aroonwithaview

  • United?

    The calm after a four year storm in America is palpable, but this reversal of the adage might be premature. Almost half of this country voted for an inept and idiotic incarnation of malevolence, and the tide may easily tip the barge if someone only slightly more capable comes along. This obvious observation aside, there’s…

  • Add wise

    I recently read a blog post of an interview with Arunava Sen, a Professor at ISI and one of my Master’s advisors. I also happened to stumble upon the chapter he wrote in the book published in his Princeton advisor’s honour, which was released at a conference in his name on his 65th birthday. This…

  • The Devil’s workshop

    For the Greeks, idleness and repose were the highest aspirations. Only in states of inaction, free from the needs and workings of the body, could the mind be free to reflect and introspect on life and one’s surroundings. In marked contrast, modern life frowns upon those that do not have a full set of pursuits…

  • To mask or not to mask

    Tocqueville’s Democracy in America famously anticipates the suppression of minority interests and individual liberties by the “tyranny of the majority”, but a delectable subtlety of his diagnosis of American democracy was his fear that the majority may in fact tyrannize society into an individualist and selfish culture. He recognized that associations, which reminds citizens of…

  • Mathemagics

    Someone claimed quite grandiosely on Twitter that “mathematical sense is normal human sense” and that “fear of mathematics is always the teacher’s fault”. Is it though? I’ve always done well at math and had regular crises driven by an intense fear of mathematics; this has led me to believe for a long time that the…