Digital money

The EFF has an interesting article on something called bitcoin, a pure digital currency not backed by anything, or controlled by any single authority, and with a hard limit on the total cash that will ever be generated. The cash generation scheme is a proof-of-work system, which means it is not “free.” Not surprising, then, [...]

Impotence, apologies etc

Pritish Nandy ends his piece on “brave” Indian mobs with a, as I see it, rhetorical question- What is it that makes perfectly normal people who have just about woken up in the morning suddenly get together and kill a person suspected of having committed a minor theft? They could simply recover the stolen property [...]

Chained speech

Simon Jenkins’ bewildering op-ed in the Guardian- Freedom of speech, like freedom of traffic, can only be defined by the curbs and regulations that make it real. The right wing seeks to curb WikiLeaks, and the left seeks to curb “hate speech”. The right wants the freedom to finance unlimited political propaganda, and the left [...]

An optimist

Explanation of a trope from the TV Tropes deconstruction of Atlas Shrugged- Very cynical in its appraisal of the motivations of high government officials who wish to exercise control over the country. However, Rand had a decidedly idealistic take on humanity as a whole, or at least human potential, and she also argued for a [...]

Don’t vote for change

K.M. wrote a very interesting post on Swami’s article that I criticized a couple of days back. He said- Political change is necessarily preceded by cultural change. Aiyer’s article shows that despite all his claims to be a liberal, he does not really understand liberty at all. Anyone who thinks liberty can be achieved by [...]