Plus Ultra

"He was full of pieces he had picked up here and there: his mother’s love of fasting and austerities, the English common law, Ruskin’s ...

As expected, some leaders have condemned the serial blasts at Bangalore as a cowardly act. Why ‘cowardly” of all expressions? Are the leade...

I have expressed my amazement before at the commitment displayed by some bloggers, in offering elaborate explanations and profound apologie...

When one has observed the world for a few decades, as I have done, and as closely as I have, one realises that many of the devices that one...

Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination for president because of "gender bias" in the news media, according to a Johns Ho...

Without meaning to pass any moral judgement on fellow bloggers, I have often wondered, why so many of them feel the need to use ‘f’ and othe...

Whenever the Sensex dips a bit, the papers carry a photograph, the next day, of shell-shocked traders staring disbelievingly at the screen i...

After reading through all the enlightening, online responses to the question, “What are you optimistic about? ” posed by The Edge Foundation...

“If I am looking much younger now than ever, it is because I have stopped eating any food item that is white in colour- such as rice, milk, ...

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...

(Source)

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...