India Technology and History – A perspective

India Technology and History – A perspective

Why was the knowledge was lost? Indian subcontinent has had a civilization for thousands of years and when we look at the remains of Indus Valley civilization there seems to be existence metropolis and intercontinental trade. There were cities like Mohenjo Daro, Harappa, Lothal that had drainage systems which can rival any of the current cities of India. Today a day of rain can flood any modern city in India whereas Indus Valley civilization used floods for their benefit. Why…

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Book Review: The Body – A Guide for the Occupants

Book Review: The Body – A Guide for the Occupants

The Body – A Guide for the occupants is written by Bill Bryson and published in 2020. This is second book of Bryson that I had a chance to read. The other one was A Walk in the woods which was about the celebrated Appalachian trail. I have few others already on my TBR list. Here is a post that I wrote sometime back on a similar topic. I think everyone would agree that human body after millions of years…

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Ryugu and Bennu – Near Earth Objects Visited in 2020

Ryugu and Bennu – Near Earth Objects Visited in 2020

Ryugu and Bennu are asteroids that are part of many of the Near Earth Objects. Many space organizations of the world are monitoring the orbits of bunch of Near Earth Objects in order to calculate if their path will cross with earth or if they are on the collision path. NASA’s JPL has a Centre for Near Earth Object Studies that is computing asteroid and comet orbits and their odds of Earth impact. Lets looks at these two asteroids. Recently…

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Boeing and it’s 737 Max Conundrum

Boeing and it’s 737 Max Conundrum

Airline Industry Overview Commercial Airplane manufacturing industry is mostly a duopoly between Boeing and Airbus for many years now after lot of consolidation that happened. Erstwhile USSR had Antonov and recently Chinese company Comac has been trying to develop C-919. But largely the duopoly has existed and both the firms wants the status quo. There are other aircraft companies in the smaller aircrafts Bombardier, Pilatus, Cessna, Dassault,Fokker, Gulfstream, Embraer and other. The markets they play in are different. Airbus had…

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What’s up? UPSC?

What’s up? UPSC?

UPSC – A history Official UPSC website has a brief history and it is clearly seen that genesis of civil servants in India has colonial hangover like many other government systems. Initially, the board of directors of East India Company nominated the candidates and they were trained in Haileybury College in London. Later after Lord Macaulay’s report merit based modern Civil Service in India was introduced in 1854. For a long time exams were conducted only in London and eligible…

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Minsk Connection in Bangalore

Minsk Connection in Bangalore

History of Twin Cities Belarus and Minsk has been in the news due to widespread unrest due the re-election of Alexander Lukashenko who has been the President of the country from the day the position was instated about 26 years ago on 20th July 1994. Lukashenko is sometimes called Last Dictator of Europe by many european journalists due to his authoritarian rule. Minsk being the Capital city was also in the news recently. Minsk was in the back of my…

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Indian Dispatches from 1918 Pandemic

Indian Dispatches from 1918 Pandemic

1918 Pandemic Great Influenza 1918 was the year of the great influenza which spread all over the world leading to estimated death of 50 million people worldwide and of this the country that was most affected was India that had alteast one-fifth of this death toll. In the history of world of pandemics there are only two which have taken more lives than this pandemic. The plague of Justinian that lasted for fifty years around AD 542 killed 100 million…

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Teardown of a Fisher Price Toy CGM35

Teardown of a Fisher Price Toy CGM35

Toy Industry Mattel owns Fisher Price and if you go to a toy shop or online the products are mostly from this company if one needs a good quality options. All others are kind of knock off of the product from there and its very easy to see a quality difference. Whatever the quality of product all products are mostly “Made In China” probably 95% of them. Are these really complicated ones and does it need lot of R&D, the…

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A Visit to Bodhi Tree Temple Complex of Bodh Gaya Bihar

A Visit to Bodhi Tree Temple Complex of Bodh Gaya Bihar

I was heading out to a place called Aurangabad in Bihar and nearest Airport was Bodh Gaya. Now I had about 2-3 hours in my hand as this trip was a real quick one. But I knew that I can’t miss going to the tree where Siddhartha became Buddha and I have to say it was worth the time. All this was a long time back in the month of February when the world was very different and nobody could…

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Learn from Patient 31 of South Korea: Super Spreader Covid-19

Learn from Patient 31 of South Korea: Super Spreader Covid-19

Covid-19 has been declared pandemic by WHO quite sometime back. The problem with Covid-19 is it’s easy spread from person to person transmission. The so called Patient 31 of South Korea is a most potent example of this kind transmission. The person who is said to be 60 year old without any history of travel to China got flu like symptoms and was advised for Corona virus test. She seems to have denied going to test for few days and…

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21st Century Mercenaries

21st Century Mercenaries

The Incident Picture this. You are in a completely new country for a week and went out to a barbeque restaurant to eat some food. You get a table squeezed in a corner. On another table complete strangers from Germany, Japan and US are having their food. One of them just starts a conversation and basic usual stuff of introductions, where and how. About half an hour later these folks on the table start leaving and one of them just…

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Personal Finance 101 – Where do one start?

Personal Finance 101 – Where do one start?

There are many life skills that are important and one that is normally not on the top of mind is personal finance. It is sometimes considered “cool” if you are not very sure about your personal finance and one saves on very last day of investment deadline. This post is reflection of what I feel is right way getting started with managing your personal finance. There are lot of young folks who start making money through their salaries and are…

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Ranga Shankara, Bikhre Bimb and those 10 years

Ranga Shankara, Bikhre Bimb and those 10 years

Part 1: October 2009 It was way back in 2010 that I had booked tickets for the play Bikhre Bimb. One of our friends had suggested that we go for a play. I don’t really remember that if that was the first time I was going for a play but it was Vikalp who asked me to book tickets. I have been very always very bad with the roads and that day I had my brother’s bike with me and…

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