Desi Tamasha

A bunch of scholars from Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley and other schools have started this awesome blog called The Situationist. Each post is brilliant and sheds light on interesting topics in social sciences. Enjoy!
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Check out this post about US defense sales to India.

Labels: defense india us

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क्या बात है! गूगल में अब हम हिंदी में टाईप कर सकते हैं! वाह वाह!

Note: यदि आप के ब्राउज़र में आप ठीक से हिंदी नहीं पढ़ पा रहे हो, तो इस लिंक पे क्लिक करें और वहाँ पर दिखाए हुए सूचन पर गौर करें। शुरू में अपने ब्राउजर में मैं भी ई कि मात्रा ठीक से पढ़ नही पा रहा था। विकिपीडिया के सूचन अमल करने के बाद अब ब्राउज़र सबकुछ ठीक से दिखा रहा है। :)
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A Slate story about aboriginal cultures in Australia from an American tourist's point-of-view.
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From Cricinfo:

Australia's inability to bowl Zimbabwe out within 50 overs in their opening World Cup warm-up was not a concern for Ricky Ponting. Zimbabwe worked their way to 184 for 7 - well short of Australia's 290 - but Ponting said the practice held his team in good stead. "In one-day cricket on wickets like that, which are really slow and low, it can be quite difficult to bowl teams out. I wasn't surprised today and it was probably more beneficial to us that we didn't."

Oh how the mighty have fallen! Who does he think he is? Steve Ballmer?
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The New York Times has a long story on how to create top-notch athletes. The story is based on a tennis academy in Moscow that has produced 4 Top 10 women's tennis players in the last five years. The story also covers something called Myelin which supposedly stores the skills knowledge in the brain.

This could explain why we've never produced any top-class sportspeople in India outside of cricket. People do start early - lots of kids start swimming, badminton and ping-pong pretty early. But no one meets the other criteria:
1. Top class technique and coaches
2. Constent training for at least 10 years (ages 7-17 for women and 9-19 for men).
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