Dryden on Intelligence

Gordon Dryden, the New Zealand-based co-author of The Learning Revolution, and more importantly a dear friend of mine, disagrees with many of the key points proposed in Charles Murray’s series of three articles from the Wall Street Journal mentioned in the post Murray on Education yesterday. It is important for me to note that Gordon himself “dropped out of school at age fourteen, and started learning.” Here is his response, parts of which I do not agree with but for the moment post without comments: Continue reading “Dryden on Intelligence”

Murray on Education

When I stumble upon something that clearly expresses how I feel about a subject, it is a sheer delight to read. Brain candy to be enjoyed and hoarded. I immediately thank the god of the world wide web (aside: I think I will nominate Ganesha as the ruling deity of the www as he represents wisdom and learning) and kiss the LCD display with gratitude. I carefully save a copy on my laptop and email a dozen people hoping they would drop everything and read the gem I discovered. The great thing about brain candy — as opposed to regular candy — is that it is a public good — you can distribute them to everyone without ever diminishing the amount available to anyone.
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Sri Sri the SCotU

One of the rewards of writing a blog is the occasional email expressing gratitude for something which resonated with the reader. I get those emails fairly regularly on a variety of topics. The flip side is of course the rant from some disgruntled reader who finds something objectionable about my opinion. I get these very rarely but when I do, it is always from a follower of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. I believe that the most commented post is the one titled “A Letter from a Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Worshipper” which to date has 74 comments. (One of the sites maintained by the devotees of SSRS has a link to this post. I am pretty certain they did not bother to read the post — they mistakenly think that it is a news item praising SSRS.)

Here’s an informative letter from someone who has attended SSRS’s Art of Living course, for the record. The writer wishes to remain anonymous. Continue reading “Sri Sri the SCotU”

IEEE Spectrum on the OLPC

Everything you have ever wanted to know about the One Laptop Per Child but never dared to ask has been answered in an excellent feature titled The Laptop Crusade by Tekla Perry in the April 2007 issue of the IEEE Spectrum. (Here’s a link to the print version of the article.) Continue reading “IEEE Spectrum on the OLPC”

Innumerate Reporting

ExpressIndia.com carries a Press Trust of India report titled “Rise in Number of Indian Students in US.” (Hat tip: Ashish Asgekar.) It is a brief report. Here it is in its entirety. Continue reading “Innumerate Reporting”

The Living Past

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.

—William Faulkner

Unfair and Unlovely

An accident is not a crime, and a crime is not an accident. That distinction kept playing in my mind as I thought of the incident in which a drunken driver, Alistair Pereira, killed seven and injured eight pavement dwellers in Mumbai one night last November. The case against him was ruled to be one of rash driving and not one of culpable homicide by a court. Pereira was handed down a six-month prison sentence and a fine of Rs 5 lakhs (approximately US$ 11,000.)
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OLPC and Markets

Alex Singleton, President of the Globalisation Institute, a European think tank, argues against the OLPC and says that computers should be left to the market economy. “The very worst idea in international development circles is the One Laptop Per Child scheme being fronted by academic Nicholas Negroponte. ”
Continue reading “OLPC and Markets”