It’s hard to find what Indian mutual funds charge their customers to manage their money for them. The so called “expense ratio.” Try to find it on, say, the UTI website, or SBI’s MF website. Also, since January 2013, SEBI (the market regulator) made it mandatory for all mutual fund houses (AMCs) to offer what […]
Craft Beer in Bangalore
IPA beka? IPA, Russian Imperial Stout, Blonde, Hefeweizen, Maibock, Pumpkin Ale, Belgian Tripel, Classic Pilsner, and such: all on tap. Moving back from the US in 2012, one worrying thought at the back of my head was — where do I get good beer in Bangalore? Back in the late 90’s, I often drank unnamed beers on […]
So much to learn, ponder about, and do….
And so much time to do it. Scott Aaronson’s “rant” on naysayers of complexity theory got me pondering. Over the last few months, my general scientific pondering has suffered at the hands of real work, startup life routine, system building, and a general state of being occupied by the trite. It’s fascinating, but not inspiring. […]
Porn and Masturbation
For a while now, I have observed this disturbing trend of using the words Porn and Masturbation (P&M) as suffixes in hyphen-separated-phrases to convey that the prefix is inferior, waste of time, pathetic, something to aspire against, etc. Cases in question: intellectual-masturbation, achievement-porn, etc. I find two insulting underlying reasoning schools at work were. One: […]
Genius
The Feynman Method Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a […]
Dev D
Color, Pathos, Neon, Blood, Helplessness, Orgasmic, Irredeemability, Red, Anguish, Nods, Honesty, As-is, Succumbing, Delirium, Insecurity, Psychedelia, Skin, Sigh, Bitter-as-coffee, Physical catharsis, Uncontrollable-lust, Random, Wanton, Appreciation-hierarchy, Feeling, Denim, Masochism, Yellow, Numb, Lonely, Cold, Vivid, Very vivid color. I am happy.
Kanyadaan
Do not influence others. Especially subliminally. Especially with ideals which you have internalized after prolong profound pondering. That’s what Nath Devlalikar does. He makes his life an experiment in ideology, and lives to live the tragic consequences. Walking out of Prithvi Theater, I felt an almost biological urge to wail out the anguish I felt […]
There Will Be Blood
If you have been waiting for a film for a while, watching it alone in a theater is probably most satisfying. For various reasons, but the most important being – I don’t have to justify why the film is worth someone else’s time. It would have been a very tough sell in There Will Be […]
The Long Tail of Blogging
Here’s what Nabokov said at the end of his literature-appreciation course: “In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys — literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the […]
The Master of Chess
“A Zugzwang!” – exclaimed Grandpa. “So it seems” mused the other old man. He laid his over-sized black-framed glasses down on the floor and turned to me with a grandfatherly smile. “Your Grandpa will be stuck for a while.” He turned towards the old chess board again and gazed at it for a while before […]