Beiträge vom April, 2011

small thoughts 2011-04-24 (my week in twitter)

Sonntag, 24. April 2011 7:59

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India reading — Maximum City by Suketo Mehta

Mittwoch, 20. April 2011 20:41

I take the opportunity of writing about an English book to do my first English travel-blog entry. I still can’t make up my mind how I will move on language-wise, being torn between connection with my friends all over the world and the feeling of integration I get from reflecting on my experiences in my mother tongue.

Maximum City had been recommended to me by several people who’s judgment I trust, and still my expectations have been surpassed. I can’t remember when a book last spoke to me so strongly on so many different levels of observations, experiences and feelings. I can basically use some quotations from it as a sort of diary of many of my own experiences. A non-fiction book of almost 600 pages, a report of an Indian expat to the US moving back „home“ to Bombay with his family, but to me that is only the starting point, for especially continuing to read it now that I have taken in my first week of Nairobi I can assert that it’s topics reach much farther. The book starts with some very good glimpses of what a newcomer sees in India:

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small thoughts 2011-04-17 (my week in twitter)

Sonntag, 17. April 2011 7:59

  • #travelinsight 32: So good to see couples holding hands again, and stuff! Even though I miss the sight of guys in intimate embraces… #
  • #travelinsight 31: Sweet Baobab Seeds. Nasty and addicting. #
  • What’s left of economics without ideology: „resources are limited, incentives matter“ wow! http://j.mp/g5iQIM Stiglitz on deficit reduction #
  • Progressivity of tax systems and inequality — how misleading hard facts can be http://j.mp/id0g3F (read link and Whiteford’s comment) #
  • Mein alter LMU-Prof Rosenstiel hat pointierte und traurige Gedanken zu Wirtschafts-Studenten und Unternehmensethik http://j.mp/fQVRJc #
  • Nachtaktive Liberale sind am intelligentesten http://j.mp/hyPG8B Kuriose Auswüchse der evolutionsbiologischen Intelligenzforschung. Und nu? #
  • #travelinsight 30: Starting to appreciate facebook again. Haha. But it does ease the pain of leaving so many people behind all the time :( #
  • #travelinsight 29: Internet seems to suck everywhere I go outside Germany — California, Glasgow, India, Kenya, getting worse and worse… #
  • #travelinsight 28: Hmmm, Kenya makes up for the missed mango season in India. I do miss Indian cuisine though, especially Bombay indulgence. #
  • #travelinsight 27: Wow, Nairobi feels very Western after India. So much space. So clean. Nobody looks at me?! #
  • #travelinsight 26: How long has my stupid computer left to live? More issues every day. Can’t wait for a nice MacBook Air :) Oh consumerism! #
  • Thoughtful criticism of Anna Hazare’s fast to death and the law for an anti-corruption commission in India it is about http://j.mp/ebRcul #

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Scientific Fields Arranged by Purity

Montag, 11. April 2011 7:42

It must be old news for some, because the comic is actually from 2008, but I laughed very hard and at the same time felt it says a lot about our world in many ways. Oh well, here it is, thanks to XKCD:

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Rediscovered: The Devil’s Dictionary (Ambrose Bierce)

Sonntag, 10. April 2011 22:13

I sometimes have free time at my hands right now to read things that have been slumbering in the depths of my computer for a long time. And I rediscovered „The Devil’s Dictionary“, composed around 1900 by Ambrose Bierce and available for free in a horrible text format on Project Gutenberg. As one of my early ventures into search and replace with regular expressions and into LaTeX, I created a nicely typeset version of that, hereby to be put into the public domain. And some of my favorite definitions from it right here:

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“Street-fighting Maths” and Nigeria vs Exxon

Sonntag, 10. April 2011 21:52

I just came across a book with the promising title „Street-Fighting Mathematics — The Art of Educated Guessing and Opportunistic Problem Solving“ by Sanjoy Mahajan (2010), which is actually licensed under Creative Commons, so it can be found for free online. The basic premise is to provide some mathematical tools or heuristics to sufficiently approximate solutions to everyday problems (and maybe also provide a more general framework for that kind of reasoning). And it starts teasingly with a topic called „Dimensions“ and „The power of multinational corporations“. Here’s the problem:

In Nigeria, a relatively economically strong country, the GDP [gross domestic product] is $99 billion. The net worth of Exxon is $119 billion. “When multinationals have a net worth higher than the GDP of the country in which they operate, what kind of power relationship are we talking about?” asks Laura Morosini.

What is the most egregious fault in the comparison between Exxon and Nigeria?

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small thoughts 2011-04-10 (my week in twitter)

Sonntag, 10. April 2011 7:59

  • Der kleinste Teufel der Energiehölle http://j.mp/e68B9K Runder Blick auf billige Energie, Externalitäten und ein Plädoyer fürs „smart grid“ #
  • #travelinsight 25: So beautiful to have little things from the loved ones back home around. So many I use every day and warm my heart! #

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small thoughts 2011-04-03 (my week in twitter)

Sonntag, 3. April 2011 7:59

  • #travelinsight 22: Baby bananas are nice, but there’s nothing like (ripe) green bananas. Why do they only sell the boring stuff in the West? #
  • #travelinsight 21: Unraveling a life again, after only two months. How fast you accumulate material things, organizational and human ties! #
  • #travelinsight 20: It’s getting seriously hot now. Time to leave. #
  • Praktische Konsequenzen für den Umgang mit Atomkraft nach Fukushima in der ZEIT http://j.mp/glpG00 Frage: Ist es das wert? #
  • After years of German paranoia, mobile phone radiation worries reach US, in the wake of new high-profile study http://j.mp/hz9281 #
  • Unsere Kraftwerke sind nur so lange sicher, wie nichts passiert, was wir nicht erwartet haben.“ Strahlenbiologe SZ http://j.mp/gecB6k #
  • Atomare Gefahren versichern statt emotional diskutieren http://j.mp/gPWtKF Wäre das „Ausstieg auf ökonomisch“? #
  • Soziologe Ulrich Beck über Japan und „Risikogesellschaft“ http://j.mp/hf0wVE dann Interview mit Atom-Lobbyist unheimlich http://j.mp/fxhxcV #

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