Readings and quotes

“When calculating probabilities, people make systematic mistakes. They do this by searching their memory for examples. If they are reminded of the attacks in Paris and Nice, they will overestimate the probability of terror. If they are exposed to the photograph of Aylan Kurdi, they might think otherwise“

“Perhaps most remarkable about Ciudad Perdida is the fact that it was built some 650 years before Machu Picchu, around 800 CE. Though only a small portion of the site has been excavated, the city is an impressive feat of engineering, built along a steep mountain ridge nearly a mile above sea level. A complex network of stone bridges and drainage systems has maintained the city throughout the test of time.“ 

A very barebones summary of the complex Polymerase Chain Reaction used to run DNA tests

This is an amazing and insightful telling of the current status quo in journalism and information dissemination. So well written. 

This is such a touching tale. Reading is for everyone, it is not an elitist habit.

“It does not take evil to destroy a community’s peace and safety. Rather, ordinary human desire for security, coupled with weak institutions and desperate short-term thinking, can lead a country into an escalating disaster.”

“It was clear to most that unlike western notions of the term, the Indian state, even if it adopted a commitment to secularism, simply couldn’t afford to embrace a completely non-interventionist role towards religion. This was because, in India, religion tended to pervade society in a manner that often had serious implications for one’s basic civil rights”

Before Canton and Hong Kong, there was Quanzhou. And it had an unique link with Indian history...

“And above all they don’t recognize what a difficult job it was for people like Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Patel to create a united country, to bring different people together, to give a democratic template to a society which had never known democracy, never known freedom of choice, to give women equal rights in a society that was deeply patriarchal, to at least fight against caste oppression, to allow affirmative action for Dalits and Adivasis… it’s an extraordinary achievement.“

From three years ago. As the author asks, why has sport embraced performance enhancing surgeries (that are not regulated to harm the human body) but has eschewed drugs, even if administered at safe levels?

Frivolous patronising that is a characteristic of Western journalism aside, these give a rather deeper look into a story that also needs to be told, along with the aggrandising advertising of Brazil

“Suffered with unsophisticated wisdom“

Martin's in your face treatment of bigotry of the masses is one reason A Song of Ice and Fire is important. A huge part of such bigotry is ableism and the seeming lack of inclusiveness with which we engage the differently abled. Here, a scholarly dissection of Hodor, a victim of mental issues.

“ Aadhaar is a potentially useful instrument for delivering benefits and reducing fraud. But even its staunchest defenders should worry about the crude instrumentalism that has surrounded the passage of the Aadhaar bill. Essentially, a small group of bureaucrats can render your privacy irrelevant. Privacy may not be absolute, as the finance minister says, but that is no reason to make bureaucratic power nearly absolute, as this bill does. If lots of different agencies link their information to Aadhaar numbers, what will be the protocols governing the sharing of that information? What will be the norms governing data mining? Will we have agency-specific protocols on what information can be shared with whom and under what conditions? Essentially, a small group of bureaucrats can render your privacy irrelevant. Privacy may not be absolute, as the finance minister says, but that is no reason to make bureaucratic power nearly absolute, as this bill does. Since we freely give in to Google and Facebook, what is wrong in giving in to the state? There are two responses. This argument may actually be a case for regulating big private companies more, rather than lowering protection standards in the state. But, most importantly, it elides an important distinction: The state can use coercive power in a way in which private entities cannot. Private entities are not inconsequential in the exercise of power, but that power operates differently. The reason we worry about the state is that it can coerce you, imprison you, deprive you of your rights. So the standards of accountability have to be correspondingly adjusted. “

With the outbreak of the "app economy", and with lots of noise on getting the next billion connected, we have a golden opportunity for the government to influence, delegate and employ resources to tackle problems, and architecting it for the participatory zeitgeist. A few examples and recollections from San Francisco and Chicago

“Technology and capitalism have largely solved the problem of supply. We are able to make more stuff, with fewer inputs of labour and capital, than ever before. We have the knowhow, we have the resources, we have the trained labour, we have the money.  The only thing businesses lack is customers“