The Maanga

Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are — they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality — the laws of physics — only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.

This man should come to India. And start a new religion. Sexual gratification is far better than seeing your name on a newspaper.

Update: A letter to the editor.

I tend to agree with P Sainath and Jagadguru.

Vietnam at least had its women. And children. Walter Sobchaks of the Free Market prism only have wasted bandwidth and deforestation to show. I have now decided to blame Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman for this.

One might think, a consulting company will have sales teams whose members were not poached from ICICI Bank. One would be wrong.

Sales Manager, Consulting Firm(SM): Hi, I just called to follow up on our last telephonic conversation. Have you decided on the budgetary allocation?

Me: No, we are still in the process of evaluating our options and I will let you know once we decide.

SM: Well, this is close to the year end. I suggest you make your options and plans transparent to us so that we will help you with the entire process. This is the year end.

Me: Err? What?

SM: This is the year end. We want to know when you will be closing this. This is the year end.

Me: Hmm, we are still in the process of evaluating our options and I will let you know once we decide.

SM: I will call you next week, on Wednesday, to check the status. Thank you.

People who graduated with me, almost always, have a story to tell about an idiot boss from their first job. One who was hired during the dotcom madness and had a job because because he or she was old enough to employed then. That was in technology, mostly in America, and a product of the 90s. The generation before mine, I am sure, has its own boom story that brims with its own idiots. In any given geography. One of the sure signs of the boom ending is when the passability of a promising hire, who was recruited to achieve the original forecast of a 70 percent CAGR or higher, looks strained. Exhibit A.

Amit Varma, in a stellar write-up, has managed to derive present day Nandigram from property rights. Someone in the Congress Party must be having a laugh at the Mint’s expense — worse, at the country’s. Which seems to think, being dropped mid-air constitutes flying.

PS: Suggestion for Ravikiran — if your inputs were used for parts of a write-up and the basic premise is something you haven’t read in full, ask the author to stop citing those inputs.