Viswanathan K's Thoughts

The only time we had equality, writes Yuval Noah Harari in 21 Lessons for the 21 st Century , was when we were hunter-gatherers. Why? “Because they had very little property. Property is a pre-requisite for long-term inequality.” Agriculture was the beginning of inequality. Increased industrialization accelerated things. But then, ironically, industrialization also contributed to the reduction in inequality. Admittedly, in a roundabout and twisted way. First, as the number of workers grew, they could form groups and unions and make demands. Next, when employee skills and intelligence began to matter, they were paid better and treated better. And as the demand for workers increased further, it opened employment doors for all “races, classes and genders”, eventually even other countries via outsourcing. All of which helped reduce inequality globally. After the fall of communism, it looked like greater prosperity and thus reduced inequality was going to be the global norm. ...

Remember the basis for coming up with the idea of dark energy? It was the accelerating universe. And how did Perlmutter and Riess come to the conclusion that the expansion is accelerating? Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explains . There’s a certain class of supernovae, the type Ia, for which we know the energy emitted over time. The farther away it is, the dimmer is appears. Thus, from its brightness, one can infer the distance. In addition, the farther away it is, the longer it took to reach us. So indirectly, from its brightness, one can calculate how long back it occurred. At the same time, one can determine its color. Just as the sound of a moving ambulance get shriller as it comes closer, the observed color of the supernova changes since it (and space itself) are moving away from us. The color can thus be used to infer the rate at which space is moving away. Combine the above two points (time of the supernova v/s rate of expansion) for multiple supernovae at differen...

Dark matter. Dark energy. They are supposed to make up most of the universe (20% and 75% respectively), leaving just a tiny 5% to the “normal” matter and energy we humans are made of and deal with on a day-to-day basis. But what are dark matter and dark energy? Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder answers . Let’s take “dark matter” first. Based on the amount of matter we can see either visually or via our detectors that use signals other than visible light, the stars on the edges of all spinning galaxies should get thrown into outer space. On a bigger scale, galaxies should never have formed in the first place. So what is this force that keeps stars and galaxies from flying off? The answer: gravity. Wait a minute, didn’t we just say that there isn’t enough perceivable matter to produce the needed gravitational force? Yes, but the key word is “perceivable”. The objects producing the “missing” gravity are not perceivable, so they’re called “dark matter”. Not “dark” as in sucking up ligh...

After the Maharashtra and Haryana elections, Karan Thapar wondered if state elections focused on issues like the state of the economy, the effects of demonetization, and rural distress in general? Whereas the national elections, held just a few months back, was based one on national security, thanks to the Balakot strikes? Thapar got it all wrong. Shekhar Gupta in his YouTube talk wondered if it was a sign that voters voted for a strong man at the center in national elections. Whereas at the state level, they vote based on other criteria. Further, continued Gupta, a year back, BJP and allies ruled 70% of India’s territory. Today, post-Maharashtra and Haryana, that figure is down to 48%. Is this a sign that we’ve crossed Peak BJP? Before I continue, I’ll take a deviation. But don’t worry, this diversion will join the main thread of the questions raised above. Many people ask why the right is so angry. Even though they’ve been in power for the last 5 ½ years. And another 4 ½ ...

I would so like hope my daughter to develop the reading habit. So far though, no luck. She’s 8 now, and the only time she’ll read is in the school bus if her friends are reading on the bus too . Ages back, I’d heard of some parents who used to read the Harry Potter books to their kids, and remember thinking, “Really? Who would read such a big book aloud?”. But now, in desperation, I decided to give it a shot. She found the first 3 books very interesting. The stories weren’t predictable. Friends fought with each other and made up. Mean kids didn’t always get their comeuppance. Adults didn’t believe Harry because hey, he was just a kid. And the details of the Harry Potter universe, from muggles to mudbloods to house elves to squibs was fascinating. The book would raise many questions and answer them only at the end. And there were always questions that didn’t get answered at all. All this was a new experience for her, a different type of book, a fascinating world of its own. ...

Now at the peak of his popularity, Napoleon demanded he be made Consular for Life. Another plebiscite, this time a 99.8% outcome. As his grip on absolute power tightened, it sparked off assassination attempts. He used one such attempt to frame a Duke, a link to the erstwhile monarchy, but most importantly: a nobody. So why did Napoleon target a nobody? Rumour said it was because the two men shared a mistress… but who can really say? Regardless of his reasons, the killing of the Duke evoked panic in the erstwhile royal line. Fearing that they’d all be killed, they sought British help to take back France. And thus started another string of wars between France and Britain. In the meantime, Napoleon brought back hereditary monarchy a decade after the French Revolution! Yet another constitution was framed, this one to declare him the “emperor”. In his coronation ceremony, he placed the crown on his own head. A “gangster move”, the podcast said admiringly. Emperor Napoleon soon re...

They thought they’d get rid of Napoleon by sending him to Italy. Instead, Napoleon turned the army around and posted huge victories over Austria and Italy. He was a soldier’s soldier, a hands-on commander and a great general who got the big picture and planned well, and allowed his soldier to loot after victories: he was very popular with his troops. This very popularity would contribute to the myth of him being short. He was called “le petit corporal”. Translated literally, it meant the “little corporal”. But in French, it was just an affectionate phrase. Napoleon was 5’ 2”, but that was in French inches . With no standardization of units, that was the same as 5’ 7” in British units. A pretty good height in that era. But this was ammunition for British mockery, and they attributed his ambition to his trying to compensate for his short height, so much so we even have the phrase “Napoleon complex”. Napoleon realized he couldn’t beat the British, so he decided to choke off the...

As I was reading the book, The Awesome Egyptians , to my 8 yo daughter, I ran into this incident where Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly entered The Great Pyramid, stayed there alone for quite a while and came out “pale and shaking”. This sounded fake. Or was it? No biography of Napoleon would ever answer such questions categorically, so I turned to the all-knowing Google. Voila! It pointed me to this podcast named, I kid you not, Our Fake History ! My hopes up, I was thrilled to see it had a 2-part series on Napoleon. The podcast started by pointing out that Napoleon was a larger than life figure. There were innumerable myths around him, some that served him and others that served his enemies, some true and others false. The series promised to explore all of them: Was he a short-statured egomaniac? Or a wise-cracking bon vivant ? A jealous lover? A great general? A destroyer of ancient monuments? And did he create that clever palindrome on Elba? Napoleon was a nobody b...

Let me start by expanding a term used throughout this blog: STEM. It stands for “Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths”. Now for the provocative question: why are boys better than girls at STEM? Here’s an economist, Alex Tabarrok’s take on the subject. He talks of the so-called “gender-equality paradox”: “Countries with the highest levels of gender equality tend to have the  lowest  ratios of women to men in STEM education.” Yes, that means those famed Scandinavian countries! The usual explanation for this is that “less is riding on choice of career in the richer, gender-equal countries”. In other words, the benefits of a higher paying STEM job in those countries gets eaten away by high taxes, and in any case, the state takes good care of you regardless of career choice… Another reason for the STEM question is that males have a higher variability . “ Variability” means that there are lots of boys who excel at things and equally, there are lots of boys who ...

The NRC (National Register of Citizens) was a list of the citizens of Assam (only). The road to the current Citizen Amendment Bill (CAB) began when the BJP decided to update the NRC for Assam. The intention was to identify all illegal immigrants who had entered after the Bangladesh war in ‘71. Inconveniently for the BJP, the updated NCR found 60% of the illegal immigrants in Assam to be Hindus. The BJP had done something lawyers are taught not to do: Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. But that’s law, and this was politics. And not for nothing is Amit Shah called admiringly (by the BJP’s supporters) the modern-day Chanakya. The surprise of the NRC findings led to a very calculated response that combined well established facts with the right’s worldview. First, the facts. Fact #1 : In 1950, Nehru and Pakistan’s head, Liaquat Ali Khan had agreed to protect and give full rights to the minorities of their respective countries. Fact #2 : The Muslim perc...

My 8 yo daughter can’t understand the difference between a couple of hundreds and say, a lakh, or a crore. The only context in which she cares about these numbers to even try and compare them is, of course, money. Then again, this inability to visualize the magnitude of difference between large numbers is a human-wide problem. Adults can’t do it either. Hence the endless analogies, like mapping the life of the planet (4.5 billion years) onto a 24 hour window, and then trying to impress you by pointing out that “modern humans have been around since 11:59:59pm—1 second”! So perhaps it’s too much to expect from kids. But we’re talking of kids here: Anything you think is easy, they absolutely won’t get. And they’ll have their enlightenment on whatever you have no hopes about. Recently, I told her that one of my friend’s kid was supposed to go on a school trip to the US. But given how much it cost, most parents dropped out. And so, I told her, the trip was cancelled. “How mu...

The Middle East. Tim Marshall explains why it is the way it is, in his wonderful book, Prisoners of Geography : “The middle of what? East of where? The region’s very name is based on a European view of the world, and it is a European view of the region that shaped it.” The Arabian desert and scrubland is the dominant feature of the entire region. Ergo, people have lived on the periphery of that region for centuries. Until, that is, the Europeans came along and created nation states and legally fixed borders. But why did Europe get involved at all? It wasn’t like oil was either known of or needed back then. Aha, it started as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire looked imminent. In 1916, while World War I was ongoing, the British and French drew up a map on how they’d divide the region (and thus the Ottoman Empire) if they won the war. The line is called the Sykes-Picot line: north of it would be French control, south of it would be British control. Since then, “Sykes-Picot” ...

The twists and turns, betrayals and horse-trading leading to Uddhav Thackeray becoming Chief Minister of Maharashtra are worthy of a face-paced novel or political thriller. Santosh Desai sums it up perfectly: “The real lesson from Maharashtra is not about any one political party’s victory or defeat… Everyone’s greed and opportunism have helped cancel out everyone’s else’s greed and opportunism.” Sharad Pawar’s NCP comes off as the one on whom the least criticism can be hurled. The Congress, on the other hand? “The Congress’ claims about its commitment to secularism lie in tatters. In the current context, its attempt to position itself as a counterpoint to the BJP is rendered laughable given its willingness to partner a party that has historically been to the right of the BJP.” Wait a minute. Didn’t the Shiv Sena say it was abandoning its Hindutva agenda, “betrayed its long-time alliance partner but showed a willingness to move beyond its core ideological position in ord...