Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

Meditations on a New Education Model

Vipassana is a 2500-year old Buddhist meditation practice that claims its lineage to the Buddha himself. Various institutions carry on the tradition of teaching Vipassana and one such is led by Shri S.N.Goenka. Goenkaji, as he is known by his students, has his headquarters in Igatpuri, a small town near Nashik in Maharashtra, India. I came across Vipassana about 15 years ago in California through some American friends who are his students. Continue reading “Meditations on a New Education Model”

Story: Other Worlds to Sing In

At times I despaired but I don’t think I ever fully gave up hope that one day I will get internet connectivity from home. After a month and more calls than I would like to remember to VSNL, I did get connected today. So to celebrate my new-found freedom to post from home, I am offering you a story. It is called Other Worlds to Sing in. A short little story that is sweet. But I cannot read it without a lump in my throat. Here is the story aka Information, Please.

Life is a Random Draw

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios, epitomizes what I believe about life. It is a random draw. Recently I came across a commencement speech he gave at Stanford University. There is a connection between Steve — you would not believe this one — and Hare Krishna!

I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Go figure.

Export Quality

Haldiram’s is perhaps the only brand known around the world which comes from Nagpur (my home town). They make a great variety of wonderful namkeens (traditional Indian salty snacks), sweets, and other stuff which can be lumped as Indian junk food. It may be my cultural chauvinism which is speaking but I think that Indian junk food (like Indian food in general) beats any other variety of junk food hands down.
Continue reading “Export Quality”

Fellowship for Tsunami Reporting

My friend Reuben over at ZooStation wants to spread the word about a $10,000 fellowship fellowship set up by SAJA for anyone wanting to do aTsunami aftermath story. The details are here.

This has been a Public Service Announcement brought to you by the kind folks at Zoo Station and its affiliates. Support also provided in part by Deeshaa Network which is made possible by a grant from an anonymous foundation.

M K Gandhi’s Autobiography

I have started on Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography. Absolutely fascinating. No doubt that he was a remarkable man. I find the book un-putdown-able. The reason I started on it is rather pedestrian: I am out of reading material and went to the Crosswords bookstore around the corner and found it to be the cheapest among the lot that I wanted to read. It was only Rs 30 (about $0.70.) Amazing window into the mind of a man who casts such a long shadow onto India. More about this man later.

Post script: Over the years I have written a bit about the man. Here’s the category link on Mohandas K. Gandhi.

11 Steps to a Better Brain

{via Sonal Vidya.} From the New Scientist: 11 Steps to a Better Brain.

One of which is:

Sleep on it
Never underestimate the power of a good night’s rest

So I am doing that a lot. I will have to work on the other 10 bits.

Andreski on Thinking

Stanislav Andreski in Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972)


So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of the natural sciences provides the best example) and the advance of knowledge sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Confused thinking, on the other hand, leads nowhere in particular and can be indulged indefinitely without producing any impact upon the world.

The World is (Information) Fat


“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”
— Samuel Johnson quoted in Boswell’s “Life of Johnson.”

If you come to think about it for a moment, what we really want is knowledge, not information. (Recall what the business school guru said: what people want is not a quarter-inch drill but rather a quarter-inch hole.) The good news is that there is a lot of information out there. The better news is that the cost of accessing that information has been dropping exponentially. But the bad news is that the cost of searching through the vast stock of information to satisfy your knowledge needs is increasing.
Continue reading “The World is (Information) Fat”