I have a lot of work piled up. I usually deal with piles of work by entertaining myself watching TV and YouTube. It’s more fun than doing serious stuff. However one topic is both serious and fun. It’s the climate change hysteria. It’s fun to watch the Chicken Littles running around clucking “the sky is falling.” But it is seriously disturbing that governments would grab more power to “address” climate change, and in that process deal a body blow to any hopes of the poor escaping the poverty that has been imposed on them by governments.

Anyhow, here’s an episode of The Mark Steyn Show that is both fun and serious. Enjoy.

Although the start of a year is an arbitrarily chosen day, sufficient number of people pay attention to the change in the least significant digit of the year that it is best to go along with the hoopla and join in wishing people “A Happy New Year.” Continue reading “New Year 2020”

I have to admit that If by Rudyard Kipling is one of my favorite English language poems, the last two verses of which appear on the left. The full poem appears at the end of this post.

The reason for this post? Because Kipling was born on this day, Dec 30th, in 1865 in Mumbai, and died in London in 1936.

Of course, when I read If in school, I had no idea of who Kipling was. I liked the poem, and that was it. Later I learned that Khushwant Singh had said that the poem was essentially a condensation of some of the messages of the Bhagavad Gita. Perhaps that’s why I had that intuitive liking for it.

Much later I realized that Kipling was not a nice man. He was, in the words of George Orwell, a “jingoist imperialist.” Here’s an excerpt from an essay Orwell wrote (I believe in 1945) on Kipling: Continue reading “George Orwell on Rudyard Kipling”

January is around the corner, the month named after the Roman god Janus who had two faces — one looking forward to the future and the other backward to the past. He is the god of “beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings” says the wiki.

It was the Roman emperor Julius Caesar (100 BCE – 44 BCE) who decided that the first day of January will mark the start of a new year in 45 BCE. Thus was born the Julian calendar that is almost universally used today (with notable exceptions like in Ethiopia.) How’s that for power and influence?

Time to look back. Continue reading “The Summing Up”

Hong Kong is at the top of the class in economic freedom and among the most prosperous in the world. Just note the change between 1980 and 2017: 255 percent increase in GDP per capita on PPP basis. Singapore, thanks to Lee Kuan Yew, did even better: #2 in economic freedom ranking, its GDP pc increased over 3x. Here’s a graphic illustration of the correlation between economic freedom and prosperity. The causal link is from freedom to prosperity.

Venezuela, much beloved of socialists like Bernie Sanders, went from moderately well-off to desperate poverty in the same period thanks to socialism. I note in passing that India was declared a socialist country by Indira Gandhi, and it shows. Continue reading “Economic Freedom and Well-being”

I find it curious that people unthinkingly claim credit where none is due. “I proud to be an Indian” and “I am proud to be a Hindu” are examples. Here’s an example from a Youtube comments’ section.

My answer to Supriya Varma went thus: Continue reading “I am Happy that I’m a Hindu”