Disqus - Latest Comments for Abi

Re: I am not Amit Varma

Abi — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 02:45:26 -0000

You wrote, "... Amit recently, and famously, won the Bestiat Prize. ... Most famous for the fact it is merely two letters away from a sexual pervert most weird."

Congratulations on making it just one letter away from a "sexual pervert most weird." Nice touch!

Re: Cloak Of Invisibility.

Abi — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:34:54 -0000

In my current state, I could use this device, particularly if it can also help me become invisible in the blogosphere ...

More seriously, photonics is an exciting -- and tremendously popular -- field in materials science, but I have to confess that I know virtually nothing about it (other than, of course, that it's an exciting field!). I guess I will have to pass on writing about this one. Thanks for asking, though ... ;-)

Re: Pathetic

Abi — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:31:31 -0000

During this World Cup, living in India is wonderful if you can stay off TV during the off-game hours. The games are all so late in the day, you don't bother to stay up. The newspaper reports the following day are all broken up, because they can't wait till the game is over to publish the final result, dampening the interest further. A couple more 'performances' like the one against Bangladesh may even help us get over our fascination for a bunch of serious -- and seriously pampered -- underachievers.

Re: I get it now…

Abi — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 07:12:13 -0000

Looks like what you *really* needed was the tedium. You don't need the beach when you can get a lot of it -- and more! -- on the web. I recommend some of the sites mentioned in this piece. Alexandra Topping has done all the research so we don't have to!

Re: Third anniversary of blogging

Abi — Thu, 10 May 2007 09:51:54 -0000

Congratulations on this Blogiversary!

In these internet times, the origins of your blog seem to go back to pre-historic days ... ;-)

Re: Boy Oh Boy!!

Abi — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 06:01:31 -0000

Yay! Double congratulations!

Given your reluctance to turn this into a Mommyblog, I presume we should not expect any pics here ...

Re: Arguing about how to bring computing to poor

Abi — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 04:14:47 -0000

1. While cell phones are great for communication, they certainly are not all that great for educational purposes (even with a TV monitor): getting info from wikipedia for example (and reading it).

2. An even more interesting possibility is that when they become reality, the two ideas may prove to be quite disruptive even in developed countries. Cheap laptops are useful not only in poor countries, but also in rich countries with poor people. Similarly, cell phones that allow you to read your e-mail on a TV is a great (and inexpensive) boon even to businesspeople who don't want to invest in an e-mail oriented device.

3. My problem with the 100 dollar laptop is primarily with Negroponte's plan to push them through governments, which are expected to buy them in lots of million pieces. Now, 100 million dollars is a huge amount even for a big country like India, where the reach of primary education is not complete.

Also, in India, the average government spending on primary education works out (roughly) to about $100 per year. When a country has so many children out of school, the government has no business buying one million pieces of these laptops for distributing to its schoolkids. It should be spending that money to get more kids into schools.