Fight or Flight

Hindutva is embarrassed by Hinduness. A new generation of confident Indians has started to move beyond its logic of fear and hate. Will the BJP be able to seize this moment for creative reinvention? ASHIS NANDY with SHOMA CHAUDHURY The cascading crisis within the BJP since May 16 and their confused debate on the role Hindutva has played in their electoral defeat tells a fascinating story. It would be premature to read any of this as a signal of either the disintegration of the party or Hindutva, but one could safely say the idea of Hindutva has been defeated by Hindustan for the moment – it has been put on a backburner and challenged to reinvent itself. The BJP’s dependence on Hindutva as its defining characteristic was bound to turn problematic. Data suggest that at most about 10 percent of BJP supporters vote for the BJP on ideological grounds. The Hindutva project was constructed by tapping into and fostering fear and a psychology of siege among the Hindus—a sense of being a minorit...

Oh, it's a mystery to me We have a greed with which we have agreed And you think you have to want more than you need Until you have it all you won't be free Society, you're a crazy breed Hope you're not lonely without me... When you want more than you have You think you need... And when you think more than you want Your thoughts begin to bleed I think I need to find a bigger place Because when you have more than you think You need more space Society, you're a crazy breed Hope you're not lonely without me... Society, crazy indeed Hope you're not lonely without me... There's those thinking, more-or-less, less is more But if less is more, how you keeping score? Means for every point you make, your level drops Kinda like you're starting from the top You can't do that... Society, you're a crazy breed Hope you're not lonely without me... Society, crazy indeed Hope you're not lonely without me... Society, have mercy on me Hope you're not...

Chris Wilkinson, CEO of HabiTECH interviews Angel Pui, CEO of My Wedding Notes Why did you become an entrepreneur? Entrepreneurs never plan to become one. We are simply not satisfied with the status quo in our everyday lives and we are arrogant enough to want to scratch the itch ourselves while thinking we are the best person to do it. What did you want to become as a child? I wanted to be an architect, to build small-scale models all day. I also wanted to be a race-car driver, a pilot, an olympics athlete, a video games or toy maker, and a fashion designer. What's your favorite part of a typical day? End of the day, because I know I've done a little more than yesterday, and just a bit closer to tomorrow. What skill would you most like to improve? Concentration. I might have ADHD. I can only spend 10 minutes on one task at a time. So I have a comprehensive system doing task 1, task, 2, task 3, then back to task 1 and task 2. 60% of the time, it works every time. (chuckle) What ...

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the final quarter being dropped into the world’s first commercial video game, for it was in May of 1979 that Galaxy Game was removed from the Coffee House café at Stanford’s Tresidder student union. I spent a good part of five years feeding coins into Galaxy’s wondrous console, and in return it taught me and several other Silicon Valley denizens valuable lessons that laid the groundwork for much of what we have done since. I met Galaxy Game in the Summer of 1974. My family had just moved to Palo Alto and I had no friends, so my brother and I rode our bikes around the Stanford campus looking for things to do. I was in 8th grade and the bowling alley got boring quickly, but next door, amidst students and lattes (also a novelty at the time) stood two large consoles, side by side, with odd-looking little black screens. Behind those screens sat a DEC PDP-11/20 powering a riveting game built on a simple concept: use a joystick and a couple of buttons ...

Contributing astronaut blogger Leroy Chiao continues to enlighten us about space travel, backtracking to the pre-launch period of nervous tension—and steak and eggs—then on to that unforgettable moment of explosive truth. Today, I was going to write about how to do something else in space. But, I changed my mind. Let's back up to the beginning of a mission. What's it like to go through a launch? How does it feel? Are you able to sleep the night before? Do you get scared? What do you eat before? Steak and eggs. Medium rare and over easy. This is what the first astronauts ate before launch and why not? I remember during one of my launch counts, the ladies were taking our pre-launch breakfast orders, going around the table. I was hearing things like, dry toast. A little yogurt. Cereal. You gotta be kidding me, what kind of pantywaists am I flying with? They got to me and I replied firmly and evenly, "Steak and eggs, medium rare and over easy." Everyone looked at me funny...

My favorite Jim quote is: "It is better to risk starving to death then surrender. If you give up on your dreams, what's left?"-Jim Carrey LIFE I don't think anybody should go through life without a team of psychologists. I have been through times when I'm literally squatting in the living room, having one of those open-throated cries, where you're crying all the way to your butthole. I always believed I would come out of it, though. I don't make it in regular channels, and that's okay for me. My life is not unlike Truman's. I can't go anywhere. Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn't trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity. I don't think anybody is interesting until they've had the shit kicked out of them. The pain is there for a reason. A lot of times when I was in those depressions, I also had the thing going through my head that this is what I've asked for. I've prayed to God that I would...

Season 1, Episode 10 (The Loobenfeld Decay) Leonard: How long is [Toby/Leo] going to stay here? Sheldon: He's a homeless drug addict, Leonard. Where's he going to go? Boy, you have a lot to learn about lying. Sheldon: (Knocking on Penny's door early in the morning). Penny, Penny, Penny! (Penny opens the door). Sheldon: Good morning. Penny: Do you have any idea what time it is? Sheldon: Of course I do, my watch is linked to the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. It's accurate to one-tenth of a second, but as I'm saying this it occurs to me once again your question may have been rhetorical. Sheldon: Artificial intelligences do not have teen fetishes. Season 1, Episode 11 (The Pancake Batter Anomaly) Sheldon: We have no idea what pathogen Typhoid Penny’s introduced into our environment. And having never been to Nebraska I’m relatively certain that I have no Corn Husking antibodies. Sheldon: Obviously you're not well-suited for three-dimensional chess. Perhaps thr...