Realm of the SCENSCI

Gorky in the lower depths of mother Russia

Maxim Gorky was arguably the most famous writer in the world at the turn of the 20th century. His novel Mother inspired millions of workers for generations. His play The Lower Depths, was among the first plays to detail the lives of the lower classes in a very realistic, unromantic manner. But Gorky is now more or less…

rrameez

February 25, 2014

Arts and Modeling, Political Science

1905, 1917, Bolshevism, Lenin, Maxim Gorky, Russian Revolution, Socialist realism, Stalin, Trotsky
Rational Fools

Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen, coined the term “Rational Fools” nearly 35 years ago. In his famous paper, Sen criticized the first principle of economics: “Every agent is actuated by only self-interest”. On top of this axiom of rational self-interest lie rational action and rational expectations, leading all the way up to the efficiency…

rrameez

December 31, 2013

Abuse of Science, History of Science, Modeling

Capitalism, Commons, Efficient Markets, Elinor Ostrom, Game Theory, Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, Rational Action, Rational Fools
Dilip Kumar: The Chekhovian Amateur who redefined acting

Anton Chekhov revolutionized modern playwriting and short stories. And he is one my favorite writers. Thus, I remember being confused when I first read that Hemingway had said the following about him: “Chekhov wrote about 6 good stories. But he was an amateur writer”. I have never quite been able to understand why Hemingway called…

rrameez

December 10, 2013

Arts and Modeling

Al Pacino, Amir Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Chekhov, Dilip Kumar, Irrfan Khan, Lagaan, Marlon Brando, Method Acting, Naseeruddin Shah, Naya Daur, Robert Deniro, Shahrukh Khan, Stella Adler
Mandela and the Sisyphean quest for freedom!

It was a hot summer’s day. I remember standing in front of his cell in the Robben Island prison. He spent eighteen years of his life there. The cell was very small and a bucket had been provided to him for excrement. But this is not what moved me. What has stayed with me is the…

rrameez

December 5, 2013

Political Science

apartheid, israel, Mandela, palestine, racism, robben island, sisypheus
Ali’s Greatest Fight; the sweet science of boxing, the bitter philosophy of dissidence, and the dicey art of jurisprudence

The most exciting fight of the 20th century did not take place in a boxing ring but in the sociopolitical-legal arena. This is the story of Cassius Clay, who changed his name to Muhammad Ali, vs the United States Govt. (With special appearances from the who’s who of the 20th century)

rrameez

October 19, 2013

Political Science

60s, Antiwar movement, barack obama, civil rights, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong, Islam, jack johnson, jesse owens, joe louis, john f kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Nation of Islam, richard nixon, sonny liston
The Ship of Theseus sails in Water (and not H2O)

The difference between natural language and the language of science The problem of reference in philosophy deals with relations of words to the world. Do words correspond to some mind-independent objects in the external world? In the following text, I propose the thesis that “reference” is one area where science and everyday affairs take sharp,…

rrameez

September 15, 2013

Modeling, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Science

Aristotle, Chomsky, H2O vs Water, Hilary Putnam, Hume, Language, Locke, Obama, Plato, Princess and the Frog, Ship of Theseus, Wittgenstein
Post Adolescent Idealism? Why psychologizing behavior is APSD: Acute Pseudo-Science Disorder

The travesty that was Bradley Manning’s trial is a topic for another forum. Reading about the court proceedings, what immediately struck me was the psychotherapist’s verdict on Manning’s behavior. He was suffering from “Post Adolescent Idealism”, said the therapist. His bashers took this and other psychological judgements that were passed on Manning (narcissism, obsessive compulsive…

rrameez

August 18, 2013

Abuse of Science, Science Debates, Social Science

American Psychiatric Association, Bradley Manning, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Dostoevsky, Einstein, Elizabeth Spelke, Galileo, George Miller, Herbert Simon, Human Behavior, Marlon Brando, Passive Aggressive Personality, Post Adolescent Idealism, Psychiatry, Psychology, Susan Carey, Tolstoy
World Bank and Mother India!

So I was queued up at the university train-ticket shop. A middle-aged man was sitting on a sofa while his wife was buying tickets to some destination. Bound by my old habit of starting conversations with total strangers, true to form and tradition, I started a conversation with him. After the initial hi-hello, he asked…

rrameez

July 30, 2013

Abuse of Science, Economics, Social Science

Farmers Suicide, free markets, IMF, Indian Farmers, Kaushik Basu, Mother India, Nargis, Neoliberalism, World Bank
Eric Schmidt’s Nightmare

The night of the happy day when Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google had declared to the world that privacy was not that important and that if you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, he had a dream that he had died and had ascended…

rrameez

July 26, 2013

Abuse of Science, Distributed Systems, Engineering, Science Debates, Social Science

Ads, Big Octopus, Edward Snowden, Eric Schmidt, Google, Google Glass, NSA, Prism, Privacy
Hippocratic oath or Hypocritic oath

I remember around 10 years back, a friend who is a doctor, went to an impoverished locality in Karachi with a team to vaccinate children against some disease(s). Their team was harassed by some ignorant and mostly illiterate people who felt that such vaccination campaigns are part of a “western conspiracy” to harm them. “Why…

rrameez

July 14, 2013

Abuse of Science, Social Science

Abbottabad, CIA, Hippocratic oath, Hypocritic oath, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, polio, St. Augustine