the mathematical basis: sine tables from kerala school of math 14th cent CE

nobody ever tells you that the sine tables were created based on the madhava paramesvara series discovered by the kerala school of math and astronomy in the 14th-15th centuries CE. with sine tables, a sextant and an accurate clock, you can tell precisely where you are on the surface of the earth. this is what enabled white people to navigate the open oceans. earlier, they had just hugged the coast.

in sum, the indian invention, which prof ck raju surmises was taken to the vatican by jesuits who were looking to improve their calendars, ended up in colonialism! no copyright, no patents, no royalties.

a US navy lieutenant told me that the tables are religiously maintained in every US navy ship, including submarines, just in case the satellites have some glitch.

China's Mega Himalayan Dam Plan | Time To Secure India's Interests? | NewsX

sabotage: compare to the nambi narayanan case, and serum institute fire

see my 2013 piece:

https://www.rediff.com/news/column/who-killed-the-isros-cryogenic-engine/20131118.htm

nambi narayanan was lucky to not be killed. and do you think the serum institute fire, and the apple factory fire in kolar, were accidents? or the damage to a submarine?

nambi narayanan's honor has been retrieved, though his life was destroyed. 

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/nambi-narayanan-gets-13-cr-additional-compensation/article32329022.ece

and yesterday:

Quick notes: Afghan pull-out | Millionaire exodus...

• Biden Will Pull US Troops Out of Afghanistan by 9/11: U.S. intelligence predicted that Taliban will make battlefield gains.
  
  'A full withdrawal from Afghanistan is dumber than dirt and devilishly dangerous'.



• India's millionaire exodus: Nearly 5,000 millionaires, or 2% of the total number of high net-worth individuals left the country in 2020 alone.



• Chip shortage: Biden meets with CEOs. . . . . Intel to step into automotive chips, but it'll take a while. . . . It takes four years to build a new fab.



• How Singapore Uses Science to Stay Cool: Scientists are coming up with novel, new designs to help keep temperatures down in Singapore.




• Dams along the Mekong threatening farmers and fish: China's construction of large hydropower dams along the river is having devastating impacts on water availability and the fertile soil that feeds hundreds of millions of people in Southeast Asia.



• White man's privilege: Livestock and dairy industries responsible for 50% of New Zealand’s greenhouse gases



• Used masks in mattresses: "Officials in Maharashtra found mattresses being stuffed with used masks. A case was registered against the factory owner, Amjad Ahmed Mansoori".



• Thread on women in the military:

Thread on what actually happens when you put womyn in the military: https://t.co/zC3xNShWrs

— Frontier Indica (@frontierindica) March 22, 2021

Gravitas: US Needs to Reboot Alliance Politics

happy new year/yugadi and tomorrow is vishu

april 13th is the beginning of the vedic new year (lunar): 5123 kali yuga. thus yugadi. in the 60 year cycle of vedic years, the new year is 'plava'; the last one was 'sarvari'. 

best wishes to telugus and kannadigas and others celebrating yugadi.

april 14th is the beginning of the solar year. the month of mesha (medam in malayalam: aries the ram). it's also tamil new year. 

this is an unusual year in which the lunar and solar year almost coincide!

this is good. blame the indian for #theranos #scam

yes, sunny balwani is a creep. but i think elizabeth holmes was entirely capable of thinking up the scam all by herself. 

my piece from a few years ago: https://openthemagazine.com/features/business/in-cold-blood/

today is jallianwalla bagh day. april 13, 1919

1600 bullets, 1579 casualties.

and the british are still not willing to accept their own monstrousness. the british queens' husband, philip, who died last week, said when visiting jallianwalla bagh that he thought the deaths were "exaggerated". how did he know? why, the son of reginald dyer, who ordered the shooting, had told him. 

my old piece on jallianwalla bagh. from 1998. https://www.rediff.com/news/1998/apr/13rajeev.htm

Asthma inhaler helps in mild wuhan virus cases

Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) tweeted at 11:30 PM on Mon, Apr 12, 2021:
A widely available asthma drug has been found to reduce the recovery time for Covid-19 patients treated at home by an average of three days, according to a large clinical study in the UK led by Oxford university https://t.co/soWIOfUc7T
(https://twitter.com/FinancialTimes/status/1381668490881474562?s=03) 

FT's dear amy kazmin gloats about indian wuhanvirus problems. again.

Putin: US Presidents Are Not Very Powerful, Bureaucracy Prevents Real Change

Putin complains about America's Deep State:

US Govt to Sell F-16s to Pakistan

The US govt has given notification of impending sale of F-16s to Pakistan:

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/us-govt-issues-notification-for-sale-of-f-16s-to-pakistan-1031620.html

US pressure on climate change will be counterproductive

as with the ill advised FONOP in lakshadweep, that kerry fellow bullying india on climate change is not going to improve relations, or india's willingness to cooperate.

illegal alien intruders are not our problem: send them back.

they have to make their peace with their home country, myanmar. they got into trouble because they were raping and killing buddhist women in myanmar in the first place. 

india has not even signed the refoulement treaty to take in refugees. 

besides, we're seen how rohingyas work: unlike grateful refugees, eg. the vietnamese boat people who were taken in by the US, these rohingya were genocidal thugs to begin with (massacred 100s of hindus in myanmar, and there is documentary evidence), and start being radical as soon as they get settled in india. 

al jazeera and other islamists putting pressure on india should be ignored. 

Episode 24: What ails Governance in India? What can we do to fix it?

https://rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/p/episode-24-what-ails-governance-in?r=66qfh&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=email

#babudom #weberian #steelframe #hierarchy #bureaucracy #skininthegame #selection #training #evaluation

Can the bureaucracy be reformed? What are its biggest problems and sins? Is it attitude, perhaps unchanged from James Mill's time, ie 1817? Is it the way they are recruited and trained? Does the problem lie in the way there's a brutal hierarchy in place where lesser babus are humiliated and treated as sub-humans while the elites play God? What about the way babudom is not accountable for results achieved (or not)? Why do they have no skin in the game? How can evaluation be made more rigorous? Do they stick up for each other to the detriment of the national interest? What about all the little jaunts to Harvard etc that they go on: are these useful to India or to someone else? Are they giving away Big Data about India to possibly malign outsiders? A no-holds-barred critique of what's good and what's bad with India's fabled babus.

Can babudom be salvaged? The answer: a big 'Maybe'.