Category: Uncategorized

The wiki page on the Foreign Policy of the United States states that —

The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States of America . . . are “to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community”.

All very noble and praiseworthy no doubt. But what exactly is it in practice and is it anything as advertised? Even if we were interested in understanding it (unlikely at best), we don’t really have the time to figure that out. But we should have at least some passing familiarity with the US foreign policy’s impact on the world. Spoiler alert: the impact is extremely terrible.

I am an enemy of the state. It is part of my nature. The state is to some extent a necessary evil but the bigger the state is, the greater evil it is. Continue reading “Sachs on US Foreign Policy”

Road accidents are an unfortunate fact of life. The best we as a society can do is to minimize the chances of an accident. And when the “accident” is due to gross negligence, then the criminal should be so severely punished that it deters others from being negligent.

I read about an accident in Pune in which two people on a bike were mowed down by a speeding car a couple of days ago. The car was a Porsche (pictured above), driven by an apparently drunk 17-year old. The victims were both 24 year old, Ashwini Koshta and Aneesh Awadhiya, from Jabalpur. They had studied engineering in Pune and were working at Johnson Controls as data analysts. Continue reading “A Tale of Two Road Accidents”

Have you ever seen an UFO? I have. I have experienced several “anomalous” phenomena that I cannot explain in terms of what I understand to be the basic principles of physics. A relatively recent example of an UFO is this.

That is a genuine UFO because it is, by definition, an unidentified flying object. UFO doesn’t imply extraterrestrial or alien origin things. It merely means that the observer is unable to identify what the flying object in an image or video is. I have not been able, to the best of my abilities, to figure out what that is. Nor has anyone else identified that. So therefore it’s an UFO.

Recently there’s been much discussion of UFOs not just on social media but also in US government agencies such as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Why and why now are interesting questions. I think that Mick West has some answers. As a researcher and debunker of claims of alien origin of UFO/UAP, I think he’s credible. Link to a video of his at the end of this post. Continue reading “UFO”

We are nearly almost totally unaware of the technological marvels that surround us. But we should be in awe of them. They don’t magically fall unbidden from the skies like manna from heaven. Real people have to work really hard, often in obscurity, to bring those amazing things to life. Today I learned the details about the making of one such innovation: that of the blue LED.

I knew that the blue LED was a big deal and that the inventors got the 2019 Physics Nobel Prize. But I didn’t know of the struggles that one of them — Shuji Nakamura — went through to make it happen. Thanks to a Veritasium video, I have a new hero: Dr Nakamura. His innovation had transformed the world. Continue reading “LED Blues”

Artificial intelligence is perhaps the most transformative technological advancement of our time, poised to revolutionize industries, reshape societies, and redefine the very fabric of human existence.

It is fundamentally changing the way we work, communicate, and interact with the world around us, pushing the boundaries of what we thought possible and opening up new frontiers in fields ranging from healthcare and finance to transportation and entertainment. With its ability to analyze vast amounts of data, learn from experience, and make autonomous decisions, artificial intelligence is poised to drive profound societal shifts and shape the future in ways we are only beginning to imagine. Continue reading “ChatGPT AI”

War is hell, as many people who have been in wars and witnessed its horrors have concluded. That includes General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820 – 1891) of the US civil war Union army who wrote “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.”

But people don’t seem to get it. Those who start wars are never the victims of wars. The leaders start wars and ordinary people pay with blood and treasure. However there are people who stand up to the war mongers; they are specially targeted by the war mongers for their opposition to war and the futility of war.

What puzzles me is this: why is it that people don’t get the bloody scam that is perpetrated against them by the war mongers? It isn’t as if there have been no senseless wars and as if there haven’t been people warning against them since antiquity. Continue reading “War is hell”

I was delighted to hear Javier Milei’s address to the 2024 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. He was absolutely devastating in his support of free-market capitalism and his opposition to big government. After becoming the president of Argentina last month, as a committed libertarian he wants to set his country on a path to economic growth by reducing the size of the government. Continue reading “Javier Milei”

J. B. S. Haldane had gloomily observed that “the world shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder.” The world is overflowing with wonders, and yet we take them all for granted, seldom stopping to marvel at them.

Fortunately we have the means literally at our fingertips to learn about them and how they came to be. I spend a good deal of time on the internet (Youtube channels, particularly) appreciating the advances humans have made in science, technology and engineering that made the wonders possible.

The economics point of view is particularly helpful in understanding how the modern world works. Except for the most recent dozen or so generations, all previous 10,000 generations of our ancestors lived lives of extreme poverty and deprivation that we cannot even imagine. We are the fortunate ones. Continue reading “Humans”

My dear friends F and D in India have two teenage sons. The older one is an undergrad in a reputed art college in Paris, and the younger one, in high school in India, is aiming to become a professional drummer. I mention this as a contrast to the career choices open to me when I was a teenager in Nagpur so many decades ago.

Born in a middle-class family in a tier-two city in India, I was limited to studying either engineering or medicine. Since I could not stomach the sight of blood or any pain and suffering, I chose engineering. Becoming an artist or a musician was inconceivable. Economist? I didn’t even know such a discipline existed.

But times have changed. In the last half century or so, career options have exploded, and not just those related to computer technology and the internet. Jobs exist in every field today, surely in hardware and software, that one could not have imagined a generation ago. Continue reading “Happiness”

Conflict is an universal feature of the living world. It arises from the struggle to survive. All living things struggle to overcome the natural world which, it would seem most of the time, is trying to kill them: droughts, floods, fires, earthquakes, asteroids, pandemics and the sort.

Then there’s the struggle against other living things — the prey versus predator variety. Add to that, there’s the competition against one’s own kind for food and mates. Nature is, as often described accurately, red in tooth and claw.

For us humans there’s the universal struggle against nature, and the competition against others of our own kind. There’s one additional dimension: the struggle of man against himself. That’s the toughest of all. The great philosophies of the world have addressed that final bit — particularly the Sanatana, Buddhist and Jain dharmas. Continue reading “Conflict”