December 2010
9 posts
This is late, but I hope y’all had a very Merry Christmas. And here’s to a very good and happy New Year.
I am off to the hills on holiday for the next week to ten days, so there will almost no new posts. And once back, I intend to move to Wordpress, so activity around here will be distinctly non-busy until the later half of January. Tumblr’s a fantastic place, but I really am...
The Glory of the Rails →
Tony Judt, in the NY Review of Books writes about the enormous impact the railways had on, well, just about everything:
Above all, think of how different the world looked to men and women before the coming of the railways. In part this was a function of restricted perception. Until 1830, few people knew what unfamiliar landscapes, distant towns, or foreign lands looked like because they had no...
I’ll call him Vishal. Big heart and an even bigger smile that made his slight buck tooth stick out. His hairstyle was a mini Afro. He always struggled with saying the letter ‘R’ and the sound ‘Ra’. So, Bharath became Bhalath and Burger became Bulger. And he laughed as soon as he said those words, because he knew we would laugh along too. He loved the occasional 5-Star...
“I will tell you that Theatre is important. That it is the window to human...”
– My friend Paro on theatre
“When authorities can’t get what they want by working within the law, the right...”
– Clay Shirky on Wikileaks and the United States’ decision to take the site down and go after Julian Assange.
By far, the most nuanced view of the whole thing I’ve read.
“I hope they keep [Twitter] simple. It works because it’s simple. I was never...”
– Sci-Fi Author William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter, Thinks Facebook Is ‘Like a Mall,’ and Much More
A Brief History of Mathematics →
Brilliant BBC podcast on the people behind the most significant mathematical discoveries. For example, the first episode chronicles:
The battle over the calculus. Professor Marcus du Sautoy reveals how the great hero of British science is rather less gentlemanly than his German rival. An astronaut and investment analyst pay homage to the enormous power of the calculus.
All episodes are...
“Our notions about happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our...”
– Thich Nhat Hanh (via kari-shma)