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Yes there is a difference. The anti globalisation Bidwais and Roys seem to think that promoting capitalism and globalisation simply means promoting businesses (especially corrupt businesses). Nothing could be farther from the truth. And being pro-market or pro-capitalism does not mean being pro-business–it means being pro-freedom. This recent article, part of the Economist’s “radical […]

The next blog mela will be observed by JK on Varnam. For instructions and more, click here.

Gene Callahan is someone whose opinion I respect a lot. The National Interest, his latest piece, is a must read. He writes regularly on libertarian issues, largely for LewRockwell.com.
. . . nations are not the sorts of entities that have interests, just like they don’t have crushes or daydreams or urges to go […]

Ideas have consequences and textbooks do matter. There’s been a lot of debate on what should go into a history textbook, here’s a piece that goes into something major that’s missing in economics textbooks.
. . .the IMF and other advisers were intently focused on privatizing existing enterprises but nearly completely ignored the other route […]

For my money, the blogger of the week is Niraj. One, he blogs around five times a day; two, he includes at least one well written comment on policy every day; three, he’s giving me a major complex! The top five from Niraj are:

Rebuilding Afghanistan through oil | Belgian War Crimes (I love it when supercilious nations get their comeuppance!) More here | India’s pathetic adoption system | The conversion tamasha between the world two largest (and most proselytising) religions | and the best, Niraj’s cheer for globalisation–with facts collected by a global attitude survey.

. . .the developing world is telling these anti-globalisation protestors to take a hike, or, better yet, jump off a cliff.

Bravo!

Etymology or the study of the origins of words gives me hours of fun. And sometimes the strangest of words have pedigrees that seem rather unlikely. The word fuck is more than 500 years old and it’s first recorded sighting was in a poem, “Flen flyys.”
Read more here.

Abheek Barman has an excellent piece on why even large groups can’t swing policy their way if there’s a strong lobby against it. He hones in onto a flaw in democracy (actually one of many) that is counterintuitive. One would expect the wishes of the “majority” to overcome the power of a small lobby in […]

While reading this article in Time, I clicked on the map provided. Quite informative it turned out to be. Look carefully where “Iraq” is.
Time does what Saddam wanted to do years ago — invade Saudi Arabia and make it part of Iraq!

Niraj wrote abou this new phenomenon of metrosexuality (NYT, requires free registration) and I’m intrigued.
The article focussed only on straight men discovering their female sides. I also know a lot of straight women who display a manly personality. What comes right on top of my mind is Kiran Bedi. She’s definately not gay, but whenever […]

Love your coffee but don’t want the caffeine with it? Decaf may not not the best solution as the solvents removing the caffeine also remove other chemicals which contribute to the flavour. A good project for out-of-the-box thinking. How about programming the coffee bean to stop making the caffeine altogether?
Not science fiction. Science fact. Dr. […]

Announcement for the 18th Bharateeya Blog Mela to be held on June 25 on www.yazadjal.com

This is absolutely super. Perhaps the most lucid and simple explanation of the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility I’ve ever seen.

Welcome to my new blog. We’re setting up right now and should be up and ready soon. In the meanwhile, my old blog is still active
Update:My old blog at blogspot is no longer active.