Indian Idler

Washington Irving: "The Sketch Book"

2009-11-28T10:56:00.005+05:30

Read "The Sketch Book" by Washington Irving a few days back. The joy of discovering a nice book or an author is the same as watching a previously unheard of movie and later realising that you watched a great movie(which everybody else in the world seems to have heard of except you). The stories are humorous, poetical and perfectly suitable for a peaceful and silent sunday.

Are we progressing?

2007-12-14T16:05:00.000+05:30

Why is that we humans are always running on a treadmill whose minimum speed is ever increasing?
Why is that we feel the life of a jet-setting, hot shot millionaire business executive is more meaningfull, more successfull than a poor farmer tilling his land in some remote village of a developing/underdeveloped country?
Has all the technological progress made so far enabled mankind to remove all the miseries of life ?
Will technology ever have the capacity to rid humans of their miseries?
Are we really more happy, leading more meaningfull life than people, say 3000 years back?

Better leaders?

2007-12-06T16:10:00.001+05:30

I have been pestered for a long time by a well meaning friend to start a blog. But being a lazy person and also having what I suspect a neo-luddite nature, I kept post phoning it. So at last here I am to clutter the cyber space with my ideas and opinions and whatnot...

So my first topic :

I read a few days back that the assembly and LokSabha constituencies will be redrawn and re-organized. The new electoral map will now have more urban constituencies. Now , going by the logic (unfounded & may be unreasonable) that

Most educated people move to cities in search of jobs.
The proportion of educated people in urban areas is more than the rural areas.
Educated people realize that it is their duty to vote.
Educated people are politically savvy and elect good, honest and able politicians.

Will it now mean that we will have a better set of politicians than in the past????