Sunday, August 12, 2018

V.S. Naipaul's Mutinies, Then and Now

V.S. Naipaul, who wrote some of the best non-fiction in the 20th century, has died. The Guardian describes his non fiction as 'gloomy portraits of India, Africa and Islam in a series of travelogues including 1964’s An Area of Darkness, 1980’s A Congo Diary and 1981’s Among the Believers'. 

 He saw the the rage of groups in India early on:

Some more gloomy writer would say the million mutinies in India would turn out to be the 'mutinies of the mobs' against each other.

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posted by Pramit Singh @ 6:06 PM 0 Comments

Friday, December 16, 2011

Christopher Hitchens: The man who questioned



Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), the man who was at war against delusion, the man who questioned religion, and other pathologies (he wrote the book 'God is not great', a book you will wish you had read as early as possible in life) has died of esophageal cancer.

Since Hitchens did not believe in a heaven so the usual platitudes of 'rest in heaven' or 'rest in peace' won't do.

But, Hitchens would have liked it very much that we continue to question things.

We are human. We can ask questions.

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posted by Pramit Singh @ 3:33 PM 0 Comments

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Those were the days (The Jobs and Gates show)



R.I.P. Steve Jobs. The world was a better place with you in it.

Also read this: Finding the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the web 2.0 era
Honestpage: 10 things Steve Jobs will be most famous for

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posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:04 PM 0 Comments

Thursday, September 08, 2011

R.I.P.: Michael Hart, Inventor of ebooks, Founder of Project Gutenberg

Michael Hart, who invented the ebook (then called in full, as electronic books) and founded the Project Gutenberg has died at the age of 64. What Wikipedia is to the availability of free knowledge, Project Gutenberg is to the availability of free ebooks. It does so by digitizing all the books in the public domain and making them available for distribution. Project Gutenberg has 36000 books in its collection so far.

This is what Michael Hart said about ebooks in July this year:
One thing about eBooks that most people haven't thought much is that eBooks are the very first thing that we're all able to have as much as we want other than air. Think about that for a moment and you realize we are in the right job." 

His obituary

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posted by Pramit Singh @ 7:06 PM 0 Comments