Rumi Nations

Here's my perspective -- from 10,000 miles away. The craziness about gun possession. Who'll explain to Americans that they're not pioneers anymore nor is the West wild. Guns make about as much sense as horse-drawn buggies for commuting to the office from Brooklyn to downtown Manhattan or riding a horse to the office in sprawling L.A. The never-retiring justices of the Supreme Court. And what is it with them being so openly, politically partisan anyway? Overturning the popular vote in presidential elections, venturing into policy formulation ... let the folks retire at 70 or 75. That reminds of the crazy election in 2000 when Al Gore got more votes than Bush -- but guess what! Bush wins because he got Florida and thus more votes in the crazy Electoral College, a relic of the 18th century. And those hanging chads appear anachronistic from the perspective of 3rd world nations. India uses EVMs !! Kill the Electoral College!

Every Monday morning, there's a universal outpouring of groans — that it's MONDAY again! It's as if everybody's mom-in-law AGAIN was about to come to visit them on Monday. This deafening noise is heard in specific parts of the world. It comes from the office-going class of people. In India, the young generation of IT and other professionals make this noise through all available means such as Facebook and Twitter. I suppose it's the same in the developed world where people have been caught up in this vicious cycle for a generation or more now. I don't know about rural America or rural Europe, but in rural India, villagers don't start groaning on Monday mornings. There's hardly any difference between Mondays or other days of the week. Their life-cycle is not a weekly one. Conversely, there's invariably an exuberant outpouring of joy come Friday. It starts in the morning itself and rises to a crescendo by the afternoon by when the youngsters i...

Death is a good thing not merely because, as Mr. Jobs put it, “It’s probably the single best invention of life,” or “it’s life’s change agent,” but also because men of hubris are at last brought down to Earth (and indeed below the Earth) by the phenomenon of death. It’s a fate that no hubristic billionaire can escape … yet. The ordinary person can look at a hubris-laden individual engaged in some megalomaniacal activity and take some satisfaction out of this knowledge that death will conquer this villain as well just as it has claimed many other villains through history. What other areas of human activity can you think of where there’s virtual equality between all? Some path breaking inventions of medical science qualify. When a vaccine is available for polio, EVERYONE is suddenly safe from this scourge — street dwellers and penthouse dwellers. But they are few and far between. Technology seems to be one arena where this occurs more frequently. Consumer devices are at once cutt...

Sagan covers so much ground in this episode ... which is what he does in all the other episodes as well! Sagan explains relativity to the general audience — I would never have thought that possible. Perhaps, an audience that is not trained in science would not be able to make much of this really. The spectacular ideas originating with Albert Einstein that the speed of light is the ultimate speed in the universe, that the speed of light stays constant in all frames of reference, that there are no privileged frames of reference, that time slows down as you travel close to the speed of light, all these concepts are such basic concepts of modern physics and yet very little known to the general public. Sagan talks about the original thinker that Leonardo da Vinci was and how Einstein's special relativity opens the door to the possibility of long distance space and time travel. Sagan shows sketches of spaceships of the future that utilize nuclear fusion as their power source — surely som...

I was wondering about how great the differences are ... Most of the people on the planet live engrossed in the occurences of their daily lives. Without giving much thought to abstract issues. Then we have other people who devote their lives to the same abstract issues. I have particularly great respect for scientists/physicists. Where would humanity be, or rather how poor would humanity be without the contributions of Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, and so many others like these. There are great scientists in the biological sciences who have found cures for diseases and contributed so much to our understanding about our own selves. Great scientists in the various physical sciences who have helped invent so many of the tools that have helped improve the quality of our lives. And we take all of these things for granted ... And continue to live in our tiny, little rat-holes. It's like much of humanity is like parasites that lives off of the...