Number of words: 2,289 In January and February of this year, there was audible popping of champagne corks in certain quarters of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. What some observers had long seen as this era’s giant geopolitical bubble had finally begun to deflate. China’s Communist Party leadership, the thinking went, was at last coming … Read more

Number of words: 1,275 He was an ordinary welder in a boring job. Geng Shuai was about to turn 30 and knew that if he did not find an outlet for his passion to create things, he would be trapped in mediocrity. Then came his Einstein moment, during the mundane chore of cooking. After chopping … Read more

Number of words: 1,920 The late Gore Vidal once confessed, with characteristic rapier wit, “I love stupidity. It excites me.” But the excitement and hilarity of human foibles and failures diminish rapidly when the consequences include more than 100,000 corpses.  Stupidity is a steadfast provider of humor and tragedy in Freedom Central, otherwise known as … Read more

Number of words: 1,821 It is very likely that the next full semester (likely to start around mid-August for IIT-Bombay) will be “virtual” as campuses will continue to be locked down, and we will have to resort to online teaching. Due to this sudden fallback on the online mode, e-learning evangelists have found a new … Read more

Number of words: 754 In an era of technology and easily accessible information, our schools still expect from us to know everything from the books, without considering whether this is going to be what we will actually need in our professional development. How many times have you wondered if you were going to need subjects … Read more

Number of words: 1,019 The current craze for online education (OE) reminds me of the wall graffiti advertising sex clinics that are visible across urban north India. These ads promise guaranteed cures — shartiya ilaj — for all kinds of ailments and afflictions. Today, OE is being force-fed to Indian education as a miracle cure … Read more

Number of words: 6,464 On a list of ten things that matter in terms of how you look at the world, satisficing would be number one, along with the whole business of decision making under uncertainty. This opens up the idea that something which may seem at first glance to be completely irrational may in … Read more

Number of words: 588 Similarly, this is from a hotel in Stockholm, the Lydmar. Has anybody stayed there? It’s the lift, it’s a series of buttons in the lift. Nothing unusual about that at all, except that these are actually not the buttons that take you to an individual floor. It starts with garage at … Read more

Number of words: 305 When we talk about theTaoist concept of change, it is important to realize that this change is not seen as occurring as a consequence of some force, but rather as a tendency which is innate in all things and situations. The movements of the Tao are not forced upon it, but … Read more

Number of words: 913 One doesn’t know how the Indian Railways, whose budget was merged with the general budget in 2017 after 92 years of being presented separately, will ever seriously deal with what every long-distance train passenger with a confirmed ticket would admit as the most profound concern: the desire to have the lowest … Read more