Subho Bijoya Dashami

Ma Durga and her children — Ganesh, Lakshmi, Saraswati and Kartik. Click to embiggen.

Pujo ended today. Ma Durga’s visit to her maternal home is over and she’s gone back to her husband’s home. Bengali traditional iconography shows her with her children. In the picture above, from left to right, there’s Ganesh, Lakshmi, Ma Durga riding a lion in her incarnation as Mahisasurmardini (the slayer of the demon Mahisasur), Saraswati and Kartik. (Image from the puja pandal at PJC Bangalore.)

Mahisasur is a powerful asura (demon) depicted as a half-buffalo, half-human being born from the union of an asura king and a she-buffalo named Mahishi. He is known for his shape-shifting abilities, capable of transforming between human and buffalo forms. He gained immense power through severe penance, which led to a boon from Bramha Dev granting him invulnerability to being killed by any man or god. This boon had a critical loophole: he could only be slain by a woman.  Continue reading “Subho Bijoya Dashami”

Goodbye, Dr. Jane Goodall

A sculpture of Jane Goodall and David Greybeard outside the Field Museum in Chicago (wiki)

Dame Jane Morris Goodall (3 April 1934 – 1 October 2025), was an English primatologist and anthropologist. She was considered the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, having studied the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees for over 60 years. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960. (Source: wiki.) She passed away yesterday, 1st Oct., in Los Angeles, CA.

Her work with the chimps at the Gombe National Park was phenomenal. I first came to know about her work through a talk she gave at the National Press Club sometime in the late 1990s. I heard the talk on my local public radio station KQED 88.5. (Those were the days when NPR had not generated to the woke nonsense station it has become now.) Continue reading “Goodbye, Dr. Jane Goodall”

Gun Violence

As you probably know that on the afternoon of Sept 10th (Mountain standard time), a 31-year old conservative activist, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated in a public event at the Utah Valley University in Utah.

A committed Christian, Charlie was extremely influential in the Republican camp. He was reasonable and always willing to engage in debate with his opponents. He graciously and consistently gave them the opportunity to argue their case to prove him wrong. As an American, he was committed to the freedom of speech that the US constitution protects (and most other “democracies” such as the UK, Australia, and India lack.)

Charlie Kirk was truly exceptional. Too much has been written about him for me to waste time on repeating his (sadly brief) life story. I have the same response to his passing as I have for the passing of any person famous or otherwise. Since he was a Christian, I recall the words of a Christian poet, John Donne. His meditation written in 1623 read in part: Continue reading “Gun Violence”

Aug 16th chat on “Trade, Tariffs and International Trade”

I am excited to announce that this Saturday, 16th August, Akshar Prabhudesai is hosting a zoom event on Indicforum.org with yours truly as the guest. We will talk about trade, tariffs and international trade. Hope you can join us.

The event is on Saturday at 9:30 PM IST (9:00 AM Pacific, 11:00 AM Central.)

Registration is required and free. Click on any link in this page to register. Talk to you on Saturday.

Road Trips in the US

I enjoy US road trips immensely. I have driven across the continental United States twice so far: once from San Jose, CA to Newark, DE, via Chicago, IL; and once from Newark, DE to San Jose, CA via Dallas, TX.

Those were nearly 4,000 kms. They were solo trips. I generally drive around 12 to 14 hours, with a couple of gas station breaks. The most recent trip was from Phoenix, AZ to San Jose, CA.

Other important road trips have been to Death Valley National Park (five times), Yosemite National Park (about a dozen times), Grand Canyon (thrice), Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, etc. Most of them involved camping. I love camping, particularly in Death Valley because if you time it right — moonless night — then you can see the Milky Way. Continue reading “Road Trips in the US”

International Trade and Food

Trade, as we all know, is good for those who trade. If two parties freely choose to exchange stuff, we can be certain of this: that they expect to gain from that, else they would not do so. Free trade is what we call a win-win situation or a positive-sum game.

Trade involves two parties and only two parties. If a third party intervenes uninvited, then it is not free trade. In that case, instead of that win-win game, it could be win-lose or even lose-lose game. The world would be a lot better if it had universal unrestricted trade.

I have a particular interest in trade. That’s because I am an economist, and economics is the study of humans as they go about that peculiar business of exchanging stuff. Trading is as unique to humans as is reading and writing: no other animal does it.

In his 1776 book “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” Adam Smith wrote about specialization and the division of labor. It is the division of labor that gives rise to “general opulence.” One of the causes of wealth is division of labor. Continue reading “International Trade and Food”

Thomas Sowell, an American Treasure

One of the joys of being an economist is that I get to meet (nearly always virtually) great minds, of the past and the present. Among those whom I admire immensely are the legendary ancients like David Hume, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and the 20th century greats like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell.

Sowell is unique in many ways. Unlike the others I just mentioned, he’s not a dead white man; he’s alive and black. Also, Sowell is not primarily an economics theorist and has not made (as far as I can tell) any fundamental theoretical contributions to economics. However, he’s one of the best social commentators and explainers of basic economics. His work enable lay persons to understand how the world works. He has made—and continues to make—the world understandable to millions of people.

Let’s begin with a brief bio of Dr Sowell. Continue reading “Thomas Sowell, an American Treasure”

Trade Wars and Freedom

As a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying classical liberal, it is distressing for me to watch the insanity of the “trade wars” that Trump has unleashed around the world. He is a self-centered, myopic, stupid, uncouth ignoramus. His economic policies are not good for the US, never mind the world.  

However, the US is a very rich economy. Although it will be hurt by the perverse tariffs that Trump has imposed on it, the US economy will weather those insults. This too shall pass.

Trump’s tariffs don’t make sense. But what’s worse is that he appears to think that the tariffs are paid for by the exporting countries. I would fail any Econ101 student who doesn’t understand that consumers pay the majority of the tariffs because a tariff is indistinguishable from a sales tax. The incidence of a sales tax is primarily on consumers, not on producers— domestic or foreign. Same goes for tariffs. Continue reading “Trade Wars and Freedom”

Goodbye, Tom Lehrer

Today I am sad. I learned that Tom Lehrer passed away recently. I have loved his songs for decades. He passed away a few days ago at the age of 97 on 26th July in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Here’s a brief introduction (edited from an AI answer.)

Tom Lehrer was an American musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician. Born in New York City to a secular Jewish family in April 1928, he was considered a child prodigy and entered Harvard College at the age of 15. As a mathematics undergraduate student at Harvard College, he began to write comic songs to entertain his friends.
He recorded pithy and humorous songs that often parodied popular musical forms, though they usually had original melodies. Lehrer’s early performances dealt with non-topical subjects and black humor in songs such as “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”. In the 1960s, he produced songs about timely social and political issues.

Continue reading “Goodbye, Tom Lehrer”

George Steiner on Literacy

A pleasure that I enjoy immeasurably is listening to good talks. Thanks to the magic of the internet, particularly YouTube, we have available an inexhaustible store of great content within easy reach. I would like to tell you about someone who is considered an intellectual giant: literary critic extraordinaire and professor of comparative literature, George Steiner.

I got to know about him around 2010 or so. He was one of the people featured in the Dutch TV documentary series, “Of Beauty and Consolation,” released in 2000. (It is available on YouTube.)

More recently I found a lot more of his talks on YouTube. But first, here’s an introduction to the man. I asked grok to do the needful.

George Steiner (1929–2020) was a French-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, and translator, renowned for his profound and interdisciplinary approach to literature, culture, and language.

Born in Paris to Austrian Jewish parents, he fled Nazi persecution with his family, settling in the U.S. in 1940. A polyglot and polymath, Steiner was educated at Yale, Harvard, and Oxford, and his work reflects a deep engagement with Western literary and philosophical traditions.

Steiner was fluent in four languages: English, French, German, and Italian. He also knew Latin and Greek. 

Continue reading “George Steiner on Literacy”