bottle, repeat. Isn’t the web an amazing place? Why? Because the world is full of inventive, amazing talent and it allows people to showcase their ingenuity, and because we get to share in the joy of discovering those nifty ideas.