Viswanathan K's Thoughts

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...

My 14 yo daughter is studying acids and bases in chemistry this year. Which is why I got a refresher that acids release hydrogen ions (H + ) when dissolved in water; and bases either accept those hydrogen ions (H + ) or release hydroxide ions (OH - ) when dissolved in water. Very elementary part of chemistry. ~~   Linus Pauling. In 1952, he hadn’t yet won a Nobel but was universally acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest chemists. At the time, the structure of the to-be-famous DNA molecule was unknown. Many teams were trying to figure it, including Watson and Crick. As also was Pauling – DNA was a molecule, so who better than a chemist to attack the problem? By the end of 1952, Pauling thought he had figured it, and communicated as much to his son, Peter, who was at Cambridge, same as Watson and Crick.   DNA’s structure was a rivalry – the British didn’t want to lose to the Americans. Peter mentions what his British colleagues were saying: “You know how childr...

As a kid, I struggled a lot with the assignment of gender to non-living things in Hindi. Neither of the other languages I knew (Tamil and English) have that concept, and it always felt weird why किताब (book) should have any gender. Even worse, there didn’t seem to be any logic to the assignment of gender.   English is an outlier in not assigning genders, says Guy Deutscher in Through the Language Glass . Most European languages (French, German) assign genders. On the other hand, several languages don’t even have words for ‘he’ and ‘she’! Like Turkish, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Vietnamese. Worst of all (confirming my childhood grouse on Hindi), most languages that assign genders to non-living objects don’t follow any pattern.   If a language loses gender words (he/she/it), well, it depends on which word(s) was lost. Spanish, French and Italian lost the “it” word (for non-living things) and so everything had to be male or female. Losing a gender word added to ...

What are the dangers if a single party dominates the political landscape for too long? Like the Congress did or the BJP is doing? Raghu S Jaitley analyzes .   One , he says, such extended dominance can change the “psychology of the electorate itself”! He elaborates: “Consider a voter born in 1992. That person would have been too young (under 18) to vote in the 2009 general election, the last election won by the Congress-led UPA. By 2029, that voter will be 37 years old. For their entire adult political life, for anyone below the age of 37 in 2028, the BJP would have occupied the political mindspace with continued narrative dominance. To such voters, the opposition begins appearing abnormal rather than an alternative.” It reminded me of the question as to how Rome, the Republic was transformed into an emperor-based system. The answer was that Julius Caeser’s successor, Augustus Caeser won the battle for succession fairly young and thus ruled for several decades. By the time ...

Like many companies, Meta (formerly known as Facebook) decided to use AI as its customer support chatbot (instead of humans). It resulted in a ridiculously easy way to hack Instagram accounts (Meta/Facebook owns Instagram).   So easy that even a layman can understand it (and be shocked). Hackers who wanted to hack anyone’s Insta account would initiate a chat with the AI support bot and ask for the email ID associated with the account be updated. The AI would do it, no questions asked! Then the hacker would initiate a password reset request on the target account. An OTP-like verification code would be sent to the associated email ID (But remember, this is now the mail ID that the hacker had changed via the chat bot). He’d enter the verification code, and bingo! Password reset and the Insta account had been hacked. “The attack did not rely on sophisticated malware, zero-day exploits or technical vulnerabilities in Instagram itself. Instead, attackers manipulated the AI system t...

How does the same party keep winning elections for abnormally long periods? Like the Left and Mamata (until this time) in Bengal? Like the BJP winning elections across the country for almost 15 years (except the last national election)? Like how the Congress used to win from independence onwards?   This is the question Raghu S Jaitley analyses and it makes for interesting reading. One would imagine that a party should not win continuously for long periods: “Economic underperformance naturally produces anti-incumbency, unemployment translates into anger, inflation gets punished, and that, over time, voters simply get tired.” What then explains all the “aberrations” listed in the first para? Why didn’t “anti-incumbency… mechanically restore equilibrium”?   Jaitley only focusses on the Congress and BJP because, at their prime, they were (are?) winning continuously both at the national level and at multiple state levels, and therefore they are relevant to all Indian...

There are two types of systems used in languages to give directions, writes Guy Deutscher in Through the Language Glass . First , the one most of us know ( egocentric ), i.e., directions wrt the individual. Turn left . Half a kilometer ahead . All directions are from the perspective of the individual. It is easy to understand why this is so popular – you don’t need a map or a compass, it feels so intuitive.   Except that, ( second ) many languages specify directions in geocentric terms. In those languages, directions are specified as north, south, east, and west, not left or right! Which languages are these? Many native languages of Australia, South East Asia, Mexico, Nepal and Madagascar. “We have simply mistaken the familiar for the natural.”   The obvious feeling would be that geocentric terms can only work for groups that stay in small areas all their life. When they tested this hypothesis by driving some natives far from their native areas, places they had ne...

The Dubai series of blogs was based on (and written) before the Iran war. Given how small the UAE is, how it has never shown signs of religious fanatism, how cosmopolitan Dubai and Abu Dhabi are, how integrated Dubai is as an airport hub and tourist destination, I was curious why Iran targets the UAE so much more compared to the other Gulf countries during the war.   Well, there are multiple reasons. One , UAE (like so many other Gulf countries) hosts American military and air force bases. Iran attacked those to increase the cost to the US and for the PR value of destroying American bases. But that should apply for all other Gulf countries as well, so it doesn’t explain why Iran targets UAE so much more. Which brings us to Two . UAE is very close (100 km), comfortably within Iran’s short-range missiles and drones, making it a cheaper option to hit. Three , the fact that Dubai (and Abu Dhabi) are global financial hubs means the splatter is felt world over. Four , the UAE had bu...

Does a language influence how and even what its users think (or don’t think)? At first glance, this seems ridiculous. Even if a language doesn’t have a word for a concept, surely users will just describe the concept using a group of words when needed, right? The absence of a word definitely does not mean that users of a language don’t know or understand the associated concept, reiterates Guy Deutscher in Through the Language Glass .   Wilhelm von Humbldt explained that the point of the above question was more nuanced, i.e., to check “what (a language) encourages and simulates its speakers to do from its own inner force”. Max Muller said something similar: “The words in which we think are channels of thought which we have not dug ourselves, but which we found ready made for us!” Bertrand Russell expressed this point even more strongly: “Language misleads us by its vocabulary and by its syntax. We must be on our guard in both respects if our logic is not to lead to false...

By the turn of the century, urban development was the driving force for Dubai, writes Tomas Pueyo.. The Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, is the most famous landmark. The world’s 2 nd largest mall, the Dubai Mall (with an aquarium and underwater zoo), came up. Land was reclaimed to create the famous Palm Jumeirah.   Dubai understood the synergies between different modes of transportation, so: “It didn’t only invest in its port and coast. It continued investing in its airport and airline.” Today, Dubai is the world’s 2 nd busiest international airport, and Emirates airlines is a synonym for opulence and coverage.   Those old selling points from when it became an SEZ – safety, low taxes, tolerance – continue and remain key attractions even today. Dubai is (was?) as safe as Tokyo and Singapore, and definitely a whole lot safer than any Western city.   Criticism of the rulers or religion is not allowed. Media is controlled by the state. Public protests are not a...

In Through the Language Glass , Guy Deutscher looks at areas where languages differ. An area where culture dominates are the relationship words. Most Indian languages, for example, have different words for older/younger relatives and maternal/paternal side relatives. Not so with English. Why? Cultural differences.   Another area where there seems to be no pattern across languages is grammar. Word ordering is radically different across languages, the ordering of one can feel back-to-front in another.   A widespread belief is that the languages of “primitive” people must be as simple as their societies. Deutscher blames this misconception on the “sources”, i.e., “from Tintin to Westerns” where the natives speak in that rudimentary “me no come, Sahib” way. The problem of course is that the assessment is being made based on how they speak the language of the white man, a language with which natives have limited familiarity. Just check out how an English speaker talks in Ge...

As it lay ignored, Dubai had one special thing – its creek , writes Tomas Pueyo. Why did the creek matter? “A creek provides protection for ships from sea storms and pirates, so Dubai could theoretically be a port.” But with so many other ports around, why would anybody care for Dubai, which (remember) had nothing to trade or sell anyway? Well, Dubai’s rulers had progressively made sure the place was safe from pirates and robbers. The most important port under the Ottomans was Basra. But as Basra got taxed more and more, merchants and traders began to look for alternatives.   It was now (1901) that Dubai created what we would call an SEZ (Special Economic Zone) today. Easy land purchasing, no taxes, a safe haven, tolerance to all beliefs. Of course, this playbook could have been tried by other creeks in the region. Why then did Dubai capitalize the most? “A big reason was that it was weak. That weakness was an asset, not a liability: The port was not huge, the Sheikh was not power...

Dubai. The UAE. The posterchild of how a country can continue to be rich, even when the oil runs out. The story behind that is interesting, as I learnt as I read this (brief) history of Dubai by Tomas Pueyo. ( Note : Through this blog, Dubai means the entire emirate by the same name, not just the one city named Dubai).   The founder of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, feared this: “ My grandfather rode a camel; my father rode a camel. I ride a Mercedes. My son rides a Land Rover, and my grandson will ride a Land Rover. But his son will ride a camel.” Al Maktoum wanted to avoid that last line. And boy, has he succeeded: “Today, Dubai is not only a bustling city. It’s one of the most dynamic city-states on Earth.”   From ancient times, Dubai lay on/close to the trade routes (Mesopotamia to Persia and China; Mesopotamia to India and South East Asia). But that never helped! Dubai, after all, was just a desert, so nobody stopped there, nothing got traded...

When the West found oil in Persia/Iran, the Saudis started looking too and found it in 1938, writes Tomas Pueyo. They have the world’s largest onshore and offshore oil fields. Its oil is cheaper because it is nearer the surface, easy to access, and it spurts up easily. Oil today accounts for 80% of government income. That is scary and we will get to why that is the case.   The Saudis spend a bigger share of their income on the military than the US, Russia and Iran! Why spend so much? Partly the Shia and Iran threat, obviously. “Part of it is because the government has no legitimacy beyond that of the sword and religious radicalism, so it must make sure people are not scheming against it. This requires a big security apparatus.” And also, it creates many jobs in and related to the military, but again controllable by the government. And lastly, its location has too many choke points: the Suez Canal, the narrow strait from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, and the Straits of Hormuz. S...

At the end of Through the Language Glass , Guy Deutscher points out that colour, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. As is well known, the eye has rods and cones. Colour perception is because of the cones. In humans, we have 3 different types of cones which can detect 3 separate colours – red, blue and green (RGB). Only those three, nothing else. How then do we “see” so many other colours?   Well, if light happens to activate both red and green cones with equal intensity, it gets interpreted as yellow. Put differently, we are not capable of detecting if a light is “truly” yellow or just a combo of equal intensity red and green! So all those non-RGB colours we are able to see? It’s just a combo of those three colours we can detect (RGB) combined in different intensities (ratios).   In fact, colour TV’s use just this point. They (like our eye) only support 3 different colours (RGB). By varying the intensities of those three colours at each pixel on the screen, ...

Tomas Pueyo wrote a great post on Saudi Arabia, informative on so many fronts. “Saudi Arabia is the biggest country in the world with no rivers! It only has wadis, ephemeral river beds that only occasionally carry water after rain.” Sure, everyone knows about the sand and desert , but did you know: “ The sand is so sandy that there are dunes up to 250 m high!” It is also rocky and mountainous on one side. Did you know the mountains are so tall that it even snows there?   From the above pic, you’d also notice the country is next to two major sea routes – the Red Sea on the left (west) and the Persian Gulf on the top (north). The coastal areas have also been on the trade routes with the corresponding opportunities for enrichment. Which is why you find so many different countries along those coasts:   Based on all this, you’d expect only the coastal areas to be the well-known cities of Saudi Arabia. And yes, Mecca, Medina and Jeddah lie close to the coast. But not the capital, ...

How does one check whether language reflects reality? Or if it is a lens that affects what we perceive and register? At this point, Europeans realized none of their languages could help answer the question – they were too similar, and had intermixed too much. So they began to pay attention to the languages of far off places, including the so-called “primitives”, writes Guy Deutscher in Through the Language Glass . “The deficiencies that Gladstone and Geiger had uncovered were replicated exactly in living languages all over the world… (for example) red was always the first of the prismatic colours to receive a name.”   On the other hand, the eyesight data contradicted the idea of “defective colour vision” – no tribe was found that couldn’t make out the difference among colours. What had seemed impossible was now a reality – even if people could notice a difference, they didn’t always bother to assign it a word.   Magnus now tweaked his theory. Agreed, he said, everyo...

As I read the chapter on Greece in Tim Marshall’s Power of Geography , I was surprised by how little I knew of the country’s history, beyond the usual Athens-democracy-Plato-Aristotle-Alexander parts! “Mountains and water are the key to understanding the past, present and future of Greece.” Greece has lots of mountains all over its north. From ancient times to present day, they made trade in the northward direction very hard. It also meant that people couldn’t move around easily and mix, leading to the lack of any unified identity. With the land/mountain route severely constrained, Greece turned to the only available option – the sea. The Aegean Sea. More on that later. The mountainous terrain meant no invader could control all of Greece – from Rome to Persia to the Ottomans to the Balkan states to the British. But the strategic value of control of the Aegean Sea meant all those empires would vie for rule over Greece. Greece, thus, was never an independent nation, even as recentl...