yazadjal.com

A good friend of mine has a favourite saying: “There are three ways of getting anything you want. Love, money or force. Libertarians don’t believe in force. So you’ve got to be content with either love or money”
Want Gmail?
GmailSwap shows you how via love (and maybe some money). If it’s only cold cash […]

Before picking up individual issues on why India is poor, I’d like to classify the issues that came out of the comments. The classification is not going to be perfect, but it allows me to club the issues into manageable morsels. BTW, these are in no particular order.

Corruption (I’d include lack of ethics in this)
Lack […]

Poor Tavleen Singh. She’s lost respect, perspective and now even a bearing for facts. In her latest anti Sonia tirade, she questions Sonia Gandhi’s renunciation stating that it was because of adverse remarks by the President. Maybe Tavleen Singh has not read this.
CITIZENSHIP ISSUE NOT DISCUSSED WITH SMT. SONIA GANDHI
19-05-2004 : Rashtrapati Bhavan, New […]

or Sliding down a slippery slope and clambering back up
Ravikiran asks Why have the citizenship requirement at all? Why not simply have anyone stand for elections in India and become Prime Minister if they and their party win? Indians might elect Mrs. Thatcher as PM. (Maggie as PM? Good idea!)
As Ravi wants to slide down […]

Anil Dash has an interesting post on blog songs. My favorite is the American Pie inspired the day that blogging died. Fairvue Central’s site seems down, so I haven’t got a chance to sample the songs there.
I wonder if we have Hindi blog-geet (blogeet?). Maybe Nukta Chini might want to jump in the fray? […]

I can ignore the Sushma Swaraj style theatrics about Sonia Gandhi becoming India’s next PM. After all Sushma has a constituency of hardcore Hindutva to promote. (Plus the political theatre will spring up responses like Rabri Devi’s)
What I find strange is the loss of perspective from respected columnists like Tavleen Singh. Tavleen Singh is […]

Pro-poor reform is the new political mantra in India. Personally, I think economic reform should ensure that there are no poor. But before we can do that, it might help to find out why is India poor? What is it that we lack or what are the chains that bind us to what is often […]

It seems like Jivha has had an attack of election blogorrhea. Twenty posts in one day. Way to go!
If you get lost, he’s kindly provided a content list. It must’ve all started with the suggestions he got on an open thread.

Here are two reviews of Super Size Me, a documentary in which the filmmaker, Morgan Spurlock, eats exclusively at McDonalds for a month to show how obesity / poor health and large fast food corporations are linked.
A. O. Scott in the New York Times. (free registration required)
The arguments in “Super Size Me” will be […]

Sydney Smith attacks the hysteria surrounding second hand smoke and critiques the unnecessarily scary research that has lead to bans on smoking in public places around the world (including India).
If banning public smoking really reduced heart attack rates by forty-percent, wouldn’t New York city cardiologists have noticed by now? A forty-percent decrease in business is […]

It’s not a cliché when you experience it – on a regular basis. A friend was transiting through Bombay and I went over to see him for dinner in Andheri, near the international airport. It was past midnight when I went to Andheri station to catch a local train home (Yes, trains do run past […]

Virginia Postrel challenges simplistic interpretations of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs with a strong defence of aethetics as an essential need in itself. (The link leads to a pdf, and might be slow to download)
Human beings do not wait until they have full stomachs and a roof that doesn’t leak before they satisfy their aesthetic needs. […]

Election season is on in both India and the US. I find small observations interesting as they sometimes show striking parallels. Here’s an op-ed piece on John Kerry’s campaign in the NYT (free registration required).
The one big problem they (the Democrats) are not addressing — and are actually making worse — is the creepy tone […]

I might have to be careful the next time I go to Germany. Laughing loudly gets you fined!

I went for a quick browse trip to the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bombay this afternoon. NGMA’s permanent collection was on display (they’re most probably in-betwen exhibitions). Most of the stuff was ordinary, with some kitsch thrown in for good measure.
On the first floor, I saw a still life by K H […]

One of the reasons why posting has been slack over the last few months is my new found narcissism. I joined a gym three months ago and have been reaping the benefits of the body beautiful. Working out is fun, but it takes time. And the time it’s taken is generally from my blog quota. […]

Thomas Sowell looks back on April 2004. Here are some of the gems:
The older I get, the more I realize that arguing on the basis of facts and logic only gets you labeled as someone who is out of step with the times, if not lacking in “compassion.”
Many disastrous mistakes, in both public and private […]