Common Sense

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:

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?

At the gas station . . .

An ordinary Joe at the gas station (note the car license plate at the start of the video.)

Abolish the Haj Subsidy

A few days ago the Supreme Court of India admitted a petition challenging the subsidy for haj. (Link). The Rs 280 crore (~ US$ 60 million) a year subsidy for Muslims to visit Saudi Arabia, the petitioners claim, is not just unconstitutional but discriminatory.

India and Australia

There can be no doubt that Australia is looming larger and larger on the Indian horizon. Speaking personally, thanks to my participation with the LAFIA2008 — Leading Australia’s Future in Asia-Pacific — delegation in July, I have gained an increased appreciation of the issues that will draw Australia and India into a deeper strategic and economic relationship.

Of large colliders and terrorism

A modern digital computer is a general purpose machine, as opposed to say a toilet flush which is a special purpose machine. General purpose machines can be programmed to do an infinitely wide array of tasks. Humans are the ultimate general purpose machines.

Humans can be programmed to do astonishing feats of technological and scientific marvels. Take the large hadron collider (LHC) which will go online in a few days. What seemingly superhuman planning, coordination, determination, knowledge, curiosity, foresight, . . . I am running out of adjectives to properly spell out the amazement I feel at the LHC . . . is demonstrated by the LHC? I get goosebumps just looking at the pictures of the LHC.

At the other end of the spectrum of human capacity lies something that is abhorrent, something that is driven by an ideology that is ignorant, anti-human, anti-progress, anti-life, anti-inquiry, anti-knowledge, . . . A cult of death and destruction that spawns monsters. Here is the story from Mirror.co.uk of how children as young as 5-year olds being taught by the taliban to become killers.

India continues to suffer from terrorism. The terrorists are home-grown but the ideology that fuels the terrorism is imported from Arabia. Kanchan Gupta’s article “The Truth about Islamofascism” should be required reading for Dr “BT” Singh. But I suppose he is fast asleep — perhaps catching up on the sleep that he lost while worrying about the pain and suffering of terrorists.

Karma, neh?

POSTSCRIPT: Do check out the amazing blog The Big Picture “News stories in pictures.”

Open Thread — Your turn

This is an open thread. Say what you will. In case you need a login to comment, email me atanudey at gmail and I will add your selected user name.

The OLPC in India

I spent the last evening in the American Center near Churchgate, Mumbai, at a presentation on the launch of the “one laptop per child” — OLPC — in India. The event was hosted by a bunch of institutions: Asia Society, Digital Bridge Foundation (created by the Reliance ADA Group), MIT Alumni Association of India, and Consulate General of the US.

I had received an email saying that Prof Negroponte would like to meet with me after the presentation. Negroponte, as most people know, is the founder and chairman of the OLPC project and a co-founder of the MIT Media Lab. The announcement said, “Professor Nicholas Negroponte will discuss the MIT-Media Labs developed XO-laptop which is widely seen as revolutionizing primary education around the world…”