Plus Ultra

"Partly original and partly insightful, but never simultaneously"

Saturday, December 10, 2011

How did Indians compute the lunar eclipse?

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“Memoirs of the various modes according to which the nations of the southern parts of India divide time” published in 1825, carries an expl...
1 comment:
Saturday, October 15, 2011

The mask of youth

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I am fascinated by this development: Japanese company REAL-f managed to design the most super realistic 3D face replica that you have ever ...
1 comment:

Saddam's bottom.

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In a post titled, “Movers and shakers of India”, I had wondered why we (Indians) are obsessed with ‘swaying bottoms’. All movie songs invo...
1 comment:
Saturday, October 01, 2011

Dasara.

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Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay, published in the year 1823, carries an article ( page 79) titled “On the institution and ce...
2 comments:
Thursday, September 29, 2011

The tough little bird.

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Robert Krulwich has a great post on the Bar-tailed Godwit. They are the only birds known to fly more than 7,000 miles nonstop, that means ...

Three men and a baby

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In the film, “Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell,” that was a hit in the ‘60s, an Italian woman (played by Gina Lollobrigida) sleeps with three Ameri...
Saturday, September 17, 2011

Lady Divine, would you like some wine?

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Christopher Hitchens, in an article three years back, writes about the obnoxious practice of restaurants trying to speed up the consumption...
2 comments:
Sunday, August 28, 2011

Mr. Walker.

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While in Kenya last week on an official trip, I drove down from Nairobi to a small town called Magati, past the Rift Valley. I was headed to...
2 comments:
Friday, August 19, 2011

Chennai Chunam

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Recreations in Agriculture, Natural History, Arts and Miscellaneous literature , by James Anderson, LLD was published in April 1799. James ...
1 comment:
Wednesday, August 17, 2011

He will be missed

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While paying her last respects to Shammi Kapoor who passed away last week, actress Madhuri Dixit was quoted as saying "He was a very fi...
2 comments:
Monday, August 15, 2011

Husband- the visible God.

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In a post dated October 2005 and titled, “Dark thoughts of a closet MCP”, I had imagined the mind of a chauvinistic male. The post began th...
3 comments:
Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Gesundheiit

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Caught in the humdrum of life, we dismiss many things as ‘routine’ or ‘mundane’. Because of this tendency to trivialize, many important thin...
2 comments:
Saturday, July 09, 2011

Vacuous and Verbose-28

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Would you buy the book based on this review ? The Vice President of India Shri M. Hamid Ansari released a book entitled “Man’s fate & ...
1 comment:
Tuesday, July 05, 2011

The Tirunelveli Brahmin.

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A Christian Missionary touring South India, in the year 1842, provides this description of the Tirunelveli Brahmin, which I found quite amus...
5 comments:

Indian architecture, circa 1850

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The Journal of the Society of Arts , Britain, 1870, reproduces a speech delivered by Lord Napier on the subject of ‘aesthetics’ in design of...

The Durable Village

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South Indian Sketches, written in 1842, is a compilation of letters from a Christian Missionary, S.Tucker, (who is touring India), to a you...
1 comment:
Thursday, June 30, 2011

Wanted: An authoritarian rule

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In one of his lectures, Francis Fukuyuma summed up “Asian values” ( as popularized by leaders like Lee Kuan Yew) as “a system in which peop...
4 comments:
Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Hi ho, Eversilver.

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A friend visiting Chennai expressed surprise that many restaurants here continued to serve snacks in stainless steel plates and coffee in st...
1 comment:
Friday, June 03, 2011

Philanthropy

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Every argument between a diehard devotee of Satya Sai Baba and a non-believer will end with the former saying, “Whether you believe in his p...
5 comments:
Monday, May 30, 2011

Why do we imprison people?

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Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at Princeton University, in his article in the Washington Times on the subject of “What will f...
3 comments:
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Raj
I can ask probing questions- especially when I know the answers.
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