Yesterday, I had an interesting discussion with a young teenager. After drifting through topics involving movies and television on which his knowledge was impressive, we arrived on the subject of Mahabharata when the curtain raiser of a new television series based on the epic caught our attention. This is when I was introduced to the new […]
Author: raman
Don’t Make Best an Enemy of the Better
Anybody who has ever taken a challenging new year resolution will likely be aware of the psychological ploys employed by the mental weakness that we’re resolved to overcome. One of the most cunning schemes among these is to use our own sense of good against ourselves – by pitting the best against the better. Let’s […]
Should We be Proud of Our Culture?
The first year in college was the first time in life when we were allowed to use a calculator in class and even during exams. Each of us were happy with our own calculator, but also wanted to test its power against those owned by others. Most of these devices were capable of evaluating finite […]
Creating Channels for Right Thought and Action
Among the unusual hobbies that I had as a kid was racing drops of waters against each other on a vertical surface. One of the observations from this activity was that if a drop could follow a path traced out by a predecessor, it did so in most cases except when it was massive enough […]
Sethubandhanam on Kazhakkuttam-Menamkulam Road
Having studied geography at school, it is not difficult for me to appreciate that where there is a mountain today could once have been under the sea, and may again go under water. But I did not expect such changes to happen so close to my home, or over so small time frames as a […]
Magic Squares With Katapayadi
The Katapayadi system of representing numbers that we introduced in a previous post opens up the possibility of numerous tricks and techniques to memorize numbers and patterns of numbers that are useful, or otherwise interesting. An example of this is an easy technique involving this number system to create ultimate magic squares with perfect symmetry. […]
The Unconstitutional Anti-Superstition Bill of Maharashtra
The so called “anti-superstition” bill of Maharashtra which as been pushed through as an ordinance, short-circuiting the formal process of discussion and voting, because a champion of this law was shot dead by some criminals, is very much in line with the pseudo-secular policies that many self-styled intellectuals seem to be in favour of. I […]
Katapayadi
Katapayadi is an ancient Indian system, perhaps more heavily used in Kerala, that denotes numbers using letters of the alphabet to form words that can be easily remembered. The table below explains the mapping between digits and letters. In addition to the letters mentioned in this chart, all stand-alone vowels are treated as zero and […]
Scorched Earth Tactics by Kerala Government
Continuing my support for the Government of Kerala in their fight against the illegal, unjustified and counter-productive blockade imposed on the Secretariat by the leftist opposition in Kerala, I am pleasantly surprised to note how well the Government has handled the protest so far. Intimidation – Calling in para-military forces and deploying them in key […]
Supporting Use of Central forces to Defeat an Illegal Siege
In line with the views presented in Egypt – a case study in democracy, I believe that for the success of democracy, it is imperative for all parties to use available non-violent and legitimate options (including legal recourse and no-confidence motion) to achieve their objectives, and not resort to holding the nation to ransom like the […]