Disqus - Latest Comments for kingsley2

Re: Caste Hierarchy And Discrimination Not Sanctioned By The Vedas

Kingsley Joseph — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 03:25:55 -0000

Even accepting the author's premise, it's mainly people who claim themselves superior by caste who claim that their caste-superiority is sanctioned in Hindu texts. This article should have been addressed to *those* people instead of towards the critics of the caste system. The fact that it wasn't done smacks of insincerity.

Re: The Aryan-Dravidian Divide Is A Political Myth

Kingsley Joseph — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 08:26:13 -0000

The author makes some good points, but fails to acknowledge the influences on the other side too - that the language, culture and religion of north India contains much that is Dravidian in origin, from the pooja that is so core to modern Hinduism but entirely absent in the Vedas, to a great deal of influence on the grammar and vocabulary of medieval and modern north Indian languages. Until such understanding is present, this seems to merely be a hit job at an ancient and unique culture that has been accepting of influences from all over.

Re: Why Murti-puja is an antidote to fundamentalism

Kingsley Joseph — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 03:01:22 -0000

I agree with much of what this writer says. But unfortunately, educated Hindus themselves seem to think very lowly of idol worship, looking down on the people who do it. The whole Sanatana Dharma movement seems to be trying to recast pluralistic Hinduism into an almost Abrahamic, monistic mould, where the Vedas are treated as "the" holy book, Brahman is capital G God etc. That's not a good development. Hinduism, never a "book religion" is at least as much in its living traditions (that include idol worship, rituals etc) as it is in its books & philosophies.

Re: Ancient Aircraft to Pythagoras

Kingsley Joseph — Fri, 09 Jan 2015 07:43:51 -0000

At the recently-concluded 102nd national science conference, there was a paper presented about ancient Indian aircrafts. And although there were nobel laureates and fields medalists present, all we heard about was that one idiot with a blooper reel of a paper - because that also happened to be the only presentation attended & foreworded by a union minister. Maybe you missed that memo? The threat to real science from people with religious and nationalistic agendas is very real. So I'm not making stuff up about people trying to pass myths off as science. In fact, this entire article is about that too - did you even read it?

Re: Ancient Aircraft to Pythagoras

Kingsley Joseph — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 04:39:55 -0000

1) Calling out religiously/nationalistically-motivated propaganda in science (pushpaka vimanas as real aircraft, a 6000 year old biblical earth etc)
2) Appreciating the creativity, ingenuity and intelligence of the past

These 2 don't have to be mutually exclusive. It's just as important to call out those who pull us backwards as it is to appreciate those who move us forward.

Calling those idiots Sanghis is definitely presumptuous - as is your use of the labels Stalinist and pseudo-secularist.

Re: On the Road Again

Kingsley Joseph — Mon, 05 May 2014 13:33:27 -0000

And just like that, you'll have to change your sidebar bio.

Re: Gujarat model is antidote to failed Bengal model of Nehru and Mahalanobis

Kingsley Joseph — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 23:53:36 -0000

The antidote to the Soviet model has to be on multiple levels, not simply the "business-friendly" plank of states like Gujarat and TN. Most of the people I speak to, seem to want a US style dynamic economy, but run from the center by a "strong PM", like a Soviet style power structure. Anyone who's lived in the US will realise how localized the power structures are and how much more people care about local issues. Most educated Indians don't know who their ward councillor or MLA actually is. We care a lot more and talk a lot more, about national issues and who should be PM, than the things we can fix in our own backyard, like street lighting and corporation schools. We have nothing but contempt for local politicians (very similar to the contempt we used to have for "banias"). Hopefully, if Modi is elected PM, he will do more to decentralize power to states and local governments instead of simply making it easy for a few large businesses to do well. Without that, we simply replace an oligarchy with a plutocracy of big business.

Re: Want to do a Zappos in India? Forget it.

Kingsley Joseph — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 09:58:53 -0000

Ants are not very disciplined - they have simply evolved as a colony-driven species. I think self-organizing groups can easily evolve in India - if everyone buys into the mission completely, the metrics are clear and friction is removed. Proof that it can happen in India: dabbawallahs - fully self-organizing, multiple points of redundancy, great accuracy and extremely low overhead.

Re: SkiftSeedlings: Five trip planning startups for five very different travelers

Kingsley Joseph — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:31:30 -0000

Thanks @Valentin Dombrovsky & @Samantha Shankman! We designed that logo ourselves, so it's gratifying that you like it.

In terms of functionality, we literally launched last week, so we have a lot to catch up with. But the team is pumped, and I'm sure we'll address these opportunities in the following weeks.

Re: Hello Startup World!

Kingsley Joseph — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 05:38:05 -0000

Thanks Seneca. We can definitely put that distributed computing power to some better uses than we do now.

Re: Hello Startup World!

Kingsley Joseph — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 05:34:53 -0000

Thanks!

Re: Hello Startup World!

Kingsley Joseph — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 02:49:59 -0000

Thanks Senthil!

Re: Hello Startup World!

Kingsley Joseph — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 02:49:50 -0000

You bet man, thanks!

Re: Hello Startup World!

Kingsley Joseph — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:09:13 -0000

Thanks 'Deem!

Re: Hello Startup World!

Kingsley Joseph — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:46:30 -0000

Thanks Ajay!

Re: Hello Startup World!

Kingsley Joseph — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:43:23 -0000

Thanks Pete!

Re: http://kingsley2.com/post/1119732842

Kingsley Joseph — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 02:47:23 -0000

Was actually supposed to be a pun on Obama - obey me :)

Re: http://kingsley2.com/post/1079895901

Kingsley Joseph — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 06:46:12 -0000

In the article, it's typically higher-end products that set a price that makes the lower end model look reasonable.

Re: http://kingsley2.com/post/1007704251

Kingsley Joseph — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 02:00:03 -0000

Thanks Alex!

Re: The 2010 Social Networking Map

Kingsley Joseph — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 23:18:41 -0000

Some non-western networks with sizable numbers: renren, QQ, tudou (video sharing), sulekha

Re: Fuck you Bay Area weather!

Kingsley Joseph — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:50:54 -0000

Have you ever been? I love the weather in Bangalore.

Re: http://kingsley2.com/post/815891990

Kingsley Joseph — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:11:58 -0000

Wolfram Alpha blog

Re: Kingsley 2.0 • “பழையன கழிதலும் புதியன புகுதலும் வழுவல கால...

Kingsley Joseph — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:07:26 -0000

It's Nannool, a grammatical work written by Pavanandhi Munivar, a Tamil-Jain scholar who lived in the 12th century. The book updated the earlier Tholkappiyam with the changes in the Tamil language during medieval times.

Re: http://kingsley2.com/post/678016239

Kingsley Joseph — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:35:37 -0000

Some interesting factoids about my social graph:
1. It's very sparse. If everyone was connected to everyone else in my graph, that would be a graph density of 1. My graph is about 0.011, or only 1% of the possible number of relationships actually exist.
2. The obvious social whales (Arrington, for example) don't play a big role in *my* graph, since they're not connected to most of my friends.
3. My salesforce.com network and my 2 social media networks (both bay area and india) are more integrated with my social life than my Digital Chocolate and Indiana networks. That is, I have more friends at salesforce.com who know my other friends than at my new employer.

Re: Naming Babies: Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore

Kingsley Joseph — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:05:46 -0000

The Chandra observatory? Chandrayaan? சண்டை?