Plus Ultra

In his book, “Super Crunchers”, the author Ian Ayres refers to the work done by Princeton economist, Orley Ashtenfelter, on the parameters...

An article in The Slate, ‘hunts for clues on what makes a catchphrase catch on and which ones deserve to be cast aside. And to make distinc...

Why do Indian movies where actors play double or multiple roles continue to enthrall audiences? Why are stories where the same actor plays t...

A typical morning at the railway level crossing near Bangalore and a typical evening at the road junction at Hanoi. (both videos via Boin...

In a post, two years back, I had linked to the e-book titled Diamond Invention that reported on the illusion created about the scarcity of...

In a lovely post, Sunil Laxman makes an ‘astute observation’ on the ‘land of liberty’. “I learnt one of the first rules of living in a con...

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While reflecting here on the challenges posed by dysfunctional sense organs, I had quoted Oliver Sacks to the effect that a person born dea...

In this post written soon after his mother’s death, Amit Varma narrates how he, as a non-believer in God or souls, and without the attenda...

In an outbound team-building exercise that I took part, we were split into three groups of five members each and marooned on three different...

In Mumbai, city officials are upset by an American warning about the risks of falling into manholes in India's commercial capital durin...

That we tend to spend more when we use a credit card than when we use physical cash, is stating the obvious. When we use cash, the ‘pleasure...

In a post , a few weeks back, I had referred to Shashi Tharoor’s criticism of R.K.Narayan- that the latter was one-dimensional and his reper...

One of the most famous palindromes is “ A man, a plan, a canal: Panama”, said to have been coined by one Leigh Mercer in the November 13 19...

I remember a scene in a Tamil play where one of the characters would manage to sell the Chennai Central Station to a gullible villager visit...

Me: Getting admission into an Engineering College is too much trouble. I don’t think you should get into the Science group when you come i...

Can money buy you happiness? No, not if you earn it and greedily spend it on yourself. But, there’s a way you can buy happiness with money. ...

In my previous post , I had referred to the plight of frogs and crickets whose mating calls get drowned in the high noise generated by human...

While on a trek through the elephant sanctuary near Thekkadi, after we had walked a couple of km, the guide asked us to stop, to remain abso...

“For 50 years, the Dalai Lama asked us to use peaceful means to solve the problems, and that achieved nothing. China just criticizes him. Af...