Viswanathan K's Thoughts

As meal-time approaches, we begin to feel hungry. Increasingly so. But why does that feeling go away even if we skip that meal ? Why didn’t the hunger get more and more intense?   The answer lies in endocrinology. I remember seeing almost all the salient points from my then 14 yo daughter’s Biology book; but it is only when you connect all those raw facts that you get the answer.   If we don’t know that, we (wrongly) assume hunger is a signal that keeps rising until we eat. But that’s not how the body work. Yes, it starts at meal-time when the gherlin level spikes. But if the food doesn’t arrive, the gherlin level eventually crashes (but it takes an hour or two for that to happen).   In parallel, without the food intake, your blood glucose level falls. In response, the body releases counter-regulatory hormones – glucagon, cortisol and epinephrine. This glucagon goes to the liver and breaks down the older stores of glycogen in the liver, thereby dumping glucose...

The roots of the contests over history lie in the fact that education systems (world over) teach history. To school kids. Most of whom will never read any history, beyond schoolbooks. And so the government of the day, via its power to set the books of curriculum, gets to decide what is accepted as “the past”. The term “indoctrination” is used by the opposition to describe this phenomenon, explains Shaan Kashyap in Who Owns History?   He gives an example. From the British era. With so many vernacular texts, there were contradictions. So much so that even locals (Bengal, Madras etc) asked the British to help instil some order to the vernacular texts. So they tried. In 1872, Syed Ahmed Khan confronted the North-West Frontier Province government on the matter about the way books presented certain Muslim figures and their actions (including the execution of a Sikh leader). Note that Khan was not challenging the events – he was unhappy about the tone/ presentation of those events t...

Greece. The cradle of Western civilization. Hellenic culture. Home to Alexander the Great, a man who conquered territories all the way to the Indus. Only as an adult, I wondered how come the Greeks never conquered Europe?   A clue to that came from this map of the ancient city states (and terrain) of Greece from a Tomas Pueyo post . What do you see in that map? “Continental Greece is all mountains!... Now does it make more sense that Greece was a series of city-states? They couldn’t sustain big populations, and they couldn’t connect each city easily.” Based on the technology (transport, communication, military) of that era, it was not possible to unify Greece in such a terrain. It was also why Greece could never conquer Europe – even if they got past the Greek mountains, they’d next face the Alps and mountain ranges of the Balkans. All insurmountable back then.   All this leads you to wonder how Greek influence could ever have spread to Europe. Well, it didn’t. At least, not i...

Shaan Kashyap’s Who Owns History? is an interesting read that goes over the writing of Indian history from a particular angle: “The book is not a history of India – it is the history of how Indians have argued over, contested and even reimagined history itself.” The same point, from a different angle: “It traces the moments when historians stepped the safe confines of universities and found themselves in the public sphere.”   In the polarized India of today, one set believes such contested history is a recent (aka Modi era) phenomenon. Another believes what is happening today is a backlash against the Left’ist version of history from before that. But no, says the book, in India, such clashes pre-date both of the above by a long time! ~~   Yuval Noah Harari said we’re hardwired to love stories and (mis)apply it to everything around us. Including history. We like clean narratives. Good and bad. Nothing grey, nothing messy. As Kashyap puts it: “If people can ch...

A cold is caused by a virus. We know that. Why then do people catch a cold right after they get drenched in the rain? That happens far too often to be a coincidence. What is going on?   The nose has a lining that traps anything that tries to enter, including that virus, in the mucus. Which is then swept backward to the throat, swallowed (yuck!), reaches the stomach, where the extremely powerful acid (in the stomach) destroys it. A conveyor belt system that never stops.   Cold air slows down that conveyor belt. The tiny cilia hair that sweep mucus beat slower, so the mucus gets thicker. The trapped virus gets to sit there longer, giving it slightly more time to occasionally escape and infect.   Now add rain to the equation. Cold + wet = temperature of the nose is lowered further. The blood vessels in the nose constrict to conserve heat. The now narrowed “pipe” means fewer immune cells arrive in the same time.   To sum it up, when you get drenched, that...

This interview by Martin Wolf (from the Financial Times ) got me thinking. He was talking about how, though capitalism has its problems, we can’t seem to find alternatives. And the irritation with capitalism isn’t a recent phenomenon: “The wild enthusiasm for the idea, ‘if only we get rid of capitalism, everything will be fine’—which was a dominant idea of progressives in the 19th century—has, in my view, been tried and tested to destruction in the 20th. So we can’t go there.” (If you didn’t get it, he is referring to communism).   Of course, that doesn’t mean one just has to live with capitalism the way it is. One can (and should), he says, tweak and improve it. But make changes slowly, he warns. Why slowly? “We have had a lot of experience with truly revolutionary changes in the last couple of centuries, and they have all, without exception, ended in disaster.” Note that Wolf’s point is on the speed of the change in case of revolutions, not the violence. But is it necessary tha...

Way Yuhl wrote a brief history in two parts of Europe as a union. From 1618 and 1648, Europe was engulfed in what came to be called the Thirty Years’ War. The bone of contention? Who should the respective kings “report” to, the ultimate authority, the Pope or the Holy Roman Emperor? “The Thirty Years’ War was the worst of Europe’s wars over who would rule the continent, and it settled nothing.”   The war concluded with what is called the Peace of Westphalia: “The Peace ended the war by ending the idea of a single authority. It replaced it with the idea of sovereign states, each ruled by its own leader, who did not answer to a higher power. Scholars mark this as the start of the modern state system, the world of separate, self-ruling countries that still exists today.” (Take that with a lot of salt: such self-rule was only for Europe, not Africa, Asia or South America).   Sounds good in theory. Independent kingdoms/countries in Europe. In practice, it led to end...

Singapore’s famous PM, Lee Kuan Yew, built world class infrastructure, provided political stability and gave tax incentives to court foreign investment. He took measures to shift the reliance on the port to labour-intensive manufacturing.   Everyone can’t afford to live in Mumbai. But for a Singaporean, there is no other city or town to go! Lee therefore provided affordable housing for all. Like India’s Provident Fund system, he forced employees and employers to contribute to a retirement fund. He then allowed citizens to tap into that PF-equivalent to make payments for the housing.   Lee made the judicial system predictable and honest, a key attraction for investors. He also raised government salaries so corruption wasn’t a “necessity”. And then he came down with an iron fist on corruption.   He institutionalized racial harmony by recognizing four official languages (English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil) and made English the working language to seamlessly conn...

This old conversation (from 2013) with former world chess champion, Magnus Carlsen, was thought-provoking. I could see the point Carlsen was making while also seeing the risk (in fact, he admitted the same himself).   Before you read further, keep in mind that Carlsen was not yet the dominant force he would soon become. He was great then, but nothing close to invincible. Yet, even then, Carlsen felt that: “It’s always better to be overly confident than pessimistic. ” Why? “If you’re not optimistic, if you’re not looking for your chances, you’re going to miss. You’re going to miss opportunities.” Conversely, he said: “There are plenty of players in history who have been immensely talented, but they’re — they’re just too pessimistic. They see too many dangers that are not there and so on so they cannot perform at a very high level. ” Interesting point – they see too many dangers that are not there .   Being the best, Carlsen said, requires supreme self-belie...

Due to its location, Britain considered Singapore a vital part of its empire. They fortified it with a naval base and were ready to fight Japan over it during World War II. But British plans and defenses were based on naval war, and they didn’t stand a chance when the Japanese came via land (Malaysia) instead! “That surrender was the largest in British history.” It was the first shock of Singapore, the realization that Britain couldn’t protect them (reminds me of the Gulf States in the Iran war). Singapore demanded and got self-government in 1959 from Britain. Its first Prime Minister was the now famous Lee Kuan Yew. “Lee's government knew the island was too small to survive on its own. This led Lee to secure Singapore's entry into the new Federation of Malaysia in September 1963.”   But the union with Malaysia had a major sticking point. Malaysia constitutionally favoured Malays in all areas; which left Singapore’s Chinese and Indian populace in the lurch. This f...

Puducherry. It consists of the former French colonies in India - Puducherry, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam. I didn’t realize those parts are scattered across India!     That looks crazy, but it’s true. And therein a fascinating tale as told by Sagar. The French came to India and decided to form alliances with regional rulers. In 1673, one such area they got was Puducherry. A small village, which, over time, extended to include other nearby villages. It is important to understand the French were not colonizing the area. Rather: “These villages were granted to them one at a time by local rulers, so they were discontinuous pieces of land that supplied the main settlement.” It was so haphazard that: “Its (just the region within Tamil Nadu alone) map is a scattered chessboard of enclaves and unevenly distributed villages and communes.” Imagine that!   The other ‘parts’ of Puducherry as shown in the map above were even tinier. And no, under French rule, those other trading village...

Singapore is surprising, writes Way Yuhl: “Singapore pumps no oil, digs no ore, and farms almost no land, yet its economy produces over $90,000 US dollars per person a year, the highest in Asia, one of the highest in the world.”   In the Indian Ocean, the winds change direction with season. This was a big deal in the era of wind powered ships. “A trading ship could sail with one wind from China or India down to the strait, but it could not sail home until the wind turned. That forced wait kept foreign traders in the strait’s harbors, and their trading made whichever port controlled the strait’s trade rich.” Singapore was one such port.   When the imperialists came, not surprisingly, they fought for control of these critical ports (Spain, Portugal, Britain). Tax the trade, and often prevent your rivals from even using the port. The British tried a different model: control the port, but make it free for all. No wonder that traders moved away fr...

If we keep using the same muscle(s) continuously for extended periods, those muscles get tired. Why then doesn’t the heart ever get tired? After all, it is a group of muscles too. And it beats (and need to beat) continuously over the entire life of the individual. What’s the difference?   The answer lies in physiology. Most muscles like the bicep work via anaerobic metabolism, i.e., metabolism without oxygen. They burn glucose without oxygen, produce energy and also lactic acid. It is the buildup of that lactic acid that causes us to feel fatigue in those areas.   The heart, on the other hand, does aerobic metabolism, i.e., metabolism with oxygen. The efficiency increase in energy production is 19 times!   Wait, there’s more. Cardiac muscles have a “refractory period”. Skeletal muscles can be simulated to contract and expand rapidly. That is good, in fact necessary, for many situations like quick acceleration and rapid actions. Cardiac muscles, on the other...

What did all those princes do post-independence? Several of them joined politics. Their success rate (getting elected) was very high, at 80%, writes John Zubrzycki in Dethroned . “(They) were able to exploit traditional ties based on rank, caste and economic dependence.”   At first, they aligned with the Congress, to ensure their privy purses and privileges remained. But with success, the bitterness that some felt, the betrayal of some promises, led several to switch sides. Vijayaraje Scindia was the most prominent switch. She even “ruled” over ten parliamentary constituencies, where nobody could win unless she “approved” them. Many of the erstwhile princes of Orrisa, Gujarat and Rajasthan also fought and won elections against the Congress. Gayatri Devi from Jaipur won by the largest margin (at that time).   Nehru, never a fan of privy purses, had, from 1953 onwards (after Patel’s death), tried coaxing the princes to voluntarily give it up. He argued that giving so m...