When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are pockets. Thus goes a well-worn Zen Buddhist saying. Our perceptions of the external world are filtered through our internal desires and motivations. This process is not linear; a powerful feedback… Read More ›
Alternative Viewpoint
Who’s the boss?
The other day I received a forwarded email informing me that in Mumbai there is a traffic law which requires that a taxi driver has to comply with a request — no, not request but rather a demand — for… Read More ›
Power, Scarcity, and Corruption
Education in India is generally in dire straits even though some people mistakenly believe that it is excellent from the successes of some ex-IIT non-resident Indians in the US who made piles of money. It is not hard to figure… Read More ›
The Directness of Zen
Here is a brief video on the Zen Mind — An Introduction. I like Zen Buddhism. It is profoundly simple and direct. The voice-over states clearly at the end of the clip that “… do not differentiate yourself as apart… Read More ›
The Renaming of Things
Hugh Fitzgerald over at Dhimmiwatch says in an article titled “Aurangzeb Road” (hat tip: Tushar) : “The Danish Embassy in India is located on Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi. So there is still a road in India that is named… Read More ›
Delusional People
Two items today from this amazing web. First, a simple rant telling monotheists that they should stop being delusional. Nothing fancy but a lot of fun. Next, a great conversation with Susan Blackmore at the Point of Inquiry. “In this… Read More ›
Gordon Dryden on India
New Zealand author Dr. Gordon Dryden, who showed me around his home-country last year (mentioned before here and here), breezed into India last month, and a week later flew out “head filled with a haze of contraditions”: Air travel: Horrified… Read More ›
Outlawing Child Labor
My position is that child labor is not the problem, but rather it is the symptom of a different underlying problem. Merely outlawing child labor will not fix the underlying problem any more than malnutrition will be fixed by outlawing… Read More ›
Oh No! India Shinging Again
From the “Don’t Know What’s the Point Department,” the new release is I am India on Google Video. A collage of images–a field of wind power generators, a soaring jet in the blue skies above a lush green field, the… Read More ›
A SET OF HARD PROBLEMS
The theory of computation studies a class of problems called ‘NP Complete.’ These are problems that are considered computationally hard in the sense that all known algorithms to solve them require a non-deterministic Turing machine polynomial orders of time. The… Read More ›