Day Dreaming

“All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the morning to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they dream their dreams with open eyes, and make them come true.” – T.E. Lawrence

The Tyranny of Christi-insanity

Swami Laxmananand Saraswati, an 80-year old Hindu priest, and five others were murdered by what is suspected a Christian mob recently in Orrisa. The news is that “police have arrested Pradesh Kumar Das, an employee of the World Vision, a Christian Charity, from Khadagpur while escaping from the district at Buguda. In another drive, two other persons Vikram Digal and William Digal have been arrested from the house of Lal Digal, a local militant Christian, from Nuasahi at Gunjibadi, Nuagaan. They have admitted to having joined a group of 28 other assailants.”

What else would one expect from the followers of Christi-insanity? Their scriptures teach them hatred and intolerance of all non-monotheists. Let me just cue up Pat Condell (who perhaps coined the term “christi-insanity”) and let him rant on my behalf on the insanity of the monotheists and their murderous ways. Here’s “The Tyranny of Scriptures.”

I wonder when humanity will become free of the curse of murderous madness of monotheism.

Dawkins at UC Berkeley

On March 8th, 2008, Richard Dawkins spoke at the Wheeler Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus during his US book tour for his book “The God Delusion.” I am an absolute admirer of Prof Dawkins.

You could see the google video of Richard in Berkeley (56 mins) or you could see it in six parts on YouTube. Here’s YouTube part 1/6 of Richard at Berkeley:

Part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.

Related post: Darwin’s Big Idea

Certification, not degrees

An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (Aug 13th) by Charles Murray, “For Most People, College is a Waste of Time” has many points that I agree with. (Hat tip: R S Malapati.)

For a while I have been convinced that it is better to separate teaching from testing and evaluation. See this post “De-linking Teaching and Testing” (Feb 2005) where I wrote: Continue reading “Certification, not degrees”

Pro-poor policies work

Pro-industrial policies promote industry, pro-health policy promote health, pro-education policies promote education. So it is natural that India’s pro-poor policies — and let’s be very clear that every single one of India’s economic policies have been pro-poor — work and promote poverty and the number of poor keeps on going up. The absolute number keeps growing. What about the percentage? It does keep improving.

So what’s the latest on poverty in India from the World Bank? It is reported that the WB released some study which talks about the changes in the recent past. Good news or bad new? Depends on who is reporting the study. Sort of like assessing beauty — which we all know lies in the eyes of the beholder. Rediff says “India has fewer poor people: World Bank“. IBNLive reads the same report and says “Number of poor in India has gone up: World Bank.” (Thanks Dr A for the links.)

How’s that for objective reporting?

Free Educational Content

A new world

That the world has changed radically in just this generation is nowhere more evident than in matters that have something to do with information and communications technology. The evidence is all around us — including this fact that I am writing this on a laptop somewhere in India and anyone with a connected computer anywhere in the world can read it. It is hard to overestimate the profound changes. Perhaps because the changes are so overwhelming that we consider them normal and so unremarkable. However, understanding the consequences of that change is going to be important in how successful we are in meeting the evolving challenges and indeed making the most of it. Here I will argue that education — the process and its objectives — has to change dramatically in this new world.
Continue reading “Free Educational Content”

Common Sense

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Thanks to you all who wrote to ask why the hiatus in blogging. I was very busy with reading and thinking. The problem apparently is that I can either write or I can think — but not both at the same time 🙂

Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, is what kept me busy. Reading Paine is an intellectual delight for me because I keep marveling how closely my ideas mirror his. I was hooked from the first line in the introduction to the pamphlet: Continue reading “Common Sense”

UC Berkeley gets a bronze

It’s heart-breaking but what is one to do. UC Berkeley, in a ranking of world universities conducted by a Chinese university published the ranked list of top 500 universities, doesn’t get the gold. (Thanks Ashish Asgekar for the link.)

UC Berkeley, my alma mater, I regret to say shows up behind Harvard, and — horror of all horrors — behind a junior university which shall not be named here. The only consolation for me is that the university that my nemesis attended — Cornell — shows up way down the list at rank 12.

It is a matter of some pride and considerable astonishment that two Indian universities make the list of the top 500: IISc and IIT-Kgp figure in the 303-401 space. I say astonishment because I am constantly amazed that given that the Indian government has done all it can to destroy education in India, even in this ranking by a Chinese university, two Indian universities are mentioned. But I am sure that given what the government is doing to cripple the IITs, they will be also-rans in the rankings race soon enough. After that, I suppose the government can set its sight on the IISc and kill it in short order.

Hi from ISB Hyderabad

Sunday was a day of travel for me. It took me 14 hours to get from Pune to Hyderabad, door to door. I had a 3 PM flight to Hyderabad out of Mumbai. Even though I left home at 8 AM, I could not reach Mumbai airport in time. The Lonvala hills had received a lot of rain with the result that there was a landslide which disabled a portion of the Pune-Mumbai expressway. I had to buy another ticket for a 7 PM flight on the airlines formerly known as Indian Airlines and later renamed “Indian” and now known as Air India.

I landed at 9 PM and took a cab to Gachibowli — about 40 kms from the new Hyderabad airport — where ISB is located. The cab ride came to Rs 620. Wow!

Anyway, today was a busy day. I sat in on two classes at ISB. I wanted to get a feel for how they teach around here. I had a couple of long sessions discussing a proposed “Institute for Urbanization” with my host Dhaval. Later in the evening, a group of students wanted to have an informal chat with me. I had a great time discussing India with a bunch of seriously motivated business school types.

Tomorrow more meetings are lined up. So until we meet again and the case is sol-ved, take care.

Love Letters from Grampa

Thanks to the greatest invention of humankind, I came across the work of one grandpa through his blog “The Zen of Zero,” a couple of months ago. Who is he?
Continue reading “Love Letters from Grampa”