Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Yoga postures are hard enough; try doing them with your eyes closed and it becomes almost impossible. Kids on the other hand seem do those same poses fairly easily with their eyes closed.   I understood why it’s easier for kids to balance with their eyes closed as I was reading this excerpt from Eureka!: Mindblowing Science Every Day of the Year . The answer starts with an interesting observation: “Children obviously enjoy the feeling of dizziness -- just look at how roundabouts in parks and playgrounds are packed with young­sters.” Why is that? Because, it turns out, our balance system is controlled by 3 senses: Inner ear (vestibular system) Receptors in joints and muscles (proprioceptor system) Eyes (visual system)   These 3 systems mature at different rates from the time we are born: “The vestibular system is fully operational by the time a child has reached 6 months of age; proprioceptors need three or four years more. The development of the visual elem...

Malcolm Gladwell’s The Bomber Mafia talks of several problems from the Second World War that I had never thought about. They do seem obvious once you hear of it…   With bomber planes flying at high speeds at high altitudes (to avoid being hit by anti-aircraft fire), the odds of any bomb landing where one wanted it to was remote. What was the windspeed? The speed of the aircraft? Was the plane level when you dropped the bomb or moving up/down? Or side to side? And you couldn’t even see the tiny target so far below clearly anyway.   Even though some devices (they were practically analog computers!) were built to try and solve this problem, they never worked out. Because in practice, the person operating it had to set the dials while under enemy fire, in a shaking plane, and sometimes with clouds hiding the target altogether.   This could explain why both the Allies and the Axis powers practiced indiscriminate bombing during the war. If you can’t aim precisely, ...

There’s this blogger who goes by the moniker Southern Punk. Recently, he (she?) wrote a thought-provoking post titled “Why does Rome keep showing up?” . As American power (hard and soft) seems to be on the decline, more and more parallels to the slow decline of Rome are common.   He then brings up that famous Roman phrase, “Bread and circuses”. “Most people think it means entertainment. It doesn't. Not exactly. The bread kept people fed. The circus kept people occupied. The point wasn't the games themselves. The point was attention .”   Attention. Nowadays, the US government “seems to communicate through spectacle” only . “I don't remember a time when everything felt this performative… Sometimes it feels like we're living inside a never-ending competition for screen time.” He contrasts that with how things used to be. Once upon a time. “I miss the idea that government was supposed to be boring. Boring meant people were working. Boring meant budgets were...

How is China positioning itself to become the new reserve/international currency? China, writes Way Yuhl, has learned from and copied America.   Remember the New Silk Road project (aka Belt and Road), whereby China “financed roads, railways, ports, power plants, and telecommunications networks” across Asia, Africa and Latin America? Well, that’s not entirely about profits from interest on the loans. It is also how China has built financial leverage with much of the developing world. If their infrastructure projects all rely on China, well, they are likely to align/agree with China on economic and financial matters. On a side note, Yuhl mentions the Sri Lanka port that was handed over to China for 99 years when Sri Lanka couldn’t repay. While India’s concern was Chinese presence so close to our borders/waters, the West cited it as an example of Chinese predatory lending ( zamindar style). Guess what? “America used the same mechanism after WWI, converting Britain’s debt depe...

While reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, I was amused by the discussion the US and Britain had as the tide of war started to turn in favour of the Allies. The Americans offered their bombers to assist the British air raids on Germany. One section of the US air force aspired for precision bombing – bombing precise targets that would yield the maximum benefits, rather than the prevalent indiscriminate reduce-everything-t0-rubble strategy. That section of the US air force was called the Bomber Mafia , the title of the book.   Illogical #1 : While this may sound great, both operationally and from a moral standpoint, the tech to do precision bombing did not exist! Equally relevant was that the if you intended to even try precision bombing, you needed to be able to see the target. Which meant you had to fly during the day (because radar tech was nothing like what it is today). That meant the enemy could see you and shoot at you that much more easily. All of this is why the British were...

How does an international currency get displaced? Does the contender need to do pre-work to take over when the transition point arrives? Way Yuhl looks at how the US dollar took over from the British pound as the international currency. As the colonial superpower, Britain ruled. The pound was the international reserve currency, and British banks handled most global commerce. “Deals that had nothing to do with Britain ran through British institutions.”   The popular belief is that the US dollar replaced the pound due to the second World War, the complete destruction of Europe and Britain, and the beginning of the end of the British empire. True, but that was just the tipping point. In the decades leading to that point, America had been preparing…   From the early 1900’s onwards, America progressively overtook Britain as the world’s largest industrial economy. It produced more steel than Britain and Germany combined. But that alone was never going to be enough to beco...