In light of the ongoing skirmishes in Ladakh region the Indian subcontinent, I came across an interesting essay by Peter Worthington, who co-founded Toronto Sun (and who was its editor-in-chief for 12 years), on his first-hand observations in India-China conflict of 1962. It is an informative essay despite its brevity, with many highlights including a searing description of the valor of Sikh units despite the loss, an interview with sorrowful Nehru is visited by a large rat running across the carpet (Worthington feels sorry for him), and an interlude with Dalai Lama where he reminisces about Heinrich Harrer (played by Brad Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet). Both India and China seemed embarrassed – one because was defeated so easily,…
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There are two ways to live our life: as a series of finite games, valuing achievements, or a long infinite game, valuing morals. This is our time to listen and rise to the challenge we face to create a better world.
Leave a CommentA famous meme due to Senator Ted Stevens analogizes internet as “a series of tubes”. Like bustling cities, it is a fuel that converts the potential energy constrained in orderliness, to a kinetic energy of human endeavor. Internet releases the atoms of our thoughts to escape parochialism. Internet is messy, disorderly and increasingly ruled by social media monopolies, but it can be where “the mind is free”. […]
Leave a CommentIt has been a tough April, and I am among the fortunate ones. I know from the extraordinary people around me, how difficult and dire the conditions have been for many people.
Here are my pandemic recommendations. Some light, some heavy. Some funny, some serious. Instead of reviewing them fully, I recall the associative memories from reading experience that came back to me, as I thumbed through these copies.
Ronan Farrow, along with journalists like Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, deserve our deepest gratitude. While they make it clear that they are not the story, it requires a certain guileless audacity to jump into unknown dangers where “angels fear to tread”. Much like Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, Catch and Kill is a peerless example of investigative journalism into strange realities that we believe exist only in fiction.
Leave a CommentWhen epidemics grow exponentially, the way the time flows becomes haphazard. If news of casualties were markers, it should seem like that time should shrink, but time seems to behave weirdly. It oscillates between periods of ennui, and panic of the instant. Everything seems like an eternity away. Yesterday, in fact, seems to have the echoes of last century. Penn closed this week over the spring break. Over a spate of three progressively discomfiting announcements, classes were delayed, then moved online and eventually all gatherings of 25 or more people were prohibited. So, I am spending the spring break in the west coast, almost an epicenter compared to idyllic Pennsylvania. My trend line is full of academic Twitterati, complaining about…
Leave a CommentKnives Out is a modern throwback to classic Christie whodunits, complete with the imposing mansion, an old dead person, the usual assortment of idiosyncratic family members and backhanded political commentary. And the Pynchon Joke.
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