The Games Built on a Cesspool

No one can escape the huge amount of press on the ongoing disaster called the “Commonwealth Games” in New Delhi. There is little doubt about the train-wreck — it’s inevitable as the locomotive has long left the track and is speeding towards a chasm dragging a long train behind it. The only point of conjecture is how damaging will be the eventual crash. The action is happening so fast that estimates of damage vary widely. But it will all be over soon enough and it will be a very long time before India recovers from the ignominy and shame.
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The World University Rankings 2010

I just can’t bring myself to trust the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. It is clearly wrong. Any ranking which puts UC Berkeley below that junior university is obviously suspect, in my considered o-pee-nee-awhn.
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A Couple of Funny Videos

For the last few days I have been busy writing. Which is the reason why I have not been writing for the blog. Actually, whenever I have any serious writing to do, I find that I have a whole lot of important pieces on the web that urgently need reading. Or videos that need watching. They’re so important that I think you should also read them or watch them, as the case may be.
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The US Constitution: Made in Arabia

I bet you did not know that the US Constitution is “sharia compliant.” No, seriously it is. Ok, I am not an expert on the US constitution, and quite frankly I don’t know the first thing about sharia except that I believe that it is about Islamic law and that all Islamic countries have to conform to sharia. So that’s why it came as a bit of shock to learn that the US constitution was sharia compliant. Here’s how.
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European History Interactive Map

The web is amazing. It is the largest smorgasbord of stuff for the brain ever imaginable. I have to admit that I spend inordinate amounts of time just learning stuff from surfing the web. It is worth reminding ourselves that the world has changed qualitatively. Used to be that information was a scarce resource. That was then. This is now. Now you have a virtually limitless supply of great information. Now the truly scarce resource is time. Anyway, go take a look at . . .
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What Holds India Back

In August in a post, Is the Indian Government the Greatest Enemy of India’s Prosperity?, I had quoted a WSJ piece which read in part, “Because India’s entrepreneurs have succeeded amid dysfunctional government and financial institutions by developing a kind of independent and experimental ingenuity, it stands to reason that the enterprising class would prosper even more were India to reduce barriers to business and clean up corruption.” I commented on that and wrote: Continue reading “What Holds India Back”

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi

It’s that time of the year again when he with the curved elephant’s trunk, of enormous body, with the brilliance of a ten million suns, the remover of obstacles, etc., visits our homes. Here are a couple of songs to welcome him.
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Must Watch Video of Daniel Everette’s Deconversion

I had read the story of Daniel Everette’s experience among the Piraha tribe years ago in an article by him. This morning, Hemley Gonzalez‘s tweet about Everette, brought that back to mind. I watched the short BBC 4 video that Hemley linked to (embedded below.) I urge you to take the 10 minutes to watch it. It is deeply moving. (On a personal note, I am off to Washington DC for a few days. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.)
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